Maara vs. Charlie
Spoilers Ahead…
As someone who watches movies across most Indian languages, I find remakes between industries pointless. Before the internet and streaming services, you could argue that people (apart from cinephiles) didn’t watch movies in a language different from theirs, so a remake allows them to watch the same story but set in their cultural context. But nowadays, that sense of watching something ‘foreign’ is gone. The success of Baahubali, KGF, and multiple Malayalam films of recent years are proof of finding critical and commercial success across our linguistically diverse country.
This is, of course, a very one-sided argument. If you haven’t watched the original, the remake is as good as a new movie for you. And a remake — especially one with a bankable star — can help re-tell a good story that originally didn’t garner much attention outside of its home state. Like Samantha’s U-Turn, which was a scene-to-scene remake of the Kannada original, but her star power helped popularise both versions.
Then, there is the monetary aspect as well. What’s the harm in replicating something you know will guarantee success? Especially in an industry where every Friday is a roll of dice for actors, directors, and producers. Look at the recent commercial success of Kabir Singh, which raked in a whopping ₹400 crore, almost equal to the amount amassed by the original.
My only issue with remakes is that they reduce the number of ‘brand-new’ movies made and consumed. Disney Hotstar+’s Diwali release, Laxmii, was a remake of the Tamil film Kanchana, which has been telecasting its Hindi dubbed version for the past ten years, thereby questioning the need for a remake in the first place!
So, then why did I watch Maara?
I initially didn’t have any intention to, but once the positive reviews started pouring in and there were mentions on how the movie added to the original and was not a remake but an adaptation, I decided to give it a shot.
Did I enjoy the movie?
The answer is complicated and hence, this essay.
(This essay is in no way written to discredit the efforts of director Dhilip Kumar and writer Bipin. The fact that they told their own story within an existing one, is itself commendable. This essay just demonstrates the differences between the two versions and what did and didn’t work for me.)
Charlie was a part of the resurgence of Malayalam cinema in the mid-2010s, following the success of movies like Ustaad Hotel, Ohm Shanti Oshana, Bangalore Days, and Premam and I watched it as a starry-eyed college freshman, who was beyond thrilled to discover yet another world of films.
What struck me most about this movie was its lack of direction in the plot. The movie just flowed, neither the protagonist Tessa (played by Parvathy) nor us, knew where this journey in search of this mysterious man could take us. It also felt very open-ended. We know next to nothing about Tessa (except for her relationship with her mother and grandmother) and even less about Charlie (played by the ever-charming Dulquer Salmaan). A lot of the proceedings are happenstance, relying more on chance than a predetermined plot thread, which contributed to the surreal premise.
Maara replaces this free spirit with a sturdy structure. Where Tessa ran away from home (fearing an arranged marriage) and sought to stay in Fort Kochi to remain hidden from her family, Paaru (Shraddha Srinath) comes to Fort Kochi for work. Where Tessa just happens to stay in Charlie’s house, Paaru decides to stay in Maara’s house after seeing his paintings. We never find out why Charlie lives a nomadic life, helping everyone along the way, whereas Maara gets a scene where he explains the reason for his constant travels.
All these additions work — it’s like the writers came up with their own reasons to fill in the blanks in these characters' lives and relations. Some like Maara’s encounter with Velayya (Moulee) on the train are just wonderful. Bathed in an orangish glow, they look right out of a fairytale book, and a parallel meeting on the opposite side of the tracks hint at something or someone already in the works to bring two lovers together. This retweaked premise of two unrelated souls unknowingly reuniting two lovers invokes the work of a celestial being. It’s like Paaru’s journey to search for Maara had already been predetermined. That’s why the beginning — with the beautifully animated sequence — and the ending are the best parts (and needless to say why, because they are original!) of the movie.
The middle portions are the dull ones, only because they replicate the various anecdotes about the titular character from the original, and as already having watched that, I was waiting for them to get it over with. But later, once the climactic reunion in the ending was revealed, I realised that the reason for this indifference was because the story isn’t so much about Maara, as it is about Paaru. She didn’t even need to meet Maara (especially with that short and lukewarm meeting scene) as the true purpose of this journey was something else. This makes this said middle portion feel weirdly disjointed with the rest of the film. In the original, Tessa was a passive character, and only through her journey do we learn of Charlie, and the culmination of them finally meeting works, as that’s what the movie has been always about. Here, the story starts with being about Paaru and her love for stories and then shifts to being about Maara and his selfless acts of kindness, and then it back to being about Paaru again. (Even in the subplot involving the little girl forced into prostitution by her father, Tessa goes to the lodge only in search of Charlie with no knowledge of this girl. Paaru instead goes looking for the girl, and not Maara). If Maara was part of the climactic reunion, I wouldn’t have this problem. But with the additions in the story and that ending, his character’s inclusion is just to help Paaru get to Velayya. So apart from the scenes where Maara helps Kani (Sshivada), the portions with the obituary and the prostitute (Abhirami) on the boat could have easily been edited out.
A lack of urgency also rids the story from being gripping and engrossing. In Charlie, there is the urgency of Tessa needing to find Charlie before her mother finds her, and there is also the suspense of what exactly happened the night Charlie tried to rob a house. These tensions are done away with, in Maara, making the movie feel bloated at times.
It also doesn’t help that Madhavan’s lack of exuberant, cheerful energy fails to help permeate his presence in scenes where he is off-screen. Shraddha Srinath is no Parvathy, who along with Dulquer Salmaan perfectly depicted the free spirit-ness of the story. There was a mischievous, child-like curiosity to her Tessa, which Shraddha Srinath’s Paaru didn’t possess. She is instead quieter, and more level-headed, which is alright in parts, but the whimsical aspect of the movie is equally lost. Like for example, in Charlie, we have many shots of Tessa physically walking to or travelling to meet the people Charlie interacted with. Through this not only do we see Kochi, but also feel her love for exploring and how she isn’t afraid to go in search of strangers to meet another stranger. Maara cuts through a lot of that search and understandably so, but it also takes away from defining Paaru’s love for the mystical and the magical.
I also didn’t understand why the story had to set in Fort Kochi itself, why not any coastal town in Tamil Nadu. This is because as a viewer, we hear Charlie speak in Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi cementing his presence as one of a Djinn, who can blend into any place, and speaks to you in your native tongue. So, with Maara talking Tamil to everyone in Kochi feels off. Though there is the explanation that he hasn’t stayed much in the city but again, like with Paaru, it robs the character of his mythical-like characteristic.
Maara is definitely not a bad movie. If I hadn’t watched Charlie, I most probably would have enjoyed it, but when comparing the two, Charlie, for me, will always be the more enjoyable, the more mesmerizing, and the more entertaining of the two.
