A FILM BY BLESSY ? Disappointing !. Review on Palunku Movie

After two brilliant movies Thanmatra  and Kazhcha, Blessy is back with Palunk accompanied by immense media hype and support from the fans of Mammootty .I too like to watch Mammootty in the simple down to earth characters like the farmer “Monichan” of this film.

But to be frank, I felt cheated after watching the movie.

Palunk(The Glass)

Language: Malayalam

Writer -Director: Blessy

Cinematographer: Santosh Tundiyil

Music: Mohan Sitara

Producer: Howly Potur

Cast: Mammootty, Jagati Sreekumar, Lakshmi Sharma, Baby Nivedita, Nedumudi Venu, Baby Nasriya, Thampi Anthony etc.

*Plot

Monichan(Mammootty) is a farmer or planter or something in a remote village of the hilly Idukki  district of Kerala. He lives happily with his wife Susamma(Lakshmi Sharma) and two girls.(Nasriya and Nivedita). The elder girl(Nasriya) has finished her upper secondary and now she has to seek admission in a city school. Monichan takes his daughters to a big English medium school in the near by town.

He happens to meet a lottery vendor Soman Pillai( Jagati Sreekumar) and develops an acquaintance. Pillai is a fraud and he wants to use our hero for making some money. Later Monichan bags an accident-claim with the help of Pillai and it was a not-so-small fortune for the farmer. Now in search of money and the pleasures of the ‘modern’ life, the family shifts from the hills to the town. Meanwhile our hero joins a parallel college run by Nedumudi Venu to become literate!

Pillai leads Monichan to do bigger businesses like faking currency etc. The innocent farmer becomes an outlaw soon. He is so busy and ignores his family. One day his elder girl goes missing. This makes him realize how good a life he had in the hills.

Script, Camera and Direction

      Blessy is not sure about what should be the message of the movie. Whether it should be about the double standard of the city residents, the innocence of the villagers, the need of good parenting, or the child abuse. He messed it up with the last scene and the message that said, “By the time you have watched this movie, a minimum of five girls are raped and murdered in India”. And the puzzled audience was told, “A film by Blessy”!

The first half an hour of the movie is ill paced and irritating. In the beginning, nothing interesting is there in the narrative. But Blessy has created some interesting situations like the first meeting of Pillai and Monichan, the literacy classes and some cute scenes with the smaller child Baby Nivedita. Blessy might have taken inspiration from the old Tolstoy story of Pak Ham the farmer who runs for land and finally gets his six feet of soil to rest forever!

The cameraman Santosh Tundiyil from Bollywood has done his job. Mohan Sitara’smusic is average.

Actors

 Mammootty is always good in portraying a villager. He does it with enough subtlety. But towards the end I have to say, he too disappointed the viewers! His crying on the child’s fate is unbearable andis least convincing. The TV ad of the movie says Mammootty is the greatest actor of India. If so, that climax would not have become like this. He is certainly not. And one website, in one of the first reviews of the movie, claimed the movie shows the finest performance of Mammootty. It is also a lie.

Lakshmi Sharma, the new actress is impressive. But Jagati Sreekumar’s Soman Pillai and the little girl Nivedita are the best among the characters. The girl will stay in your mind. Nedumudi Venu, Nasriya and the “Munshi” fame lean old man are just OK.

This movie is not as great as the ads and media hype say and it is a disappointing film by the ambitious director Blessy.