What happens when too much experimentation becomes the only issue hindering the film-viewing experience? “Gold” is a classic case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. One tiny incident snowballed into several incidents that were connected to one episode. A small-time entrepreneur comes across an unknown vehicle, and he is trying to get rid of it. But soon, he decides not to get rid of it. Why? “Gold” is a mishmash of a lot of things, a want-to-be satire with a hint of black comedy. Directed by Alphonse Puthren, who gave us the beautiful “Premam,” Gold is a multi-starrer film that has the likes of Prithviraj Sukumaran, Nayanthara, Baburaj, Saiju Kurup, Mallika Sukumaran, and plenty of other actors making cameos.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Gold’ Plot Synopsis: What Happens In The Film?
“Gold” begins with Joshi’s mother waking him up and informing him of a pickup truck parked right in front of their house. Joshi is a small-time entrepreneur who runs an electronics store that sells mobile phones. Joshi is intrigued by a pickup truck covered by blue tarpaulin, without any key, parked outside his house out of nowhere. Joshi decides to file a complaint about the matter at the local police station. On reaching the said police station, the road to the station is blocked by a truck carrying timber. The local CPO at the station, Rakesh Manjaparra, helps with filing the complaint and comes by Joshi’s home to check how the pickup truck reached his home. Rakesh and his subordinate are soft-spoken police officers who only want to help Joshi sort out this issue. Unfortunately, they were called back to the station to resolve the timber truck matter. Joshi is confused at this point about why someone would leave a truck outside their home. Joshi and the policemen find out the truck is filled with speakers, and they assume it was left by mistake by some retailer. Unable to do anything about it, Joshi keeps the vehicle as it is. Joshi receives his new car, but he is unable to park it in his courtyard because the entryway is blocked by the pickup truck.
Joshi asks his mechanic friend Jomon to replace the tires of the truck and provide duplicate keys for the same. On the same day, Joshi’s speaker at home stops working. Realizing that the speakers in the truck can be used as a replacement, he picks one of them only to realize those are not real speakers, but gold bars painted as speakers. To Joshi’s horror, he discovers all the so-called speakers in the back of the pickup truck were gold bars and not actual speakers. Joshi gets all greedy at this point and devises a plan to keep the gold to himself, but first, he must confirm how pure the gold is that he just discovered. Joshi makes sure he keeps the news of this discovery to himself. He does not inform his mother also of the same so that he can figure the way out of this situation without any collateral damage. Joshi is beyond excited to have come across a treasure such as this, but he is being level-headed about his excitement. He takes a rather calm approach to figure out how to deal with this situation. Joshi is visited by the police officers again, and by that time, he makes sure to keep the gold speaker back in the truck to avoid any suspicion. Joshi approaches several jewelry stores to see if they can sell him any gold melting machines. One of his contacts provides him with the machine, which he utilizes rather safely to melt the gold into a proper biscuit without the blue paint to masquerade as a speaker. Any sort of logic is thrown out the window since, most of the time, Joshi’s mother is unaware of what her son is doing inside their own home. Gold melting is a process that will surely garner attention, but conveniently it doesn’t. Joshi and his newfound love for the precious metal can be seen on his face, and he surely has a lot of plans for himself and his family once he sells the reconstructed gold bars.
‘Gold’ Ending Explained: Is Joshi Able To Keep All The Gold Bars For Himself, Or Does He Get Caught?
The story takes the audience back to two days ago to let us know how the truck full of gold bars disguised as speakers reached Joshi’s home. A rich businessman Unnikrishnan’s daughter, Sumangali, is off to get married to a nouveau riche businessman, Idea Shaji’s son, Suneesh. Idea Shaji has asked for a dowry from Unnikrishnan, and Unnikrishnan has agreed to do so to get his only daughter, Sumangali married. Most of the property he owns includes a shopping complex, a jewelry store, and his home, which Shaji has asked to be named after his son after their kids get married. Unnikrishnan goes out of his way to make this alliance work, even though this marriage is happening without the consent of his only daughter. Unnikrishnan is a typical Indian father who is constantly worried about the so-called burden of his unmarried daughter and the constant need to validate to society that he has money, and he is spending a lot of money on her wedding. The groom shamelessly asked for a luxury car as well, and Unnikrishnan did not think twice before fulfilling that wish. One of the other demands put forward by Idea Shaji was to provide 200 kg of gold in the form of bars disguised as Bluetooth speakers. Idea Shaji is a typical male chauvinistic and greedy man who thinks he can get away with bending the law in his favor. Idea Shaji twisted Unnikrishnan’s arm (metaphorically) under the garb of his only daughter getting married as per the norms of society. Unnikrishnan asked his trusted confidante to drop the truck full of gold at the said address. It is in Unnikrishnan’s shopping complex that Joshi is running his mobile store. Unnikrishnan was forcing Joshi to vacate his store for the mall which is all ready to be sold to Idea Shaji. Joshi and his employees hold their ground and refuse to vacate the store, much to Unnikrishnan’s dismay. Unnikrishnan is frustrated at this point because his daughter is not keen on the marriage and because of the huge amount he has spent so far on all preparations leading up to the wedding. He is livid about the fact that Idea Shaji has been following up on him relentlessly over the dowry demands, but Unnikrishnan is showing tremendous patience.
Once the story returns to the current scenario, Joshi hatches a plan to sell the first bar of gold to the person who gave him the gold-melting machine. Through him, Joshi gets in touch with a gold store owner who purchases this said bar of gold for 45 lakhs in cash. Joshi is more than thrilled to have received this amount and decides to replace all the gold bars in the truck with original speakers. Joshi, at this point, is acting all smartly and smoothly without letting anyone know his source of treasure. Surprisingly, no one doubts his source of gold, as they only worry about the goods. Joshi contacts several electronic stores to check the availability of the said speaker in bulk. One electronic store has the item, but it can’t be sent together in one go. They first sent 20 boxes and sent the rest later. Joshi managed to replace 20 boxes of gold with real speakers. Joshi is happy that his plan has been successful so far, and he keeps counting the money he will make from selling these gold bars one by one systematically.
The police officers, though, came by to inform him that they would take the truck away the next day, as per the complaint registered by Joshi. Joshi is visibly shaken by this news, for he intended to replace the gold with actual speakers before they took it away. The electronic store sent the remaining goods just in time for Joshi to replace the gold with the actual speakers. It is Joshi who is very lucky at this point, for no one has any suspicions about him being the one making maximum use of the truck. Even his mother has not noticed anything odd about his behavior so far. The police officers also trust him with the truck, even though they have not figured out that it carried gold disguised as speakers. Unnikrishnan, on the other hand, is informed the gold never reached Idea Shaji. On contacting his driver, he is told that the truck was attacked by some goons, and the driver kept the truck at an abandoned home, which turned out to be Joshi’s home. The driver and Unnikrishnan head to Joshi’s home only to find the police there. Unnikrishnan, his daughter Sumangali, and the driver move away from the spot.
Unnikrishnan soon receives a phone call from Idea Shaji on the status of the gold and the rest of the property, which was to be named after his son Suneesh. Unnikrishnan is livid at this point and breaks off the marriage. Sumangali is happy that she doesn’t have to go through the charade of the wedding and marriage. Unnikrishnan is also happy that Idea Shaji is out of the picture, and he wouldn’t have to write off his property. Unnikrishnan also abandons his gold at Joshi’s home for it is of no use to him anymore. He names the shopping complex after his daughter and asks her to take charge of the operations. He asks Joshi not to vacate the premises, as he plans to bring back all the businesses. It is during this interaction that Sumangali and Joshi speak to one another for the first time. Meanwhile, Joshi replaces almost all the gold with real speakers, and the police take control of the vehicle and let him know that it will be sold off in an auction after 6 months. Joshi requests that they inform him of the auction results. Joshi is satisfied with the amount of gold he is able to keep for himself. The only loophole in the entire discourse is the fact that no one was aware of the activities Joshi was carrying out; people blindly trusted him. After six months, the state CM informed the people that he anonymously received Rs 85 crore in the state account, and the said man wanted the CM to spend this money on the upliftment of the people. The CM gladly agrees to this request by reading out the letter sent by this person, called “Gold,” anonymously. It is implied that Joshi was the one who sent all the money to the state government.
Final Thoughts
“Gold” is an example of high-concept experimentation gone wrong to the point that the entire screenplay derailed very quickly. There are many characters introduced in the movie, but none of them serve any purpose in the narrative of the film. They just come and go without any explanation. The cameos by plenty of actors from across the Malayalam industry are surely a highlight, but the cameos did not serve any purpose in the story or the screenplay. A complete waste of talent. This film could have been reduced to 1 hour and 30 minutes, but Alphonse was interested in adding unnecessary shots, subplots, and comedy tracks, which fell flat. The editing, the sound design, and the dubbing were the major issues with the film, for none of them were in sync with the storytelling aspect of the film. The end of the film was preposterous. It is implied that it was Joshi who sent the money as “Gold” to the state government. But this does not make sense because, in the beginning, there is a song sequence that lets us into Joshi’s mind about what he intends to do with the money he will receive from selling the gold he discovered. This is a contradiction done by the writer–director Alphonse. As mentioned above, “Gold” is a case of too many cooks and spoiled broth. If only Alphonse stuck to good old storytelling and did not give too much attention to experimental direction, editing and camerawork. “Gold” can be skipped because 2 hours and 40 minutes is too long for a premise this simple.
