The film consists of four segments  The Thief, The Police, Two Men and a Woman and One Woman, Two Men. The first story is about a thief who, by force of circumstances, is unable to renounce his only means of livelihood and is punished by his disgrace more than by law; he loses courage to face his proud son. In the second story, two corrupt and wily police men – the ‘grassroots’ representatives of the state, systematically rob an honest rickshaw puller of his savings and also freedom. In the third story we find a youngster wavering between ‘obligations’ to his family and society, and the love he feels for his servant whom he impregnates. It is the ‘law’ of what he is expected to
do versus the ‘justice’ of what his being yearns for. The fourth story, the most sensuous among the four, has a beautiful woman at the centre inviting lovers and inciting stories. Panki Amma is an enigmatic woman to whom men are attracted; she rejects none and seems to offer love to all, may be of different kinds. [The work of a master]

The Kerala State Film Jury thought this was the best film of 2008, better than TV Chandran’s Vilapangalkkapuram. TV Chandran meanwhile thinks Adoor’s film is a TV serial.

“This time the award for the best film has been given to a TV serial and not a film. Last year his film was not given an award because the then jury felt his film was a serial,” Chandran told reporters here. [Adoor's film is a TV serial: T. V. Chandran]

Adoor meanwhile thought that since the accuser was ‘TV’ Chandran, he would know something about ‘TV’ serials.

Commenting on the same Adoor said that those who think his film is a television serial is “ignorant of what a TV serial is and what a film is”.[Adoor's film is a TV serial: T. V. Chandran]

We understand TV Chandran’s frustration. He tried to make an award movie with Dileep as the hero – Kathavaseshan – which was equivalent to making a dragon fly lift Sai Kumar. It did not win any awards. But when Adoor was not in the picture Chandran’s movies have won national acclaim, like the brilliant Padom Onnu, Oru Vilapam.

Both these two are great directors and it becomes a problem when both have movies together. To resolve this, we should change laws so that they alternate each year. When Adoor makes a movie, TV Chandran takes a break and vice versa. If they don’t listen, we think, whatever movie Vinayan makes that year should be given the best picture award. That should teach everyone a lesson.

Trivia

• MJ Radhakrishnan(Cinematography), M Jayachandran(Music Direction), T. Krishnanunni(Sound Recording), Vrinda(Choreography) won the Kerala state award in 2007 too in their respective fields.
• Jury Chairman Girish Kasaravalli commented that no short film, documentary or Children’s film made the mark.
• Jury Chairman also commented that there was no confusion this time on selection of awards and he also stated the obvious – that the quality of Malayalam movies have gone down.
• Lal has the unique distinction of being a succesful director, producer and now best actor.
• This year none of the super stars, minor stars , wannabe stars, meteors, comets or asteroids were anywhere near the awards.
  

Update(4th June, 2009):  Looks like it’s tough times at India Glitz, they have decided to ‘outsource’  HTML development.

Bhoomi Malayalam is good, fast, at times a little too ‘painkili’ emotional(that would be there, frickin women! ), but highly watchable. It is not much of a thought provoking movie, but one those ‘reminding’ movies which reminds us of things. Then, atleast the ten people who watched “Bhoomi Malayalam” wouldn’t go home complaining about the sorry state of Malayalam cinema.[T a l k i e s » T.V. Chandran’s Bhoomi Malayalam]

But 10 people is an insufficient number to stop the Death Watch.

At 7:30 am, Gopinath Menon (Dileep) is seen alone, smoking a cigarette in his house. At 8:30 am he is still smoking. A while later, he is found hanging. Why would a guy who was seen drunk and partying in his house the previous day commit suicide without any reason? The search for the motive by his fiancée Renuka (Jyothirmayi) forms the story of this movie.

Renuka meets Menon’s family, friends, colleagues and people who knew him in the passing and tries to make sense of his life. He was a civil engineer who lived with his mother and elder sister. His job took him to various places like Gujarat, Calcutta and Trivandrum and along the way he be-friended many people from various parts of the country. There was one unique thing about Gopinatha Menon – he could not tolerate any harm being done to female children.

To stress this point, an incident is shown when Menon was staying with other colleagues in Gujarat. Their neighbor had a daughter who was friends with them. One day while coming back from office, Menon sees a colleague, kind of fighting with this girl. He assumes that this colleague (Pandyarajan) is about to molest the girl and beats him up. Later he comes to know that it was a false assumption.

In another incident in Bengal, Menon finds an girl walking alone on the road and brings her home. It seems she had lost her way. He and his friend talk to her and find the approximate location of the house and go to drop her back. The parents and neighbors who have been looking for the girl think that Menon and his friend had abducted her and beat them up.

With few incidents like these, one would think that the director has conveyed his point. No, he still drums it in with more and more incidents. In one case, the night before he committed suicide, he is seen stopping his car in the middle of the road and helping another girl child from being abducted. Previously he was also seen transporting the dead body of his friend’s daughter to her funeral when no one was willing to help.

All these incidents are reconstructed from the memories of the people involved. As soon as this repetitive saving of the girl child starts getting clichéd, the director goes on to prove that Gopinatha Menon was a person who was more interested in the welfare of other much above his own happiness. When his girl friend (Nithya Das) decided to marry someone else, he lets her go, but after sleeping with her in a hotel room.

This helping others business becomes ridiculous when Menon encounters a thief (Indrans) who has problems with police. Menon does not think for a moment and goes and shouts at the inspector (Cochin Haneefa) for stealing from a thief. He does not advice the thief to give up his illegal activities, but instead the director justifies the thief’s career through a song.

Finally after a long winding story, we finally learn about the reason behind his death. It seems he saw a report in the newspaper which said that the girl who was his neighbor in Gujarat was raped and killed. Stuck by grief, he committed suicide after writing the following lines on the wall, “For the shame of being alive”.

We could not believe that this movie was made by the same director who made Padom Onnu: Ou Vilapam. Padom Onnu had a single focus and the story and screenplay maintained that focus all through out. In that movie none of the scenes looked artificial or contrived. In this movie, a few of Menon’s encounters with various suffering girls look believable, but later they become really artificial through repetitiveness.

In this movie, we could not understand Gopinatha Menon. Most often he is seen as a problem solver, often by taking matters into his own hands. Once when he finds that a pregnant woman died in a hospital due to negligence by doctors, he manhandles them. When girls are in trouble, he fights physically with the perpetrators. He even fights for criminals. We could not fathom how such a man would commit suicide at the end. If we had seen a slow decline in his faith in society, it would have been a bit more logical, but no such attempt is made.

That said, there are some brilliant moments in T.V.Chandran’s screenplay. Most of the scenes in Menon’s life are reconstructed from the retelling by his family and friends. When Renuka meets Menon’s girl friend, she talks about an incident where both of them had to stay in a hotel for a night. While the voice over by Nithya Das says that nothing happened between them, the visuals on the screen show otherwise, which was absolutely brilliant.

Similarly there are many places where the same incident is repeated, from the angles of various people involved in the scene. Once while coming back drunk with his colleagues, he spots his friend played by Vijayaraghavan doing a hunger strike. This scene is told by both Vijayaraghavan and the friends in the car, but unlike Kurosowa’s Rashomon where the story varied based on the person telling it, here it is all consistent.

There are some ridiculous scenes as well. Renuka once goes to an agency which specializes in investigating suicides. The office is filled with women dressed like Air Hostesses in the 1950s, sitting in front of computers, projecting their screens on to walls. On the screens are the names of famous people who have committed suicides. In which office do you see every employee projecting their screens on the wall? This scene made us laugh even though the context was serious.

Dileep tries to show that he can do a movie without comedy and succeeds to a certain degree. His range moves from over the top (while shouting at other people) to subtle (his expressions when he knows that his girl friend is leaving him). Indrans appears in a short role, but makes it memorable as a thief. Pandiyarajan, Cochin Haneefa, Vijayaraghavan, Bindu Panicker and many other known faces give very realistic performances even though they appear briefly. Unlike the background music in Padom Onnu: Oru Vilapam which was loud, irritating and manipulative, this one was very restrained.

While lot of people have questioned the motive in making a film glorifying suicides in a state which leads the nation in the number of suicides, we feel that a film maker has the right to make a film of his choice, and not be restricted by such factors. Still we felt this was a dishonest and artificial film and hope that the ending was not created with an award in mind.

One day when Shahina (Meera Jasmine) is walking to school along with her friends, she sees the local village broker Hassan Moyeen (Mamu Koya) along the way staring at her. When she comes near, he asks if she is the daughter of Sophia (Pallavi Krishnan). Shahina retorts something angrily and walks away, but when she is in school, something sinister happens.

The broker along with Shahina’s uncle make a visit to her house with the objective to convince Shahina’s parents to get her married. The shocking fact is that she is only 14. More shocking is the fact that they want Shahina to be the second wife of a 30 year old man. The man, Razak (Irshad) wants some money to go to the middle east and that his motivation for the second marriage.

Shahina is a girl who is interested in studies and loves poetry, especially Gitanjali by Tagore and it was her dream to go to college. All that gets shattered when she is forced into marriage. In her husband’s house, she becomes friends with his first wife and daughter. She does not allow Razak to touch her and frustrated Razak forces his first wife to sedate her and rapes her. Following this, he complains to his mother that since he cannot touch her, he wants a divorce.

Shahina is sent back home and starts going back to school.She gets another marriage proposal, this time from Hajiyar, an old man in the village, older than her father, who wants to take her as his fourth wife which her mother rejects. Then Shahina finds that she is pregnant and her world collapses. Her mother dies of shock and finally she becomes a teenage mother, alone with her baby.

The story of the film is simple and is told in an anecdotal format. There are many scenes which remain in your mind as you finish the movie. Often there is a scene where a line of teenage girls with children in their arms and bucket of clothes in the other hand walk towards somewhere. You feel like this scene has no relation to the movie. In the last scene, you see Shahina in the line along with her baby walking with many other women to the river bank. The final shot is that of all the babies crying in the river bank while their single mothers are washing clothes. It was a heart breaking scene.

While the rape scene by her husband and the marriage proposal by the old man were repulsive, the instant divorce and the attempts by the local Muslims to blame Shahina’s school teacher for her pregnancy were shocking. When confronted by the locals, the school teacher Kasim (Babu Annur) gives them a lecture on Quran and how to respect women and the Hajiar, the man who wanted to take Shahina as his fourth wife wryly says that the teacher is “not progressive” like them.

Meera Jasmine was natural as Shahina. Her transformation from an innocent school girl to a teenage mother is a powerful performance, without overacting,and she won the national award for this role. (In 2005 she played the role of a grieving woman in a much better performance in Perumazhakkalam) The rest of the cast, largely unknowns, gave very natural performances. Many of them had short roles, but with impact.

Director T.V.Chandran was able to set the right tone and speed for the movie. He was also able to extract the right performances from his actors. Unlike the slow pace of such movies which can be termed “Art movies”, this one moves at a reasonably good pace. Still there some shots of people walking along the road for long time, which I think is required as per “Art movie” laws. Such 1970s techniques should be done away with.

The biggest damage to this movie was done by Johnson’s background score. The first scene of the movie is that of a Muslim woman walking along a desolated road with a child in her arms. The background music is that of a sarangi playing something sad. At this point we don’t even know who this woman is or what her problem is, but the director used music to manipulate our emotions. Then at some point, the music turns from sad to something like the Naushad’s title music for the serial, The Sword of Tipu Sultan. The transition between these tunes was not smooth and took our attention away from the scene. Similarly in many important scenes the background music turned out be a distraction and it would have been better if the movie did not have any background score.

The movie, written by Aryadan Shoukath (son of minister Aryadan Mohammed) is a candid look at the sad life of Muslim girls in Kerala. We feel for them when they are married off to people twice or thrice their age and divorced with no one asking for their opinion. It would not have been possible to make this film in many Islamic countries, but thanks to the freedom we have in India, such criticism is possible.Even then the premiere of this movie saw protests from Islamic publications and the release was postponed due to the fear of theater owners in getting involved in controversial topics.

We like movies which talk about evils in our society and have a social message. Sadly not many movies are made in this genre and not many of our stars act in such controversial movies. This movie does not offer a solution to the problem and leaves the ending open.

We recommend that everyone see this movie and look forward to seeing more scripts from Aryadan Shoukath.