Achappa Album- A Delightful Film

Deepti Sivan, married to the youngest brother Sajeev Sivan of the famous Santosh Sivan of the Sivan family steeped in very good cinema, has traversed a long way till she made her debut as a filmmaker with a long documentary entitled Decoding Shankar on the life and works of renowned singer and composer, Grammy Award winner Shankar Mahadevan.

This film was chosen in the “Indian Panorama” of 49th edition of International Film Festival of India at Goa. This documentary film drew rave reviews from both the critics and cinema buffs alike. During the making of this film, Deepti was pregnant with her third son.

After Decoding Shankar, Deepti made a documentary “Gods Own Kingdom” which is on the world’s richest temple - the Padmanabha Swamy temple, the latest viral trending Anthem on the Indian Navy “Call of the Blue Waters” unveiled by the President of India on Navy Day. She then produced a Feature Film “Ozhuki, Ozhuki, Ozhuki” directed by her husband Sanjeev Sivan, a lovely film with a boy as the protagonist.This boy, Shreyan, is the son of Sanjeev and Deepti and made his debut in this film.

She has now made her first feature film, Achappa’s Album, featuring her son Shreyan as Appan, the boy who, almost by a chance accident, happens to visit his father Kuttan’s childhood home to find out why his father is so short-tempered and whether he was like this as a boy.

On the one hand, it throws up the images of an affluent, modern, urban family consisting of two working parents, an old surrogate mother, actually an old maid in Appan’s’s father’s village home who lives with the family and loves Appan dearly. On the other hand, his parents are driven to despair with Appan’s naughty pranks when they are often summoned by his school principal with complaints about the boy.

On the other hand, Appan is annoyed with his parents forever squabbling about minor things and feels left out and alone. Once, for injuring the old aunt by mistake, his father Kuttan locks him up in the attic of the house. Appan is terrified of the dark and pleads to be let out. To keep from panicking, he begins to go through old, discarded things in this attic and comes across his grandfather’s box of magic and an old album where he is surprised to discover old photographs of his father as a small boy, looking exactly like himself.

His grandfather, who Rishi has never seen as he was born after the old man had died, suddenly appears to him and tells him that he can take Appan to their old village home to meet his grandparents and find out more about a father who does not communicate with him much. He takes a trip back in time to his father’s village. But the older generation mistake Appan for his father when he was a boy as both father and son are split images of each other as children.

The film thus travels with Rishi sometimes in the present context and sometimes engages in time travel which brings in a good and well-treated dose of magic realism to the story. He learns that his grandfather was a magician. Rishi finally trips back to the present where Kuttan, his father now communicates with his son in a healthy manner, begins to play on the tabla he did so well as a boy and his mother returns to her old proficiency in Bharat Natyam.

Achappa’s Album is a roller-coaster ride for children and adults alike spiced up with boyhood acts of mischief and fights, a travel into the past offering a visual delight of life in a Kerala village in an extended family filled with song, dance and merriment full of entertainment for a mainstream audience.

We are given glimpses of a Kerala village where an extended family lived together in harmony, sang songs, cooked delicious dishes and enjoyed a happy life free from modern gimmicks like the cell phone, the television and the computer.

Mohan Agashe as Achappa is a delight as he always is while Shreyan throws up a marvelously natural and organic performance in a multi-layered role of a naughty, city-bred, 14 year old who knows nothing about village life.

Looking back on her directorial debut with a challenign subject that involves time travel, a teenage boy’s growing up and a naughty boy who cannot understand why her parents are always squabbling, Achappa’s Album is an audiovisual delight. It deals with time travel not easy to handle by a debutant filmmaker, with magic, with lovely music all framed within a family story.

Deepti Sivan says, “My film stemmed out of an intense emotion. It is a father-son story where the father sort of replace each other for a short while which shows both of them as teenagers, offering them a glimpse into each other’s lives and maybe lead to a better understanding.” But this statement is not entirely correct.

When Appan is transported to his father’s village home, he is mistaken by the entire family as Kuttan as a boy and his father has no inkling of this time-travel. The family members are no more and Kuttan is still an adult working back in the city. The older generation believes that Appan is Kuttan and they thus, ask him to play on the tabla which he cannot play on at all.

In response, Sivan says, “the story appealed to me because it attempts to bridge the gap between generations. Being a mother of three growing sons, I have sensed how generations are often judgmental about each other. The film suggests that this is not backed by logic. Each generation has its plus and minus points and life is all about negotiations with these bouquets and brickbats and emerge a winner in the battle of life.”

The cinematography spans the beauty of a Kerala village and pits it opposite the cloistered coldness of city life where the music is different, the lifestyles are different, the entertainment lessons are different and even the food patterns and childhood games are different. This covers a huge landscape without melodrama or loudness in any way. The way Appan discovers his mother as a little girl smitten by him as she thinks he is Kuttan is cute and sweet.

Achappa’s Album also offers us a lovely glimpse into the extended joint family back in the village when Kuttan was 14 years old watching the women in the family busy in all kinds of household chores yet taking a break in music and dance. This throws up a striking contrast between urban and rural lifestyles, pitting the simplicity of rural life with the complexity of city life. However, Appan’s speech towards the end at the complex’s meeting is a bit too much and could have been clipped away.