Alternate Movies

This is a classic case of Clash of Ideologies. How important is ideologies in one's life?.How far should one go for his ideologies?. Are Ideologies more important than love?.The movie throws various questions through a beautiful and different story with an awesome screenplay.The movie also has good music and acting. This is, i would say is one of those must watch movies.



A namboodari(Narendra prasad), who is a high priest in a temple, has two sons.Bhanu(Jayaram) and soma dattan(Suresh Gopi).The namboodari is a very orthodox guy, who performs yaga's and poojas.His first son soma dattan is a reporter in New delhi and his second son is with him and he is a priest at the same temple.



Soma Dattan leaves delhi and comes back to his home town for good. But the family realizes that he has changed. Slowly we come to know that soma dattan is a staunch communist and an atheist. He is against blind beliefs , customs and he opposes even his father on those issues. Because of the difference he moves out of the house, marries another fellow atheist and starts living in a house, that the villagers believes is haunted.



There are two separate threads of how soma dattan's atheist wife changes and his brother's love affair, and how, in both the cases customs and blind belief's becomes a problem.




On the main story, the villagers request the namboothari to perform a yaga to bring rain to the rainless village.The namboothari agrees, soma dattan starts an agitation against it as he thinks it is a blind belief.



On the yaga day he challenges his father and tells him that he should become an atheist if it does not rain.The father agrees. Did it rain??is the rest of the story.



You might take different side or view than what the director has portrayed. But if you consider the whole thing as just a story and get within the realm of the story.This is a wonderful movie.The movie is not about which ideology is right and which is wrong. It is beyond that, it is about the fact that love is above all of them.

During a talk between the father and son.Soma dattan says that he believes that a man has progressed from a primitive hunting tribe who roamed like animals to what he is know, because of questioning everything and thinking on his own, and customs and traditions stops a man from questioning things and thinking on his own.He says heis taking everyone back to the old ages by all the traditional practices His father simply replies that iam not doing anything that will cause an harm to anyone. Iam doing everything on the belief that it will bring good to them.

Analysis:
***************spoilers*******************

Before soma dattan leaves the house the father and son have a talk and then the Nambothari says that soma duttan will return to this house one day,when he has understood everything.

In the climax after the yaga, it actually rains and it rains like hell.Soma Dattan is stunned.He just cannot believe it.But he concedes and goes to his house to ask for his father’s forgiveness. But he goes to the house only to see his father immolating himself.The movie ends with soma dattan carrying on his father's priestly duties.

The big question here is why did the namboothari commit suicide?.Through out the movie, the namboothari has been a good father, He has been trying to balance both his beliefs and being a good father. At the end when his son after all his emotional talks and agitations loses because of the rain. The father is the one who is more sad, he does not want to see his defeated son, a broken soul.Hence he commits suicide. By these acts he shows how much he has loved his son.

The characters are done well. The namboothari and somma dattan are the stead fast ones.Gayathri is the opportunist and bhanu, is more for his brothers love than ideology.Actually Bhanu is the one who suffers the most on this.

********************

Cast and Credits:

Geetha - Gayathri
Suresh Gopi - Soma Dattan
Jayaram -Bhanu


Music:
The movie has excellent music.Music is by S.P.Venkatesh.The songs are all classical based with Yesudoss rendering them beautifully.

Check out the songs here

Long before Vishal Baradwaj adapted shakesphere's Othello into Omkara. Jayaraj adapted it, into the national award winning movie, “Kaliyattom“. He takes one of kerala’s traditional dance form called theyyam as the backdrop and seamlessly merges Othello into it.



Kaliyattom is a dance performed in temples during festivals, where various characters play the mythological stories. During the festival the lead character is supposed to have divine powers, so people worship and ask advices from the lead character. And because the lead character is semi god the person who is playing that is respected in the society. And he is also supposed to maintain some discipline in his personal life.



Kannan Perumalayan(Suresh Gopi) plays the lead character in the theyyam's.He has two other persons in the troupe, paniyan(lal) and kaanthan(Biju Menon).Perumalayan falls in love with thamara(Manju warrier),the daughter of a rich guy. They both elope and get married. They are both asked to appear before a respected old man of the village and in that meeting the angry father tells malayan that, his daughter is a wicked girl who ditched her father and ran after him and warns him that one day she will ditch him also and run with some one else.



Among the two guys in his troupe, malayan likes kaanthan a lot as he was the one helped him in his love affair with thamara.Paniyan who plays the role of a joker in the theyyam's is jealous of malayan.He is jealous of the importance given to Malayan in both theyam and in real life. As he is only a joker in the they yam, nobody respects him and he is mistreated by everyone. He secretly wishes to become the lead character one day, and become a respected person. He plots against malayan by poisoning him with the idea that thamara is having a love affair with kaanthan. What happens to thamara and malayan is the rest of the story?. Well people who read othello know the answers.



This is a far better adaptation than Omkara.Excellent acting by the lal, suresh gopi and manju warrier adds life to the movie.The theyyam backdrop adds extra color and emotions to the movie.As a lead character in theyyam , malayan is supposed to have a clean mind , but since he starts having the suspicion. He starts feeling that he is not pure enough to be a god and it slowly starts eating him. Suresh gopi expresses that pent up anger , suspicion and love nicely.



Cast and Credit:
Suresh Gopi .... Kannan Perumalayan/Othello
Lal .... Paniyan/Iago
Biju Menon .... Kaanthan
Bindu Panikkar .... Cheerma, Paniyan's wife
Manju Warrier .... Thamara/Desdemona

Original Music by
Gautam Mukherjee



I felt Lal acted a lot better than suresh gopi in the movie.From a joker who is simple and foolish to a very cunning planner. He goes to both the extremes with ease. Lal who was a famous director, script writer, producer was convinced by jayaraj to act in movies.Now he is one of the well known actors in malayalam.

Music:
The movie has very good songs.Especially the climax song "Ennodenthinee Pinakkam".Set on the sahana raaga with beautiful lyrics, this is a wonderful song.

Listen to the songs here

Awards:
Jayaraj bagged the National Award for best director
Suresh Gopi shared the National Award for best actor with his fellow malayalee actor Balachandran Menon.

Trivia:
Jayaraj tried his hand on another shakesphere play.He adapted Macbeth as "Kannagi" starring Nanditha Das , Lal and siddique.It was well adapted except for the stupid climax.

Links
Rediff special on Kaliyattom
Suresh Gopi interview
Lal Interview

Call him a maverick.He is just not a director who directed national award winning movies or internationally acclaimed movies.He has also directed box office movies loaded with masala elements to crap movies.One of the under rated director's in india, jayaraj has given some very good movies.

Its a pity that he was not credited for some of his good works in his own state.As most of the film makers in kerala or communist, his religion oriented stories are not credited properly even though there were credited outside the state.

Check out Jayaraj's profile on Rediff here.

Jayaraj Movies in Alternate movies
Kaliyattom

Paithrukam

Deshadanam

Probably the best of Padmarajan, this is an awesome movie.A movie that has to be seen more than once and analyzed like a book.



The movie is about the character Jaya Krishnan. A stingy farmer and a clean guy in his village, he leads a dual life. He becomes a different person when he goes to the nearest city. He spends lavishly with his friends and visits the bar regularly in the city.As he had stayed and studied in the city during his college days, he has lots of friends in the city. His friends circle includes a pimp, who he address's as thangal(Babu Nampoothiri). One day thangal asks jayakrishnan's help to bring a new girl, clara(sumlatha) into his business. He asks him to write a letter like a mother superior of a church, asking clara to come to the city.This is to get the girl to the city with her father’s permission. Mean while jayakrishnan meets Radha(parvathi) a homely girl and falls in love with her.He goes and meets her and conveys his wishes to marry her.Radha refuses and insults him.



Thangal again meets Jaya Krishnan and asks for another help. Clara has come to town and he want's to know what kind of a girl clara is.Jaya krishnan who even though knows thangal for a long time and have setup many of his friends, has never touched a girl till now and firmly believes that the first girl that he touches should be his wife.But disappointed by radha's disapproval and the attraction towards the clara, he falls in love with her and spends a night with her.He is surprised to know that it was the first time for clara too.



He promises to marry clara as he is already guilty of the fact that he was the one who wrote the letter and brought her into the business. But clara runs off next morning and disappoints jaya krishnan. Radha changes her mind and starts loving jayakrishanan.Jaya krishnan is again caught in between two worlds. Between the homely radha and now prostitute clara. What happens and who he marries is the rest of the story.

You can say this as a simple love triangle or a great story depending on how much time you spend to understand the characters. On the first go this movie might seem as an average love triangle. But believe me it is not.It is one of the most beautiful characterization ever done in indian cinema.

The beauty of the movie lies in understanding and analyzing the characters. Why did clara run away?. Why is jaya krishnan going after clara, when radha has already come into his life?. Why does his facial expression change after making rishi drink or after setting him up with a girl?. Analyze and ask questions, the movie becomes bigger. Repeated viewing will make you understand the characters better and know what an awesome write padmarajan is.

Analysis:
****spoilers****
Jayakrishnan is one of the beautiful characters Padmarajan has ever created.Jaya Krishnan is not a distant character. He is one of us.Many of us, do have dual lives.Two faces.One for the society and one for our self.Given india’s social setup, there are many characters like Jaya Krishnan living amongst us.Jaya Krishnan is a complete character, he balances everything in his life.He is not an out and out party guy.He is a family man, who escapes to another world now and then.He balances the good part and bad part. Padmarajan extends the dual personality of jayakrishnan to his love life too.Jaya krishnan the homely guys escapes to another world now and then through his visits to the city.On the love front also he does that by trying to meet clara again and again.But unlike his dual worlds he cannot go on with it in his love life and he is forced to take a stand.

On the other hand clara is a character that wants to be free, a character that does not want to get hurt. A deep character which does not reveal much of herself. She does not want to be caged into anything. Dark and mysterious, Clara is also a very good characterization.



Padmarjan nicely uses rain in the story.At the start when ever jaya krishnan comes in contact with clara it rains.It rains when he writes the first letter to bring her into business. It rains when he meets her the first time.It rains when he gets the message that clara is coming back to meet him.Jaya Krishnan takes these as a sign that clara was meant for him. But later it does not rain when he meets clara , as by that time clara has become a prostitute and jayakrishnan's love for her is not as strong as it was before.






There are some beautiful moments in the movie, Especially the scenes of jayakrishnan and clara.Jayakrishnan meets clara for the first time and they go out to the beach.Its night time and in that romantic hour, they both lay down in the sea shores on the waves and talk about there future.




Similarly when clara comes back after becoming a professional call girl.She meets jayakrishnan and when he asks her whether they should go to any hotel or room.She says that she does not want to go into any room.She just wants to walk around as she is sick of rooms.She says all that she sees in her profession is, walls, walls and walls.Bedroom walls,bathroom walls etc.Lets walk in the open space she says.They walk around the city all night.



The next day they take a lonely house on top of the hills.Padmarajan does not show any scenes of them staying inside the house,they spend there time outside the house under the open sky and stars.



On that hill, when they are talking, clara hears a cry.She asks jayakrishnan who is making that nosie.He says there is a mad man chained and locked inside a room.His legs has got lots of bruises because of the chain and he cries when ever the chain brushes the wounds. Clara says, she wants to be the wound in that mad man's legs. An un healing wound which has only relationship with the chain.


*****************

The film was adapted from padmarajan's novel "Udakappola".

Cast and Credit:
Mohanlal .... Jayakrishnan
Sumalatha .... Clara
Parvathi .... Radha
Asokan .... Rishi
Babu Nampoothiri .... Thangal
Srinath .... Madhavan
Sukumari .... Jayakrishnan's Mother
Jagathi Sreekumar .... Ravunni Nair
Sankaradi .... Radha's Father
M.G. Soman .... Moni Joseph

Original Music by
Johnson (background music)
Perumbavoor G. Raveendranath


Blessy who later on went to make movie like kazcha and Thanmathra was Padmarajan's assisant during this time.



Good acting by everyone.Mohanlal depicts the character jayakrishnan beautifully. The duality of the character comes out of him naturally.

Music:
As usual the movie has good music.Nice songs and theme music.

1)Onnam ragam Padi


From http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZpZYf-Mwh8
Megam Poothu thudangi

From
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPkqMx18LdI


you can listen to the songs here

DVD:
This movie is available on DVD.As usual with bad subtitles.This DVD is released by sandhya films.The movie can be bought at there website here.

Last of padmarajan's movie.This is a beautiful fantasy story, filled with magical moments. Many movies were inspired by wim Wender's "Wings of Desire", like City of angels etc.Padmarajan takes a leaf out of Wings of Desire and spins the story around our mythology and legends for this movie.Unlike the other movies where the angels are philosophical and dull, the gandharvan in this movie is a lively character. Padmarajan enriches the scenes of gandharvan with his imagination. When ever he appears there is a feast for your senses. Beautiful visuals, good background music, nice dialogues/songs and the characters talk about how there is a good smell of Palla flower when ever he appears.




First of all who is a gandharvan?. Gandharvans are celestial men, who are very good musicians.There job is supposed to keep the deva's in swarg(paradise) happy with their music .They are also big womanizer's, who often get caught. If they are found guilty they are punished to stay away from paradise and spend a certain time on earth. The gandarvans during their stay on earth, keep on doing what they are well know for, seduce women. They seduce women on earth and go back to paradise after there punishment time is over.




This movie is about one such gandharvan and bama the girl that he falls in love with. Bama is a college student. She goes on a tour to some sea town and while standing at the beach, she gets a statue. A beautiful statue that turns into a man at night.This particular gandharvan is someone who does not enjoy paradise and wants to leave everything and live like a normal man on earth. Unlike the usual gandravan who just use the women of earth, He falls in love with bama and breaks some of the rules that a gandharvan is supposed to follow. The Gods come to know about it and order the gandharvan to come back to paradise or face punishment.The gandarvan is in love with bama and he does nto want to go back. Did those lovers succeed in their love or not is the rest of the story.

The movie is lyrical.The scenes are normal and realistic.But when ever the gandharvan appears it becomes lyrical and pure imagination. The movie has a strong sexual undertone, but there are no revealing or sexual scenes in the movie. Padmarajan at the later part in the movie, wastes many scene by making the gandarvan a simple magician.



This is a story that is a pure fantasy and it is hard to convince the audience about a gandharvan coming and falling in love with a girl on earth.A slight mistake could screw up the whole story.But this is where padmarajan proves why he is a great writer/director. The screen play is done in such a way that you don’t have any time to question the setup of the movie. You are sucked into it right from the start and take the story as it is and enjoy the lyrical quality of the story.





Cast and Credit:
Nitish Bharadwaj .... Gandharvan
Suparna .... Bhama
M.G. Soman .... Gopalakrishnan Nair
Ganesh Kumar .... Pradeep
Philomina .... Bhama's Grandmother
Vinduja Menon .... Bhama's Sister
Thezni Khan .... Bhama's Friend
Sulakshana .... Bhama's Mother
I.V.Sasi .... Bhama's Father

Art Director for this movie is Rajiv Anchal. Who later became a director and directed movies like Guru.



Music:
Music is by Jhonson.Like many of padmarajan's other movies, this one also has some melodious songs and BGM.The songs are classical based and Yesudoss who is called the "Gana Gandharvan" renders them beautifully.
Listen to the songs here




You Tube Links

Devi


Paalapoove



Devangangal

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

Read about padmarajan on wiki here.

One of the important directors who started the middle of the road movies in malayalam, Padmarajan is an awesome writer/director. So many directors make movies from books, but not all succeed. Off these very few movies give the same feeling that you get when you finish a good book. Padmarajan is such a good writer/director that most of his movies gives you that feeling.

Watch his movie and the character stays with you for life.I haven't seen anyone who can etch out a character as good as padmarajan.His movies have to be read and analyzed like a book. Like books in his movies he slowly builds up the story, with good characterization and nice climax. He spends time on his characters and makes the audience understand it well with the detailed portrayal of the character. And like books there are those magical and moments in the movie. His eye for details brings out those cherish able, simple moments of our life through the characters in the movie. And on the bigger picture, he chooses different and unforgettable stories.

Watch his movie or rather read his movies.

Padmarajan movies in Alternate Movies

Moonam Pakkam

Njan Gandharvan

Thoovana Thumbigal

Links
Padmarajan Home page

When there is a scarcity for original stories and screenplay in rest of india, the kerala film industry churns out so many different stories. Yes, it might lack the technical excellence or sophistication of the other regional films. But they are in a different league when it comes to making movies with different and original stories.

They do make there own share of junk movies,But on the other hand there are some beautiful and unforgettable middle of the road movies.These movies have strong stories, realistic characters and excellent screenplay. These movies lack the glamor and glitz of the regular movies. But on the other hand you don’t have to be worried about seeing a villager doing a dance song in switzerland, when he falls in love. Actually most of the songs in these movies are used to take the movie forward than a group of people dancing in a beautiful location.

It is sad that people hardly know about the malayalam movies outside its regional limits. Non availability of DVD's and poor subtitling of the available DVDs also adds to this problem. Thought i will write a little bit about some good malayalam movies & director's.

Based on the story by sardindu bandopadhyaya. Saripur is a desert town located in central asia.In this town, 2000 years before, lived two monks. Pithumitta(Alok Nath) and Uchanda(Nana Patekar). Pithumitta is the older one and uchanda is the younger one.



One day a big sand storm comes and the whole village sinks under the sand.Pitumita and uchanda escape the sand storm. When they come out of the monastery after the storm.Nobody is alive in the village except for two kids. They name the boy, Nirvan(End) and the girl, Ethi(Beginning).



After 20 years, Ethi(Pallavi joshi) and Nirvan(Nitish Baradwaj) are fully grown.Uchanda is disturbed by the young and beautiful ethi.Ethi falls in love with nirvan.Uchanda's mind becomes filled with Lust and jealousy. He tries to separate both of them.He makes nirvan a monk.And tells him that he should not have any relation with women. What happens to the lovers and uchanda is the rest of the movie.



Four characters in a desert monastery and two of them are monks, can there be a story to tell. Yes, you cannot escape from the human drama. Even though the monks renounce everything and are trying to lead a life without any needs, one of them fails and falls prey for jealousy and lust.There starts the drama and everybody is sucked into it.The movie throws some basic questions.What are the religious rules for, if it does not want two people to fall in love. Wasn't love supposed to be the basis for all the religious rules?.


Cast and Credit:
Alok Nath - Pithumitta
Nana Patekar - Uchanda
Nitish Baradwaj - Nirvan
Pallavi Joshi - Ethi





The movie has only four characters.I felt Nana Patekar was a wrong choice to play the monk role.He looked like an usual villain in saffron robe.

Nabendu Gosh

The movie is directed by Nabendu Gosh.Even though he has been in the industry for a long time, this was his debut movie as a director and he won the national award for Best first time director at an young age of 79 :)

Music:
Music is by salil choudhary.There is one mesmerizing song in the movie called”aisa lage” by Asha Bonsle.A beautiful song well composed by salil choudhary.

Awards:
1988 Indira Gandhi Award For The Best First Film Of A Director

Warning:
There is a nude scene in the movie.

Links:
Nabendu Gosh
Young man of 90