Manichitrathazhu

Nakulan and his wife Ganga, who have been living in Kolkata, decide to take a vacation to Nakulan’s ancestral village in Kerala. This is Ganga’s first visit to her husband’s place. Despite warnings from elder family members, Nakulan insists on staying at his ancestral home, the Madampalli Tharavad, which is apparently haunted. The rest of the family joins them as well, not willing to leave them alone in a haunted house. Nakulan’s maternal uncle, Thambi, cautions the couple to avoid certain parts of the house, particularly a locked room known as the "Thekkini." Nakulan’s aunt and Thambi's sister, Bhasura, reveals the dark history behind the house.

About 150 years ago, the family’s patriarch and the ruling feudal lord, Karnavar Sankaran Thambi, fell in love with a dancer named Nagavalli during a trip to Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu and brought her back to the mansion. However, Nagavalli was already in love with another dancer, Ramanathan, who moved into the nearby house and Nagavalli started to meet him secretly. When the Karnavar discovered the affair, he killed them both, after which legend has it that Nagavalli's vengeful spirit began haunting the mansion. With the help of priests, her spirit was locked away in the Thekkini, but the Karnavar committed suicide shortly after. It is believed that both their spirits still linger in the mansion.

In the present day, Alli (Bhasura's daughter) and Mahadevan (a college lecturer) are engaged and Mahadevan currently lives in the house in which Nagavalli's lover Ramanathan used to live. Ganga, after listening to the story, dismisses it as a mere legend meant to scare people away from hidden treasures in the house. Driven by curiosity, she enlists Alli, to help her unlock the Thekkini. After gaining access, strange events begin to occur: people see apparitions of a woman, objects break mysteriously, and Ganga's sari catches fire. Suspicion falls on Thambi’s elder daughter, Sreedevi, who had been originally meant to marry Nakulan years ago (Nakulan's mother Sharadha had rejected the proposal due to problems with Sreedevi's horoscope and he had moved on to marry Ganga. Later, Sreedevi had married someone else but it ended up in a divorce due to her bad horoscope). With tensions rising, the family begins to believe that Sridevi may be possessed by Nagavalli's spirit.

Concerned, Nakulan calls on Dr. Sunny, a renowned US-based Indian psychiatrist, to investigate the situation. After arriving at the mansion, Sunny encounters several mysterious events, including an attempt on Alli’s life, as well as a woman's eerie voice singing and dancing in Tamil emanating from the locked Thekkini at midnight. Sunny supposedly starts treating Sreedevi, and in the process, slowly grows close to her. After a few days, impersonating the Karnavar by wearing his sandals and using his staff, he converses with the mysterious voice in Thekkini, who reveals herself as Nagavalli and vows revenge on the upcoming Durgashtami night by killing the Karnavar. Sunny goes to a place called Evoor with Chandhu, Sreedevi's brother, and talks to a few people there. He also foils someone's attempt to kill Nakulan by giving him poisoned tea and blaming Sreedevi, locks her up in her bedroom.

During a Kathakali dance performance attended by the family, Ganga suddenly disappears. Sunny finds her being harassed by Alli’s fiancé, Mahadevan, though Mahadevan insists he is innocent. After the confusion settles down, Sunny reveals to Mahadevan and Nakulan that all the problems in the house are being orchestrated by Ganga. Ganga suffers from dissociative identity disorder which has taken on the personality of Nagavalli. Her condition stems from childhood trauma, where she was left with her grandmother while her absentee parents moved to Kolkata. Deeply attached to her grandmother, Ganga grew up immersed in folklore, which fueled her fantasies. The news that her parents were taking her away to the city caused the disease to start, however she recovered later after moving with her parents to Kolkata. Soon after she had opened Nagavalli's room, her disorder came back in the form of Nagavalli's split persona when she started sympathizing with her. Sunny tells them that Ganga, whose mind is frequently overtaken by Nagavalli's personality, perceives Mahadevan as Ramanathan due to him living in the same house as Ramanathan. He reveals that she had tried to kill Alli due to jealousy over Mahadevan and had tried to frame Mahadevan for her apparent sexual harassment to get him back into her life through stopping his marriage to Alli. She also views Nakulan as the Karnavar and had tried to kill him with the poisoned tea. Sunny also reveals that he had later explained everything to the locked up Sreedevi and now she is helping him. Sunny explains that Nagavlli persona's goal is to kill Nakulan on Durgashtami night, as she had told him during the night in Thekkini.

Meanwhile, Thambi and the family, skeptical of Sunny's treatment of Sreedevi, call in a tantric expert, Pullattuparam Brahmadathan Namboodiri, for another solution. Namboodiri and Sunny turn out to be old friends, and Sunny tells Namboodiri of the situation and a plan he has in his mind. Although he initially dismisses Sunny’s plan as impractical, he agrees to assist.

On the morning of Durgashtami, Sunny asks Nakulan to provoke Ganga and witness her transformation and as expected, the Nagavalli persona emerges. Nakulan shouts at her, immediately bringing her Ganga persona back and she realises something is wrong with her. She quickly reverts to Nagavalli’s persona later that night and believing Mahadevan to be Ramanathan, follows him to the rituals prepared by the Namboodiri in front of everyone, to their shock. Namboodiri engages with the Nagavalli persona, and tells her he will help her behead the Karnavar and avenge her death. Nakulan is brought before her but just before she prepares to strike, Namboodiri blows smoke and ash into her face to temporarily close her eyes. At the same moment, Sunny swaps Nakulan with a dummy. The Nagavalli persona cuts the dummy into pieces and finally becomes dormant, convinced that her enemy is dead. Later, Sunny uses therapy to cure Ganga.

The family bids farewell to Ganga, Nakulan, and Sunny. Before leaving, Sunny expresses his desire to marry Sreedevi to which she responds with a smile, indicating her consent.

 

• Mohanlal as Dr. Sunny Joseph /Sunny/Sunnichan, the psychiatrist, Nakulan's best friend from america, who solves Ganga's personality disorder, The main protagonist
• Shobana in dual roles:
  • as Ganga Nakulan, a slightly modern lady from Kolkata who grows curious about the legends heard from Nakulan's ancestoral house, later develop's split personality disorder (voiceover by Bhagyalakshmi)
  • as Nagavalli, the dancer from the legends (voiceover by Durga)^{[20][21] [20]}
• Suresh Gopi as Nakulan, Ganga's husband and the Karnavar in Ganga's hallucination as Nagavalli^[20]
• Vinaya Prasad as Sreedevi, Thambi's elder daughter and Sunny's love interest (voiceover by Anandavally)^[20]
• Nedumudi Venu as Thambi, maternal uncle of Nakulan
• Kuttyedathi Vilasini as Thambi's wife, Nakulan's aunt by marriage
• Sudheesh as Chandhu, Thambi's son and Sreedevi's younger brother
• K. P. A. C. Lalitha as Bhasura, Nakulan's maternal aunt
• Innocent as Unnithan, Bhasura's husband and Nakulan's uncle by marriage^[20]
• Rudra as Alli, daughter of Unnithan and Bhasura, engaged to Mahadevan (voiceover by Ambily)^[20]
• Sridhar as Mahadevan, a professor living next door to Madampally and engaged to Alli / as Ramanathan, Nagavalli's love interest
• Thilakan as Pullattuparam Brahmadathan Namboothiripad, tantric expert and Sunny's friend
• Kuthiravattam Pappu as Kattuparamban, a neighbour
• K. B. Ganesh Kumar as Dasappan Kutty, helper of Unnithan and their distant relative^[20]
• Vaijayanthi as Jayasree, Thambi's younger daughter^[20]
• Kottayam Santha as School Head mistress

Then young directors Sibi Malayil, Priyadarshan and Siddique–Lal served as the second-unit directors, who worked separately but simultaneously with veteran director Fazil to significantly speed up the filming process.^[22][23] The cinematography was by Venu, Anandakuttan and Sunny Joseph served as the second-unit cinematographers, the film was edited by T. R. Shekar. The original songs were composed by M. G. Radhakrishnan, while the original score was composed by Johnson. Mohanlal, though credited as a lead actor, has been noted to have only an extended cameo, the main role being that of Shobhana.^[23]

 

Filming took place in Padmanabhapuram of Kanyakumari district.

The haunting Thekkini room was created inside the Vasan House in Chennai, the house of late S. S. Vasan, the founder of Gemini Studios. It was one of the film’s key locations apart from Padmanabhapuram Palace and Hill Palace, Tripunithura. The major parts of the film were filmed at Hill Palace, Tripunithura and the climax was filmed at Padmanabhapuram Palace.^[24] The painting of Nagavalli was made by artist R. Madhavan, drawn without a live model.^[25]

Shobana's voice was dubbed by two dubbing artistes—Bhagyalakshmi and Durga. Bhagyalakshmi dubbed her voice for Ganga, while Durga gave voice to the character's alter-ego, Nagavalli. Nagavalli's voice is heard only in a minor part of the film compared to Ganga's. Durga was not credited in the film or its publicity material and until 2016, the popular belief was that Bhagyalakshmi solely dubbed both voices.^[26][27]

In January 2016, in an article Ormapookkal published by Manorama Weekly, Fazil revealed that initially Bhagyalakshmi dubbed for both Ganga and Nagavalli, but during post-production, some of the crew, including editor Shekar, had a feeling that both voices sounded somewhat similar even though Bhagyalakshmi tried altering her voice for Nagavalli. Since Nagavalli's dialogues are in the Tamil language, Fazil hired Tamil dubbing artist Durga for the part. But he forgot to inform Bhagyalakshmi, hence she was also unaware of it for a long time. Fazil did not credit Durga in the film; according to him, it was a difficult to make changes in the titles at that time, which was already prepared and her portion in the film was minor. The credits included only Bhagyalakshmi as the dubbing artiste for Shobana.^[28] Other dubbing artistes were Anandavally and Ambili, who dubbed for Vinaya Prasad and Rudra.^[29]

The soundtrack for the film was composed by M. G. Radhakrishnan which went on to become one of the most popular soundtrack in Malayalam.^[30] The album consists of nine tracks. The lyrics in Malayalam is written by Bichu Thirumala and Madhu Muttam and lyrics in Tamil are written by Vaali.^[31]

Manichitrathazhu was released on 25 December 1993,^[32] and performed well at the box office, becoming the highest-grossing Malayalam film at the time.^[33][34][35] It ran for more than 365 days in some centres.^[36]

Certain themes that were discussed in the movie were Ganga’s yearning for intimacy with her husband Nakulan, Mental health disorders and why it’s important to turn to science rather than trust conventional modes of treatments as well as Dr. Sunny and Ganga’s passionate friendship, all of which were rare in Indian cinema, creating a unique blend which received a positive response from the audience.^[40]

The film also deals with the devadasi courtesan practice formerly prevalent in southern India and its patronage by local Nair chieftains, caste prejudices and Tantric cults.^[41]

Manichitrathazhu is considered as a classic and is hailed as one of the best films ever made in Indian cinema.^[12] The film has consistently fetched maximum ratings for its television screenings.^[12] Even twenty years after its release it has been screened more than 12 times a year on an average on Kerala's leading TV channel, Asianet.^[12] The film has received the maximum TRP rating on every screening; TRP ratings have increased every year, a rare record for a film produced in Kerala.^[12][42] For many Malayalis, Manichitrathazhu is a part of their cultural lives.^[43]

In a 2013 online poll in India by IBN Live, Manichitrathazhu was voted second among India's greatest films, by the audience. The poll was conducted as part of the celebration of Indian cinema completing 100 years. The poll constituted a list of 100 films from different Indian languages.^[35] A saree featuring Shobhana in a song scene from this film was released in the market as the Nagavali saree.^[44]

One of the most memorable or defining scenes of the movie where Nakulan provokes Ganga to transform into the Nagavalli persona was recreated in later Malayalam films like Om Shanti Oshana.^[45]

The film was re-released in theatres after 30 years in August 2024.^[46]

"Vijanaveedhi", a Malayalam horror novel by Aswathi Thirunal, has been listed by some as an inspiration for the film, though director Fazil and writer Madhu both deny this.^[47]

A spin-off titled Geethaanjali was released on 14 November 2013, directed by Priyadarshan with Mohanlal reprising his role as Sunny and Suresh Gopi as Nakulan in a cameo appearance.^[48]

• Dissociative identity disorder
• Identity formation
• List of Malayalam horror films
• Mental illness in film
• Devadasi, Indian women entertainers (Nagavalli in the film)
• Bharatanatyam and Kathakali, classical Indian dances featured in the film

• Manichitrathazhu at IMDb