Pathemari is one of the finest Malayalam films of the year so far. It is also doing surprisingly well at the box office.
“I was not expecting the film to be a success like this,” the film’s director Salim Ahamed admitted at a Meet-the-Press here on Friday. “I did not try to deliberately add to Pathemari any element that is required by our commercial cinema. I think the film is accepted by people because they could relate to their relatives or friends who have worked in the Gulf countries.” He said the film had opened with just five or six viewers in some theatres for the first show. “That number increased by the time for the next show and it was full house by the evening screening,” he said. “I had worked hard on the research and technical aspects of the film.”
Salim said he chose Mammootty for the role of Narayanan because he could portray the three stages of life of the protagonist. “I did not model Narayanan on any one individual but on a few workers like him in the Gulf,” he said.
