Alternate Movies

Among loads and loads of trash movie that india produces, this is a gem of a movie.A wonderful movie from a master director.A beautiful combination of music,story, screenplay and acting. If u can get the movie don’t read the review as it has spoilers.



Thampi(Thilakan) is an old man in his 80's.A retired lawyer, he is leading a solitary life in a beach town.He gets the news that his grandson bhaskar(Jayaram) aka pachu is visiting him on his holidays.He is excited, cause he hasn't seen pachu in the last 5 years and after his son's death, his grandson is all he got in this world.Pachu visits his grandfather with 3 of his college friends. Thampi is very happy, as pachu and his friends bring joy and happiness into the house. One day while swimming at the beach Pachu is sucked into the sea. Nobody is sure whether pachu died or not as they are not able to see his dead body. The rule of the sea is that if someone drowns, the body will wash ashore after three days. What happens with everyone and pachu in the next three days is the rest of the story.It's about those painful three days.



This is not the usual tear jerker movie.No, you wont see long crying sequences and sad sad dialogues. This is about those moments that affects the characters deeply.Padmarajan plays with the emotions of the viewer in the later part of the movie. He repeatedly teases the audience with hopes and despair. When others are hopeless that pachu will come back alive. Thampi believes that he will come back. Padmarajan switches back and forth between the hopeful thampi and others, creating doubt in the mind of the viewer.

Like many of his other movies, padmarajan beautifully builds the characters. All the characters become memorable.Unlike other movies, the stories does not stop with the drowning of pachu.It goes on for another 45 mins to a good climax.The movie can be seen in two parts. The scenes before the accident and the scenes after.Before the accident padmarjan builds the story on the mischievousness and fun of pachu and his friends.In the second part he gets into the feelings of everyone who was associated with pachu.The guilty friends, the hopeful grandfather, the shattered girl friend etc.what goes in the mind of a old man, whose has lost his son and is not sure whether his grand son is alive or not.Or the friends who saw pachu drowning,or pachu's girlfriend who is away from her parents and her only comfort was her childhood love.



There are lot of nice scenes after pachu's disappearance .The scenes are realistic and touching .Like, Pachu's friends are guilty as they are the one who always wanted to go and swim at the sea.They go to the sea side every morning after pachu disappears, to see whether the body has washed ashore. One day Ranjit, one of pachu's friend is looking at the sea.He sees some kind of object at a distant, he rushes with the expectation of seeing pachu alive/dead(with a very good BGM playing),only to realize that it is some kind of a wood. Everybody at the beach keep asking them "Did they get the BODY?","Did they get the BODY?".The word BODY hurts the friends greatly.





Cast and Credit
Jayaram .... Pachu
Jagathi Sreekumar .... Kavala
Thilakan .... Thampi
Rahman .... Lopaz
Ashokan .... Ranjith




The movie has very good acting by everyone. Especially thilakan. He comes out with a performance of a lifetime and brings the character thampi alive. Jayaram as pachu is a good fit for the character, with his cheerful attitude and innocent looks he makes the loss of the character unbearable to everyone.


Music:
Music is by Ilayaraja.
There are two songs in the movie

1)Unnarum Ee Ganam
A beautiful nostalgic song.Pachu is coming.The grandfather is excited about his arrival,his old memories come out as a haunting melody.



from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x2xiL6mXZM

2)Thamarakilli Paddunnu
A duet between pachu and badra.



Forget the visuals,You can switch of the visuals and just hear the audio of the movie.Hearing just the movie's awesome background scores is a experience by itself.THe movie has an excellent background score. Looks like Maestro illayaraja was impressed with the story.

Awards:
G. Venu Gopal won the state award for best singer

Trivia:
The novelist that badra talks about with thampi is Borges.You know you are watching a malayalam movie when the heroine reads Borges, instead of sidney sheldon or other popular novelist.

Links
Thilakan Interview