Eeda Review: a romantic drama with clear political statement

Kannur has this political history which has always put the district under a bad light as they always take things very seriously and end up killing each other. Acclaimed film editor B Ajithkumar debuts as a director with the film Eeda which places a Romeo and Juliet story in the midst of the political climate of Kannur. With convincing level of realism helping the movie in getting the emotions correct, Eeda has a clear statement.

Anand and Aishwarya are our main protagonists. Both are natives of Kannur. Anand is working in an insurance firm in Mysore and Aishwarya is studying in Mysore. Their friendship gradually becomes a love affair and then only they realize the fact that both of them belonged to groups who always looked for an opportunity to kill one another. Their effort to get out of that system to live a life together is what Eeda depicting.

B Ajithkumar is not going strong against any particular political ideology. His aim was to show the fact that in this “fight” everyone was a loser and for that he balances the flaws by dividing it to both parties. He uses many characters to show us various sides of a political death. The shallow martyr boasting of both ideologies are exposed here. The lack of clarity and the melodrama in the middle portions is apparently the only major weak point of this film. But towards the end the film becomes more and more intense and ends poetically on another Harthal day.

Shane Nigam continues to show the audience that he has the potential to be a quality actor in the future. The young man gets into the emotional state of Anand easily and he was comfortable with the dialect. Nimisha Sajayan also learns the slang and uses it effectively to portray the strength and weakness of Aishwarya. Manikandan Achari gets a character with substance and so was the case with Sujith Shankar. The film has names like Alencier Ley Lopez, Sudhi Koppa, Surabhi Lakshmi and many others and they all have made a convincing portrayal of their characters.

Much like the movies he has associated himself with; B Ajithkumar chooses the realistic path for Eeda. He makes sure there is authenticity in his narrative by making it very close to the landscape of Kannur by choosing locations and using real slang. Without losing subtlety the content shows us the intentions of all these politically motivated killings and its foul plays. Like I already mentioned, the romance gets a bit mushy in the midway and that’s the only downside to this film. The cuts by the director himself were good and so were the frames. I liked the usage of BGM themes from the tracks.

Eeda has a political statement of its own and it effectively communicates that to its viewer. This adaptation of Romeo and Juliet explores the bloodshed politics of Kannur district through an affecting love story. Eeda is a convincing romantic drama with a valid statement.