There are actors, and then there are echoes. These echoes are the voices that do not fade when the curtains fall and the eyes that continue to speak when the dialogue ends. Mohanlal is such an echo. In the latest Vinsmera Jewellers advertisement, he does not merely adorn ornaments. He incarnates the very idea of ‘Sundaran’ (a beautiful being) who is rare not just in form but in essence.
The camera caresses his face as if it were a sacred object. Then, with a flicker of the wrist and a glance born of centuries, he breaks into abhinaya. It is pure classical expression that is at once performance and revelation. The music rises not in crescendo, but in calm poise.
Mohanlal incarnates the very idea of ‘Sundaran’ (a beautiful being) who is rare not just in form but in essence. Photo: Screengrab/Facebook
It is a breathtaking return, not to the screen, but to form. The ad, less than 120 seconds, becomes a stage, and Mohanlal becomes the dancer once again. The actor is not bound by any story but is liberated by movement. Here is grace, long studied and deeply lived, returning as muscle memory wrapped in divine expression.
One thinks of ‘Kamaladalam’ (1992 Malayalam movie), where Mohanlal danced in grief and redemption. Or ‘Vanaprastham’, where he carried the weight of caste, love, betrayal, and performance — all while painted green, all while dancing on a thin line between Arjuna and the man beneath the makeup. In the Shaji N. Karun masterpiece, Mohanlal played a Kathakali artiste who realises late that the woman he loved never loved him. She only fell in love with the characters he played. His vengeance is neither bloodied nor loud. However, it is performed subtly yet devastatingly in a Kathakali scene where Mohanlal’s character, on stage, courts his own daughter, who plays the female protagonist in the recital. The song plays in the background, “nandanam vidarthunnu, nin mrudu sparshanam”. The pain lingers, so does Mohanlal’s blank gaze into the universe as if connecting with a celestial self that relays all the answers.
Mohanlal in ‘Vanaprastham’. Photo: IMDb
But here, in the Vinsmera ad, there is no vengeance. Only joy. Only a certain cosmic mischief flickers behind his eyes. The wrist turns, the eyebrow arches, the frame glows. The decades of cinema, martial arts, dedication, movement, method, and focus have crystallised into poise. His presence in the ad is not that of an actor but that of a maverick revisiting his domain after an age of silence. And in that pause between one mudra and the next, we feel the weight of a career that has played lover and liar, king and clown, dancer and drunkard.
For Mohanlal, you do not need a ‘Vanaprastham’, after all, to prove that you are an artiste. Sometimes, or mostly, a gesture would suffice. One step in a jeweller’s ad. Or that brief, joyful jig in Hallo, an otherwise raucous entertainer, where Mohanlal shimmied and spun with the energy of someone half his age and the timing of someone twice as trained. He was surrounded by younger actors, flashier dancers. However, none of them could touch the ease with which he moved.
This is not nostalgia. This is recall. This is a reminder that real art does not retire. It waits. And when the right music returns, so does grace. In a jewel-clad turn, a raised brow, or the dancer’s stillness before the storm, Mohanlal, the actor eternal, reminds us that brilliance has no expiry.