‘Minmini’ movie review: Halitha Shameem’s Himalayan outing leaves you cold

A still from ‘Minmini’

Early in Minmini, inside a school during a chilly evening at Ooty, a candle goes off.

A student offers to light it up with his candle. “When one candle lights up another, there’s no loss,” someone remarks.

This line, in essence, is symbolic of this 143-minute coming of age drama, one that opens with sequences in a school in Ooty. The most popular student here in Pari (Gaurav Kaalai), a football star who has won so many cups that the school shelves aren’t able to accommodate them. Enter Sabari, a new student who has very different interests; he plays chess, isn’t as outgoing as Pari and is more interested in colouring the sketching.

Sabari and Pari do not get along but there is indeed some simmering tension between them. The film builds up this drama for far too long until an accident occurs, after which Minmini becomes an almost different film: about finding oneself.

The second half opens, without wasting any time, in the Himalayas. Two students from the group, till now very much in a shell and without knowledge of the outside world, are now out in the expanse. They are not just finding themselves but also helping discover others.

You’ll have to watch the film to understand why, but director Halitha Shameem’s Minmini is best watched when you’re really not expecting dramatic things to happen. There’s a lot of romanticisation of the Himalayas happening here, with two key characters, Praveenah (Esther Anil) and Sabari (Praveen Kishore), undertaking a journey of discovery. Director Halitha Shameem goes with a lot of “vibes” here, spraying the sequences with long stretches of conversation about life, goals and happiness.

The problem with all this is that it makes Minmini look like a pretty postcard with little depth. Like the lead actors spotting an arts festival sign and immediately deciding to head in. Like trying to ride a camel, or drinking butter tea, and meeting new bikers on the way. While the lack of romantic conversation between the two is indeed refreshing, these scenes also feel a tad too stretched and like an advertisement for Himalayan tourism.

The voiceovers, mostly the characters’ commentary on life, don’t really help at these junctures. The cinematography by Manoj Paramahamsa is breathtaking, largely thanks to the beauty and views that the terrain offers. The music is by Khatija Rahman, who has a reasonably good outing; but one does wish that she didn’t have to fill the entire college stretches in the first half with thunderous background music.

The end reveal and subsequent stretches make for some gripping viewing, but Halitha didn’t have to make things too literal; like getting a young Sabari read a book about friendship, or having the leads converse about the sky and afterlife in a starlit night. The accident sequence could have better filmed too — the seriousness of the mishap does not come through in the visuals — but the college friendship scenes and the entire Himalayan stretch do make up for that.

One of the biggest talking points about Minmini before its release was that the filmmaker chose to capture the movie over eight years so that she could capture the growth of the actors in the film. While that attempt is admirable, especially with respect to Sabari, it results in two halves that is very different in nature from each other.

From a bird’s eye view of recent Tamil cinema, largely dominated by black-and red-visual tones, guns and aruvals, the colourful and well-lit Minmini does come across as a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, the novelty is only in the visuals and the treatment, but not in the depth in scenes. From the director who gave us more memorable films like Poovarasan Peepee and Sillu Karupatti, Minmini seems more visual but less brave.

Many times, you wish for more drama and more confrontation. Just like the journey the characters undertake, the film too, unfortunately, doesn’t have a certain destination. It pretty much feels like a beautiful photograph of the Himalayas that you would see and sigh at.

Minmini is currently running in theatres