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Kumbalangi Nights Movie Review

Kumbalangi Nights is a 2019 Indian Malayalam film directed by Madhu C. Narayanan and starring Fahadh Faasil. This is a flawed, but very well acted and touching film.

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Saji, Bonny, Bobby and Franky are siblings who mostly do not get along. However, a series of events forces them to keep their animosity aside and support each other. This is a very well made film from a first-time director. His directing is confident, the writing is quite strong and the acting is uniformly terrific.

Every single performer did a phenomenal job here with the standout being Fahadh Faasil in a complex, superbly written role. Soubin Shahir was also great and so were other cast members. This movie has a couple of romantic elements and interesting female characters who are feminist in their depictions, but they were underdeveloped for the most part as the movie is centered after all on this male-centric family.

But the family themselves are wonderfully realized individually and as a group. You got the slacker type, the mute and moody type and the one who shows most potential, but the most memorable one is of course Shammi, a man who effectively exemplifies what many would call to be toxic masculinity, but I would just call a man who is broken by societal expectations.

Kumbalangi Nights isn’t preachy at all in its depiction of how these expectations of men not to cry and to always be strong affects them badly. Instead, this theme is treated in a nuanced, believable manner. India as a country is quite different in the regard of overly expressed masculinity, something that the West doesn’t experience anymore, so watching this movie you see a glimpse into a different culture with all its pros and cons.

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The movie is at its best when it is silent instead of talkative as it gives us so much emotion and character work just through silence and nuanced facial expressions and body language. But the dialogue is still quite strong and consistently engaging while the score, cinematography and production design made perfect use of its gorgeous riverside setting. I just wished that all characters were given their proper due and that the ending wasn’t disappointing as it was rather rushed.