Sukhamano Sukhamann Review: A Soft-Spoken Fantasy That Needed Stronger Roots
Malayalam cinema seems to be gently flirting with fantasy again. Not the grand, spectacle-heavy kind, but the intimate, emotionally bruised variety, where ghosts linger less to frighten and more to fill silences. After Sarvam Maya reminded us that the supernatural can be playful, even mischievous, Sukhamano Sukhamann steps into similar territory with softer intentions. It wants to ask a simple question and mean it.
“Sukhamano?” — Are you okay?
It’s a greeting we use casually, often without waiting for an answer. Director Arunlal Ramachandran builds his debut around that emotional absence, what happens to a person who is never truly asked, and never truly heard.
Theo (Mathew Thomas) is an ambulance driver in a town that has already decided who he is. Branded “mental” by those around him, Theo moves through life with the quiet dislocation of someone permanently outside the circle. After transporting bodies, he begins seeing the deceased figures who slowly occupy his lonely home and, in many ways, his fractured emotional world.
The film never treats these apparitions as horror devices. They are projections, emotional substitutes born from unresolved childhood trauma and a life starved of belonging. it’s seems tender and almost magical realist premise. However, the film struggles to fully inhabit its own emotional terrain.
There are stretches where the storytelling feels schematic as if themes of depression, abandonment and isolation are being checked off rather than organically unfolding. Certain scenes land, but others feel inserted for impact rather than earned through narrative progression. The emotional weight the film reaches for doesn’t always arrive.
Theo’s world expands through Iype (Jagadish), a cemetery caretaker carrying his own tragic history, and Charu (Devika Sanjay), a terminally ill young woman afraid of leaving the world unnoticed. Their backstories are poignant in isolation, yet familiar in structure. The film rarely surprises us with where these arcs lead.
The romance between Theo and Charu is meant to anchor the narrative, but it never quite deepens beyond suggestion. We are told they are falling in love; we are not always made to feel it. Charu, in particular, feels underwritten, her emotional space narrower than Theo’s, her motivations thinner than the story requires.
The humour, too, sits in an uncertain zone neither fully quirky nor fully melancholic. It occasionally works,occasionally drifts.
Yet, the film is not without merit. Visually, it carries a softness that suits its themes. Tobin Thomas frames lend warmth to spaces that might otherwise feel stark. Nipin Besent’s music becomes the film’s most reliable emotional anchor, often adding depth when the screenplay falters. The modest runtime works in its favour; the narrative doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Mathew Thomas brings a quiet vulnerability to Theo that fits the character’s emotional isolation. Jagadish once again proves how effortlessly he can move between gentle humour and restrained sorrow. Devika Sanjay brings sincerity, even when the writing does not fully support her character’s potential.
There is a moving film somewhere within Sukhamano Sukhamann. You glimpse it in silences, in small exchanges, in the ache beneath the fantasy. But those glimpses rarely consolidate into something lasting.
The central question, “Are you okay?” carries immense relevance in an increasingly disconnected world. The film understands its importance. It just doesn’t dig deep enough to let the question linger.
See, Sukhamano Sukhamann is not frustrating enough to dismiss, nor profound enough to remember too. It sits somewhere in between gentle, sincere, but emotionally undercooked.
