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A welcome attempt by debutant director

Filmmaker Sohanlal

The cliché is unmistakable and the motif rather redundant. Still, ‘Orkkuka Vallapozhum’ directed by debutant Sohanlal evokes some hope when the Malayalam movie industry is at its lowest ebb with flimsy narratives and larger-than-life characters ransacking the silver screen like never before.

At a time film budgets are at variance with the quality of the end product, ‘Orkkuka Vallapozhum’ is a welcome change as a sincere attempt at emotive cinema on a shoe-string budget. “The film cost just about Rs 35 lakh,” Mr. Sohanlal said after the movie was screened by Metro Film Society here recently.

‘Orkkuka Vallapozhum’, starring Thilakan, presents a septuagenarian, Sethumadhavan, on a journey down the memory lane. At a hill-top bungalow that was his childhood home during the time of the British Raj, he travels back and forth in time and encounters his childhood sweetheart Paru in memory. Soon after the country’s Independence, the young Sethu had left for Madras in search of a job.

Now, from the bungalow’s caretaker, he comes to know about Paru’s miserable life after his departure and her tragic death. The movie ends on a rainy night when the old man falls into the same gorge where his beloved was flung to death. As the rain falls incessantly, he raises his hands, connecting to the heavens as if in a meditative trance.

The director admits that Ingrid Bergman’s reflective classic in pale-blue and black, ‘Wild Strawberries’ profoundly inspired him in fashioning the narrative. Obviously, the memory sequences owe a lot to its famed archetype. Although the film makes some effort to create a ‘period’ effect, the Raj era in the movie presents itself through a series of skewed, if not hackneyed, images. A couplet from the late P. Bhaskaran’s poem ‘Orkkuka Vallapozhum’ whose resonating cadence cuts through the rain as background score in the last scene, however, fails to make the desired effect.

A certain amount of cliché is indispensable when you are on a nostalgic trip, argues the director.

Among the pluses of the movie are its simple, personalised narration; universal theme; and the sterling performance by the thespian Thilakan. Shot in Vagamon and Peerumedu in 18 days, the movie has picturesque frames.

It didn’t do well at the box office, though. “No doubt, we were constrained by the budget, but that is our positive as well. In fact, we need to have a parallel system to screen small budget films,” says Mr. Sohanlal, rekindling an old debate.

S. Anandan

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