I especially liked the scenes where the director repeatedly shows a poor video shop owner who gets arrested and beaten up for "kidnapping" Kanmani, and another scene where he shows the jealousy of another neighborhood girl (who, of course, is in love with the hero) in a subtle manner. Interestingly, this episode has some of the rare scenes of the film with the marks of Sathyan Anthikkad of his earlier films. I think the director's courage is truly remarkable in introducing such fancy-dress scenes with Meera Jasmine acting as a man. Instead, she is shown going for a suicide attempt, from which Preman saves her, and as a temporary workaround, Kanmani disguises as a boy and goes to work with Preman, that too to the same locality where she had been living since she was seven years old. Thankfully, the director doesn’t show us Kanmani immediately falling in love with Preman. Soon, Preman and team gets some work at a house, and he starts observing the hardships of a Tamil orphan girl Kanmani (Meera Jasmine) who works as a servant at the adjacent house. In the beginning of the film, Preman is introduced to us as he comes to perform a " kutti idal" function for a house, where he educates few skeptical engineers about ancient Indian architecture schemes.
Preman lives with his father (Gopi) in a rented house, owned by Chettiyar (Oduvil Unnikrishnan, who looked so aged and different in his appearance, which made me immensely sad). Manikandan is "chief" just for namesake, and Preman is the man who does most of the complex tasks.
Preman (Mohanlal) is a carpenter working with Manikandan Ashari (Innocent) who is the "chief carpenter". However, this village is a bit different and more picturesque compared to his older films, with beautiful dark blue mountains in the background, a river with a rope-bridge across it, and lakes with shining green water, and so on. Rasathanthram is based on Sathyan Anthikkad's own story, and the incidents occur in a village, like in all Anthikkad films. All that Rasathanthram generates is a kind of deja vu feeling in its every minute, and it looks like a collection of episodes from a never-ending Malayalam mega-serial. His last few movies - Kochu Kochu Santhoshangal, Narendran Makan Jayakanthan Vaka, Yathrakkarude Shraddhakku, and Manassinakkare were all disappointing films (I haven’t seen his last film, Achchuvinte Amma), and Rasathanthram is yet another boring and disappointing film, shattering any hopes that his reunion with the great actor would give us another memorable film. In fact, it has been quite some time since his movies lost that innocent charm. Sadly, gone are the days when Sathyan Anthikkad movies were so likeable. Mohanlal, Sreenivasan and Jayaram gave some of their finest performances in Sathyan Anthikkad films. Sathyan Anthikkad always had a fixed team in most of his films, which included actors like Oduvil Unnikrishnan, Innocent, Mamukkoya, KPAC Lalitha, and his cinematographer Vipin Mohan. His nonsense comedy films - Nadodikkattu and Pattanapravesham - I might have seen a dozen times or more, and would still like to watch again.
Appunni, Sandesham, Sanmanassullavarkku Samadhanam, TP Balagopalan MA, Varavelppu, Kudumba Puranam, Ponmuttayidunna Tharavu, Thalayana Manthram, Veendum Chila Veettukaryangal, Mazhavil Kavadi, - how enjoyable those films were! And they never bored me even after repeated viewing. He told simple stories about simple people living in Kerala villages, with a touch of humor. There was a time when I used to eagerly wait for each Sathyan Anthikkad film. This film shows a reunion of the director and actor Mohanlal after a gap of 12 years (that is, after Pingami). Today we watched the latest Sathyan Anthikkad film, Rasathanthram, at Sangeeth theatre.
0 kommentar(er)
