Shrinking open spaces is certainly a concern, but it still is not an issue ‘mainstream’ enough to catch the imagination of our popular cinema. But by some play of coincidence, two out-and-out mainstream films, released in the gap of a few days, are laments to protect these shared public spaces, where people, irrespective of caste or creed, come together.
It’s an interesting exercise to compare how these two films approach the issue. While in K. Biju’s Georgettan’s Pooram , the ground is just incidental to the plot, in Ranjan Pramod’s Rakshadhikari Baiju , the plot and the sub-plots all in some way originate from the village ground. Most of the action in the latter happens on the ground, so much so that the audience feels like being caught in Groundhog day , of the same day repeating again and again. For government employee Baiju (Biju Menon), much of his life revolves around the ground where he and his friends began the cricket club ‘Kumbalam brothers’. He has been a constant there, mingling and playing with everyone.
But the cricketers are not the only ones there. There are girls playing badminton, kids playing football, an old man whose life breath is the constant conflicts that he has with the kids here and of course the entire village, which is in some way connected to the ground. Ranjan, who has also written the script, is in no hurry to bring the core issue into the plot, as he slowly goes about telling the little stories of all those who play there, some of them interesting, some of them yawn-worthy.
This strategy of building in the audience some kind of closeness to the ground, is sadly the film’s failing too. Even as the interval point arrives one and a half hours later, we look for at least a hint of conflict in the story, with which it can go forward. We half expect a jarring sub-plot of a violent drug dealer character to provide that conflict, but even that turns out to be a minor diversion. Until just before the climax, the film goes about aimlessly, like a stray hit to the wasteland in the next plot.
Nostalgia for a bygone era and for ‘ideal villages’ is the over-riding theme of the film, but it is not taken to nauseating levels as in some recent films. It is hinted moderately, like the blink-and-miss shot of Baiju looking out from a hospital window at some children playing cricket with much difficulty on an apartment terrace. In the era of twenty-twenty cricket, which incidentally comes as part of the plot, Ranjan Pramod sets about to script a test match, certainly with a lot of good intention. But it turns out to be a tame draw.
S.R. Praveen
