Ketchup Cut: Hridayam is the director's way of celebrating every youth's journey into adulthood

Today, we discuss one of the many instances and characters from Vineeth Sreenivasan's coming-of-age romantic movie, Hridayam.

Romance and college life has to be one of the most beautiful experiences while growing up. And for some reason, this combination always attracts storytellers with everyone trying their best to show their own perspective of these quality years. Vineeth Sreenivasan who has mastered the art of telling the stories of young adults by now also gave us Hridayam which was a success. And like most of his movies, this movie too had instances that makes us fall in love with it, making us want to talk about it in this week's Ketchup Talk.

About the movie:

Directed by – Vineeth Sreenivasan
Written By – Vineeth Sreenivasan
Cast – Pranav Mohanlal, Kalyani Priyadarshan, Darshana Rajendran
Where to watch – DisneyPlus Hotstar

Haridayam is a romantic coming-of-age movie about the life of a man in his early 30s, Arun Neelkandan (Pranav Mohanlal) reflecting on his misspent youth and the rocky road that brought him to adulthood.

Ketchup Cut:

Talk about showing the simplicity of a young man growing up into adulthood while experiencing his fair share of bad days and Vineeth Sreenivasan does a good job. The director who himself has taken an active part onscreen has somehow cracked the code to get to an audience of all ages. And he's done it again with his latest hit, Hridayam.

The premise of the movie does not seem that complicated. It's a story of a man who walks into his college life, away from his home only to experience something more than what he had expected. Arun is the prime example of every young Malayalee boy who moved to another city to complete his engineering degree and who found a whole new world waiting for him. We have seen Vineeth play around stories of young adults in the background of their college lives (shoutout to movies like Malarvaadi Arts Club, Oru Vadakan Selfie). He tries his best to work around the same and succeeds to a great extent.

While the movie revolves around Arun's life, one character that truly leaves an impact on the audience is Selva. It's impossible for anyone to walk out after watching the movie and not love the character. He's the alkaline that brings out Arun's life back to a more peaceful one breaking his toxic path of self-destruction. Selva is that character that every storyteller wants who holds a portion of the story that the audience always ends up loving.

While it may be predictable how his story moves forward, it's the way it was portrayed that makes you want to talk about it. It's the director's ability to play with natural and material elements, like the sun or the wind or the train to put the whole story together that grabs us by the gut. If you go back and watch the movie you will realize the constant presence of the sun around Selva throughout the film. Making it a part of his character throughout in a subtle way only for it to make more sense when the character dies, it's also an example of good storytelling. Not to forget how trains play an important part in the story. We get to see the commute in some of the most important parts of Arun's life, be it in the start when he is traveling to Chennai, parting ways with Darshana and moving on to the next chapter of his life, or falling in love with Nithya in the second half of the movie.

And the director tries his best to present the same as a beautiful love letter to every young adult and succeeds to an extent, up until we get a bit bored considering how long the movie feels like. Although you enjoy the small details that he tried to include in the movie, after a point it feels too stretched making you wonder how much of the movie is still left. It's for sure a one-time watch when you're deciding on what to watch in your next family get-together.

Have you watched the movie on DisneyPlus Hotstar yet? Let us know what your thoughts are on the movie.

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