Four Walls & Two Nighties movie review: Achyuth Kumar is let down by weak presentation of decent plot

2/5

Story: Shankar (Achyuth Kumar), lovingly called Shankaranna by his near-and-dear ones, has many firsts to his credit – he was the first from his village to wear a pair of trousers, the first to get a government job and the first to have a love marriage when he insisted on marrying his next-door neighbour, Parvathi. Wedded bliss doesn’t last long, though, as the couple have four kids – three daughters and a son - in quick succession, with Parvathi succumbing to complications in childbirth after the fourth.

Shankaranna brings up his children without letting them ever feel the absence of their mother, but as the years pass by and his daughters get to marriageable age, people in the locality begin wondering why he is showing no interest in having them ‘settle down’. While Shankaranna remains unperturbed, his son Surya is affected by the comments, which results in tension in the household. Why is Shankaranna limiting his daughters’ lives to the four walls of their house?

Review: For some strange reason, I had unrealistic expectations of Four Walls & Two Nighties. Director SS Sajjan’s film about a single dad and the relationship dynamic with his grown-up children sounded like a promising set up. But more importantly, the film had been picked up to be distributed award-winning filmmaker D Satya Prakash, so, the logic was that it had to have some merit for him to show interest. What a disappointment this one turned out to be.

But here’s the thing, the film is actually not all that bad. The premise is decent and when you get to the reason Shankaranna is so protective of his daughters, you genuinely feel for the man. The problem is that getting to that point is quite tiresome. The narrative takes forever to drive home points about the sacrifices that parents make to bring up their children, and how today’s generation needs to be praised to their face and not in front of others, among others. The film is just too long and at one point, when I thought the film was over, there was at least 15 minutes more run-time, a lot of which could have been avoided.

The problem with many filmmakers is that they are possessive about their films and believe that every frame that has been shot is a value add. When I was a cub journalist two decades ago, I was told in the newsroom that once your copy/article is on the sub-editors’ desk, you have to trust their instincts in presenting it in perhaps half or even less word count. The same logic should apply here too – trust the editor and give him a free-hand – the end result may just be a lot better. The sad bit is that Achyuth Kumar, as Shankaranna, is all heart in the film; he genuinely tries to hold the film together, but he is let down by the weak execution.

Verdict: Four Walls & Two Nighties has got very limited screens and at the most one show each at multiplexes. If the next few days are like how the show I attended was, with only three in attendance, it will be removed in no time and will, hopefully, come to OTT then. That may just be the better bet.