Pranayam

Blessy won’t be making 3D any time soon. Like we care, right? Blessy’s style of moving making is one dimensional, his stories absolutely require characters not to have any depth. But then again I can’t go on my spiteful tirade against Blessy  because he at least makes movies, I am just an armchair critic.

From my armchair, actually a couch, Pranayam is one of the better Blessy movies, the credit should go to Mohanlal and Anupam Kher. Two phenomenal actors doing a remarkable job within the set one dimensional framework. Jayaprada has done okay, then again poignant female roles in Malayalam only require expertise in various degrees and categories of crying – sobbing, weeping, sniveling, moaning, bawling, whimpering, screaming, blubbing, wailing – are like the navarasas of acting skills necessary in a Malayalam actress’s repertoire. It also helps if you are a classical dancer or a Kalathilakam. 

I was wondering whether we didn’t have any homegrown actresses who could’ve replaced Jayaprada in this role. Late Srividya and Jayabharathi come to mind. They obviously didn’t make it into Blessy’s mind while he was  doing the casting.

Although shot in color, characerization is typical Blessy – black and white with no greys. In the white corner we have the three main characters – Anupam Kher, Jayaprada and Mohanlal along with Anoop Menon as Anupam Kher’s son and there is the girl who plays Anoop Menon’s daughter. Every other significant character is in the black corner, all of them qualify as outright demons with little or no understanding of human condition besides theirs. 

While the movie tugs at the heartstrings occasionally, all that tugging was precipitated by the cinematic liberty taken by Blessy by creating the characters in black corner who are devoid of any greys. My favorite hippie era poet singer, the sounds of Leonard Cohen haunts this movie, so does Blessy’s personal philosophical injections via Mohanlal’s dialogs. Digital butterflies and birds show up at strategic scenes a la M.Mukandan Velliankalu and dragon flies (ref: The Legend of Khasak.)

Inspite of all this I am immensely glad Blessy is making progress – Kaazcha and Tanmatra were tortures, Calcutta News was forgettable, Palunku was actually watcheable, Bhramaram was okay if you take it as a pyscho-social thriller and now we have Pranayam which compared to his first two movies could be deemed a classic. Worth watching, while you are at it try those 3D glasses to get some depth.

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Calcutta News

Blessy has a whole lot to say within the confines of one film. That's not a fault if he knows how to package it within 2-2.5 hours. In Calcutta News he fails trying to shoot too many birds with one stone. A small sampling of the subjects he dabbles with in the film are as follows, prostitution, sex-racket, mental issues, ghosts, seances and mediums, growth of media, increased use of mobile technology and underworld kidnappings. It feels like the film didn't want to spare any smoking gun issues plaguing contemporary Indian society.

Bringing in Dileep as the ace news-reporter of the TV channel Calcutta News didn't save the movie either. The new improved version of Dileep with intellectual glasses and santoku sideburns could not make a media-brain out of the actor who is more comfortable playing himself - in films like Meesha Madhavan, Kalyanaraman etc. Infact that plus the use of English in Blessy's script is enough to drive a sane person away from the screen.

Blessy's English might make the British regret ever to have colonized India. I wish he had kept the dialogs to Malayalam, instead of making the characters speak in broken bits of English now and then to reiterate their socio-educational status. The diction of actors and the dubbing artists add injury to the insult. Please, it is Malayalam movie, lets the actors speak in their mother tongue. I wonder how the Bengali in the script (ample opportunities to squeeze it in since the story takes place in Calcutta) would sound to a native Bengali person?

Contemporary issues are Blessy's strong point from his film # 1 - Kaazcha, which he followed thru' with Thanmatra and Palunku. For me, of the above mentioned three films Palunku was the bearable one, even good in places. Calcutta News is riveting at the start, you have to give credit where it is due, but it becomes embarrassing to watch in the second half with mis-information, mis-interpretations and misuse of English.

Too many shortcomings to list, but it had not-so-bad camera work, songs were ok and so was Meera Jasmine and Indrajit in the roles given to them. Review: 2.5 stars
 

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Palunku

Palunku means crystal in Malayalam, the movie is the third offering from Blessy one of the much touted directors of contemporary Malayalam cinema. The wiki link for Blessy I've posted above makes me want to bang my head against the wall and question the basic concept of wikipedia letting no-namers no-experts(like myself) update crucial information about people, places and history. The link equates Blessy's talents with Padmarajan and Bharathan - the maestros of Malayalam cinema which is like saying moon could take the place of the sun if only it rose during the day. Blasphemous!

Anyway moving on with the movie, the central character Monichan, a high-range farmer who migrates to the city with his family is played by Mammootty. The film starts off in serene village settings, where in spite of the burgeoning odds against survival in the form of un-payable loans, schools without teachers, the world is still fresh and innocent. That is one thing I've against Blessy's interpretation of stories - the absence of grays. The idyllic scenarios like the 'golden past' or the 'unspoilt village' is juxtaposed against the 'dreadful present or the 'sinful city.' One has all the good qualities and the other has all the bad qualities and the characters invariably have to fit in to either of these settings and are devoid of any shade of gray.

Monichan's family of wife and two kids are living in a blissfully tranquil high-range village with cows, tailor-birds and chickens when the children's school run out of teachers. This forces the family to shift their base to the city which is like the hot-bed of evil. But the Monichan parivar is unaware of it, they remain largely innocent and wide-eyed except for Monichan who takes to the city like a fish to water. From there on he takes the worst route possible to making a living in the city. The story despite its shortcoming becomes more interesting in the second half.

Mammootty is a good choice for the role, atleast he is 'acting his age.' Blessy introduces Kannada actress Lakshmi Sharma as Monichan's wife,she's good too, so are the two little girls who play the roles of their kids. Jagathy has a very interesting part. The story is tighter in the second half. There are no diversions from the main theme and it progresses fluidly on to the ending, which although I didn't see it coming, was not a total surprise either. It was like the movie had to impart this message of poetic (or is it Biblical) sense of justice or there had to be a 'moral to the story'. Afterall you spent two plus hours watching the film, did you get to take home a message? That is what the current Malayalam film makers are aspiring to achieve, which makes their stories predictable as fairytales or nightmares - whichever is the flavor of the moment.

After the much hyped Kazhcha which fell flat on my face and the award winning farce of Thanmatra, Palunku is infact a winner. It looks like Blessy is getting better as a director and a script-writer, although he has a long way to go before he can be anywhere near his mentor - Padmarajan.

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