‘Ore Kadal’ – a stir

Shyamaprasad has now offered his third film to audiences, once again an adaptation. This time it is based on well known Bengali author Sunil Gangopadhyay’s :”Heerak Deepti”. Even if one is not smitten by the film, it sets you thinking, open’s your eyes, and of course realise that this is definitely a path breaking film as far as Malayalam cinema is concerned.

The difference is that issues handled have not been touched so far, but these do exist in our lives. Another important aspect is that he chose Mammooty for the role of the academic-intellectual. Although he has not been able to make us forget that it is our popular hero on screen, but he (Mammooty) has done a good job. The film succeeds on scripting or else this could have slid into a lot of ‘difficult-to-watch-on-screen-type’ of scenes. The restraint exercised in the picturisation of the growing relationship between the self-centred unthinking intellectual and the naïve housewife is commendable.

Naren as Deepti’s husband is also a type we come across very often. Can’t fault him (!) for pushing his wife to seek help from a stranger in the same apartment block, because there are many people like that too. Remya Krishnan as Dr S K Nathan’s companion fits well into the role clear about her position in the status as a companion or one is not sure if it is that she does not want to give up her freedom.

Protests, and murmurs galore we hear about the manner in which women have been depicted in the film. Before taking up cudgels for a particular gender, what as audiences we must probe is if there is credibility and how successfully it has been conveyed. Another interesting aspect was the ability to show the ‘distant’ urban landscape posited against the personal turmoil of a woman. She goes through all of it -insecurity due to the joblessness of the husband, inability to pursue studies because her husband says she take care of the children, seeking the help of a neighbour who can seen everything only through his ‘theories’ of underdevelopment.

As the inaugural film for the IFFI at Goa this year, ‘Ore Kadal’ will get noticed for the fact that it handles a very contemporary situation of relationships in a world which is shrinking to mean the individual and his/her immediate surroundings.