Palunku

Blessy's latest Malayalam film Palunku got released on last Friday. Normally, we don’t get to see a movie having its first screening at Irinjalakuda, but Palunku was released at Irinjalakuda Mas Theatre too. I didn't want to miss the opportunity to watch a much-awaited Malayalam film on the day of its release, and hence we went to the theatre and watched the matinee show on Friday itself. To our surprise, there were just around ten or fifteen people waiting in the queue for buying tickets, in spite of Mammootty being the hero of the film. The noon show was over at 2, and we tried to judge the quality of the film by observing the facial expressions of the people coming out after the show. We couldn't guess much, and it looked like there were not many people for the noon show too. To my amusement, one person fired a malappadakkam (cracker) near a large picture board of Mammootty installed in front of the theatre by the "Mammootty Fans Association". Probably the film is too good, and the "fan" is celebrating that, I thought.

There were just around fifty people in the theatre for the matinee show, and I think half of them were members of the fan club, who received the titles of the film with great applause. For the first ten minutes of the film, they started clapping whenever a new character appeared on the screen. They got used to it so much that they clapped even when the close-up of Jesus Christ's image on the locket of a kontha was shown on the screen!!

Palunku starts with showing the scenes from the life of Monichen, an uneducated, simpleton farmer living in a village near Adimali (??). He is a person very similar to Madhavan of Kazhcha, but is an extrovert, unlike Madhavan. He leads his routine and uneventful but pleasant life in the village with his wife and two young children, looking after his pepper and cows. The first half an hour of the film shows these scenes in a rather uninteresting, slow and boring manner, and I hoped that good things will come when Monichen relocates to the "City", as his children need to go for schooling in the English Medium school there. Then we see Monichen slowly changing because of city life - Initially he is curious and excited about the various possibilities of life in the City, and joins a "Vayojana Vidyabhyasa Camp" to learn to read and write. Soon, he transforms himself to a moneylender, and to meet the business requirements, he is having to make friends with few local goondas and able men. At his home, his wife welcomes the improvements in living standards aided by equipments like television, refrigerator and washing machine. Changes in life are more drastic as days go by, as Monichen soon starts becoming more ambitious and ventures into multiple businesses, encouraged and assisted by his new-found friend Pilla (Jagathi). How Monichen learns the lessons of Life in the hard way forms the rest of the story.

I have always felt that director Blessy is highly overrated. Immediately after his first film, Kazhcha, he was compared with Padmarajan. Kazhcha was a good-intentioned and well-made film with a lot of freshness, and I liked it very much when I watched it first time. However, when I watched this film second time, when it was shown on television, many of its shortcomings became obvious, and now I feel that it is just an "above-average" film. Blessy's second film, Thanmathra, was a mediocre work. And now, Palunku is just barely watchable. There is five-second long scene in the film where they show a group of birds flying in the sky in background when Monichen talks about few things dreamingly. Except for this short clip, there is absolutely nothing in the film that is thematically new or fresh in its presentation style. Many a times, Blessy seems to be confused regarding what he has to say - Does he want to say that City Life is bad and villages are better? Does he want to portray the effects of greed on human beings? The sentences displayed during the climax scene indicate that Blessy's main intention was probably to make a statement on the attacks on women in Kerala society. Haven't there been far more better films like Kadavu and Bhoothakkannadi which have handled these themes in an artistically superior way? Blessy's film doesn't even entertain, and many times it stoops to the standards of a boring television serial.

Monichen's character is one which doesn't have much of heroic qualities. He doesn't make us feel sympathy for him; He doesn't even make us hate him. I think it would have been challenging for Mammootty to shred the histrionics of a Hero or sympathy-monger and then play the character in such a way as to make us feel that he is a man we would meet anywhere, anytime during our life. Mammootty plays the role well, and that is the only saving grace of the film. Jagathi or anybody else have no major challenges to handle in the film. Photography by Santosh Thundiyil is okay, but Mohan Sithara's background music is horrible.

I wonder why this film was named Palunku (glass). Was it because the film will "break" like Palunku? ;-) I also suspect that the crackers were probably lighted by a member of the Mohanlal Fans Association, and not that of Mammootty's.