കള്ളൻ പവിത്രൻ (Kallan Pavithran) (1981)

Director: Padmarajan
Writer:    Padmarajan
Cinematographer: Vipin Das
Cast:         Nedumudi Venu, Bharat Gopi, Adoor Bhasi, Beena
Language: Malayalam

Pavithran (Nedumudi Venu) is a small time thief with two families, one with his official wife and another with his mistress. A rich mill owner (Bharat Gopi) accuses him of stealing some utensils from his home. As he starts to snoops around Pavithran's mistress' home, he begins a relationship with her. Meanwhile, Pavithran meets a mysterious merchant from town while trying to sell the utensils who shows him his huge utensils warehouse which he doesn't care to lock because of the notoriety of snakes in there. Affected by this meeting, Pavithran moves back in with his official wife but slowly his fortunes starts turning with him becoming rich and driving his nemesis' business down to the ground.

The film is an adaptation of Padmarajan's short story with the same name and it is the first commercial hit of his career as a director. Film is basically about the base instincts of male and female genders, which is largely driven by evolutionary factors. Sex doesn't cost males much and it is the opposite for women. So males tend to think with their dick while females place a lot of importance to financial security. People can complain and wallow about this or this stereotyping but that is how we're predisposed to behave. All the main characters in this film behave in this manner and Adoor Bhasi's character can be seen as The God in the proverbial biblical sense. He gives Pavithran the complete freewill by showing him the warehouse lacking solid security and hanging it like the Apple from Eden. Or maybe he is the devil but it doesn't matter. Anyway it is unabashedly a morality tale with a surreal twist. Padmarajan even puts the moral message in text format at the end in a light fashion.

It is a great watch with very raw characters. Performances are excellent and Bharat Gopi is cast against his type. You would normally expect Gopi and Venu to switch places in such a story. It seems the early Padmarajan films and the ones he wrote for other directors primarily dealt with base human desires.

Rating: 4.5/5 

അപരൻ (Aparan) (1988)

Director: Padmarajan
Writer:    Padmarajan 
Cinematographer: Venu
Cast:.         Jayaram, Shobana, Madhu, Mukesh
Language: Malayalam

A young unemployed man (Jayaram), hunting for jobs, is roughed up by some people who mistakes him for a fraudster, who supposedly looks just like him. He earns a reprieve when the police officer turns out to be his old college mate but his doppelgänger's legacy continues to haunt him as he moves into the city when he gets a job.

The film is an adaptation of a short story from Padmarajan and the title translates as 'Doppelgänger'. Film also marked the debut of Jayaram who then became a sort of fixture in Padmarajan's latter year films. The basic plot might make you go 'I've seen this before' but treatment is quite different. If you've got a premise like this from a film from the 80s you expect it to end in a tragic way with a 'Crime doesn't pay' moral lesson. But this is Padmarajan and he can always make things interesting based on characterisation.

Here you can see Jayaram's character almost discovering his darker side because of the other dude who is spoken off like a myth. Many of his actions doesn't seem to come from a rational basis and some of the film's contrivances can be explained off like that. They don't have the physical confrontation the way you expect them to have and we only hear the bad dude's voice,  and that too towards the end. All in all, one could say that this story can be seen as a very superior backstory for a film like 'Don' and I wonder whether that film influenced Padmarajan in any way.

Overall, it is a nice little genre film. There aren't many interesting characters in it and the film is a bit too plot driven. Jayaram does his part will considering the fact that it is a debut film for him. His is not a very likeable character and it is intentionally so. One could also say that it is a metaphorical reading of caste sentiments in Kerala where some of the very upper caste people could very much feel like they are getting hunted for something that they presume they are not responsible for. Padmarajan does go out of the way to mention the caste of the character in one scene anyway.

Rating: 3/5  

ഞാന്‍ ഗന്ധര്‍വന്‍ (Njan Gandharvan) (1991)

Director: P. Padmarajan
Writer:    P. Padmarajan
Cast:       Suparna Anand, Nitish Bharadwaj
Language: Malayalam

The film is an esoteric fantasy about a girl and her passion for a celestial lover, who keeps appearing from a wooden statue that she found on a beach but is invisible to others. In Hindu mythology, gandharvas act as messengers between God and humans. They are usually depicted as singers in the court of Gods and also acts as guards for the Somas (intoxicating drink served for Gods). In Hindu law, a Gandharva marriage is one contracted by mutual consent and without formal rituals. In the film, the nameless Gandharvan (Nitish Bharadwaj) tells the girl that they are governed by very strict rules of heaven. They are usually banished to Earth when Gods catch them on their flings with Apsaras, and on Earth, they are ought to take virginity of the girls that they encounter after which they are supposed to forget about each other. Gandharvan in the film is a rebel who wants to break the rules and become a human after being smitten by the human girl. 

Both the main characters in the film are non-Malayalees and I am not sure about the exact logic of such a casting decision but Padmrajan might have thought that familiar faces would get in the way of convincingly portraying what are very odd characters in mainstream cinema. Mythical fantasy set in contemporary times is not a common genre in Malayalam cinema and only other film I could think of which came before this is 'Pappan Priyapetta Pappn', which was a comedy with Yaman. King of Death, in it. To be fair, casting Nitish Bharadwaj must have been a no-brainer since he was of course famous for portraying the role of Shri Krishna in the TV series epic 'Mahabharatha'. 

When it comes to enjoying the film, dubbing involved with the two main characters do get in the way sometimes in the film. The basic story is very flimsy but you do get the typical feel that Padmarajan manages to get in his films aided by a haunting theme music. I am not sure exactly what Padmarajan is going for since the Gandharva in it is very much real as he is seen interacting with other characters in the film. Maybe what he is trying to convey is that Heaven is very much a totalitarian regime governed by strict rules to control its inhabitants. Compared to that, the Earth is miles better, and the girl's family is portrayed as a very practical one which does not mind to go by her choice. I am not really an expert on Hindu mythology and don't know whether he is giving an alternate view on things and if so, it could very well be worthwhile, but I didn't find it all that interesting. But there is a novelty factor because of the fantasy elements which makes it a good enough watch overall.

Padmarajn met with an untimely death within a week after its release. Film was not very successful at the box office but was very well received when it was aired on TV. Out of all the Padmarajan films that I have watched this one is my least favorite. Wim Wender's 'Wings of Desire' also had a story of an angel coming down to the Earth but there is not much similarity between the two films. The script for Njan Gandharvan is not adapted from any other literary work of Padmarajan and was an original screenplay for the film. The three songs in it are very good and in context but you do get the feel that Padmarajan is doing it because he is hamstrung by limited actors.

Rating: 3/5

                                                                       

നമുക്കു പാർക്കാൻ മുന്തിരിത്തോപ്പുകൾ (Namukku Parkkan Munthiri Thoppukal) (1986)

Director: P. Padmarajan
Writers:  P. Padmarajan, K. K. Sudhakaran (Story)
Cast:       Mohanlal, Shari, Thilakan, Vineeth
Language: Malayalam

A beautiful and well-told love story of of a guy who falls in love with the newly moved neighbor girl. But the girl's situation was worst than he thought when he finds that the man who was told to be her father was her step-father.

Film is set in Mysore, Karnataka and the title translates as 'Vineyards for Us to Dwell In' . If you go just by synopsis, it will look like a 'Painkili' story from a Malayalam weekly but in Padmarajan's hands it is just something else. The film stands out basically because of the understated acting and mannerisms. The extra members in Solomon's (Mohanlal) household are characters that many of us would find living in our house at some point of time. Antony (Vineeth) is a college student who is staying in his aunt's house far away from his home. Mary is some distant relative with a tragic past staying in the house and family sort of accepts her into the fold as she is keeping company to the old mother.  The film only consists of a very few characters but the relationships between all the characters, not just the main ones, are properly developed. Most of us would relate most to Antony, who looks up to his much elder cousin Solomon. This is a relationship that is common in majority of Padmarajan-Mohanlal films where Mohanlal plays the cool guy (Thoovanathumbikal & Season being the other two am referring to). Thilakan plays the character of step-father who metes out step-fatherly treatment and even some more to Sophia (Shari), Solomon's love interest. It is another great performance from Thilakan.

I saw the film for the first time some four years back with some friends. We all loved it then and were egging Solomon not to do some silly revenge thing at the end of it, which would have been the path most filmmakers would have taken. Even though I immensely enjoyed it first time round I really didn't think it will be worth a re-watch, and I was wrong. The usage of lines from Solomon's songs in Bible would have been not this good but for the fact that it is Mohanlal who is delivering it. Padmarajan is someone who uses songs and theme music really well to add to the story.  Padmarajan, being a writer-director, is a rare breed in Malayalam cinema. But unlike his most other films which were based on his own writings, this one is a loose adaptation of K.K. Sudhakaran's novel. It is shame that the visual quality of the print that they have preserved is not very good which is true for many films from those times.

Overall the film is a great watch and it is such a simple story very well-told with a great atmosphere. At 137 minutes, it is comparatively a shorter length film by Indian standards. It seems 1986 was a very busy year for Padmarajan with five releases. He directed eighteen films over twelve years from 1979 to 1991 and I have so far seen ten of them. When you put those numbers into context you can see why he is considered to be the greatest Malayalam film director. The ones that I haven't seen are mostly his earlier works.

Rating: 4.5/5 

Thoovanathumbikal (1987)

Director: Padmarajan
Writer:    Padmarajan
Cast:       Mohanlal, Sumalatha, Parvathy, Ashokan
Language: Malayalam

Jayakrishnan (Mohanlal) is a landlord bachelor from a rural village. He displays two set of personal images in his life: a miserly farmer in-front of his family and villagers and a spendthrift guy living a high life with his friends when in town. The film tells the story of his relationship with two women, Radha (Parvathy) to whom he first proposed and Clara (Sumalatha) an escort with whom he lost his virginity. 

There have been many films in Malayalam recently where the main or only feature point of the film would be a local slang. They are passed on as comedy and Mammootty has been guilty of several such monstrosities like Rajamanikyam, Pranchiyettan and several other films. The first thing that jumps out of Thoovanathumbikal would be Mohanlal's distinct Thrissur/Palaghat accent. But it is just a small detail in a film that has several other things going for it. It is a character study on Jayakrishnan whom initially seems to be very self-aware and very comfortable in his own skin even though he is kind of living a dual life. The thing is we cannot really say he is actually doing it on purpose. In the film he is a very sincere and honest person with everyone he interacts with and is not actively trying to hide what he is doing when he goes out of his village. It is just that he doesn't have any avenue in his village to pursue those dalliances. By the end of the film we find that he is a very vulnerable person with some preconcieved ideas and ideals but ultimately remains to be a mystery. He explains that he had freedom only after his father died and that is why he didn't have any relationships with women when he was young, but from the film it is clear that he lived a free life when he was in college. The exact timing of his father's death is not revealed and we don't really know whether he was kind of a normal rebel during his college days or he had the same personality that he exhibits now.

Ashokan is excellent as his side-kick Rishi and the characters like Babu and Ravunni (Jagathy) serves as plot devices to get us into the character of Jayakrishnan. But in the hands of Padmarajan these characters are truly memorable. The character Jayakrishnan and his friends are loosely based on Padmarajan's friend Karakath Unni Menon and his friend circle from his AIR Thrissur days. Lead characters with moral ambiguity and emotional complexity are not very common in Indian cinema which deals mostly in binary characters. Jayakrishnan is certainly one of the most interesting lead character that Indian cinema has ever seen.

Rating: 5/5

Arappatta Kettiya Gramathil (Malayalam) (1986)

Director: P. Padmarajan
Writer:    P. Padmarajan
Cast:      Mammootty, Nedumudi Venu, Sukumari, Ashokan
Language: Malayalam

Arappatta Kettiya Gramathil, which translates as 'In the village which wears a warrior's belt', is a film from the legendary director P. Padmarajan based on his short story of the same name. It revolves around three men who end up in a brothel in a remote village and the problems they encounter in the next 24 hours.

The film can be interpreted as a critique of the society in general in terms of its hypocrisy. The three characters played by Mammootty, Nedumudi Venu and Ashokan can be seen as representation of the director itself by being amoral hedonists. The arrival of a new girl in the brothel causes communal problems in the village as both the leaders want first dibs while the girl refuses since she was cheated into the situation. The three men end up rescuing her from the situation. The last act of the film is a bit conventional as it tries to find a moral center. 

It is amazing that such subject matters were dealt in Malayalam cinema in those days. Recently Malayalam cinema has taken a turn for the better with plenty of films  pursuing edgier themes even though nothing exceptional has been produced so far. Hopefully we will see better outcomes as a result of these first steps.

Rating: 4/5