Movie 4 d week : Piravi(1988)

review by Vinoo
Language : Malayalam
Director : Shaji N Karun

‘Piravi’ should be counted among one of our best films. It tells the story of an old man’s, Raghava Chakyar’s, wait for his son, Raghu. Raghu, an Engineering student, goes mysteriously missing from his college. He does not turn up for his sister’s engagement ceremony. His father sits in wait hoping his son will come back one day. Finally he learns from a newspaper report that Raghu has been taken into custody by the police. Raghava Chakyar goes to Trivandrum to meet the Minister and then the Police Inspector and finally returns with nothing but reassurances. He keeps the news to himself so as not to bring grief to his wife and daughter. The daughter meets Raghu’s classmate from who she gets the news of his arrest. She decides to find out what really happened and meets Raghu’s classmates to get details of his arrest. She figures he has been arrested by the police allegedly for being a naxalite sympathizer, and specifically for directing a play that mocked one of the ministers in the then cabinet in Kerala. She returns home and tells her father that waiting for Raghu is futile, to which her father angrily responds – “Forget him? How can I as his father, she as his mother and you as his sister forget him? Well… how can we?” (Bad translation that). His daily routine of fording the river to get to the bus stand and wait until the last bus has left before he returns home really kills you. The film ends on that note, with the father expectantly looking for the last bus with the profound hope that his son will return today. The emotions of the father is conveyed so very well through the eyes of Premji. Raghu never appears in the entire length of the film, except as childhood memories. Thanks to my cousin for sourcing this film from Switzerland. Could have shared this if only it had English subtitles.

The film has brilliant portrayal by Premji as Raghava Chakyar, the father. Premji has also acted in films like ‘Vilkkanundu swapnangal’, ‘Paraya Dhan’, ‘Fakira’, ‘Hatyara’, Anubandham’, etc. Hope to look for him the next time I watch these films. Also Archana has never looked as good as she does in this film. I think Shaji has not used artificial lighting for any of the scenes in ‘Piravi’. Shaji has shot the film himself and the frames are simply brilliant.

‘Piravi’ is based on the Rajan Murder case, which rocked the Kerala assembly when C Achutha Menon was the Chief Minister and K Karunakaran the then Home Minister in the CPI-Cong led Government. The verdict later, caused such a furore that K Karunakaran had to resign from his Chief Ministership, barely a month after taking oath. The Rajan incident is a stark reminder of the days of the emergency and how his father, Eachara Warrier, could not even file a habeus corpus. He had to wait until the Emergency was lifted before he could file a case against the Kerala government.

Shaji N Karun has also directed ‘Vanaprastham’, which in my opinion is brilliant. Also got a VHS copy of ‘Swam / Swaham’ which I hope to figure a way of watching. He has also directed ‘Nishad’ in Hindi, which I hope to access. ‘Kuttisraank’, his latest film has just been released. Shaji surely is among one of our best Director’s today.
‘Memories of a father’ written by T V Eachara Warrier, Rajan’s father, is worth a read and you can find it here :
http://www.ahrchk.net/pub/pdf/mof.pdf

Useless trivia : Music for ‘Piravi’ is by G Aravindan, who has also scored music for ‘Aaro oral’ and his own ‘Estheppan’. Shaji used to be the Cinematographer on most of G Aravindan’s films like ‘Oridathu’ ‘Kanchana Sita’, ‘Thampu’, “Estheppan’, ‘Pokkuveyil’, etc besides being Cinematographer on films like ‘Onnumuthal poojyam vare’, ‘Arapatta kettiya gramathil’, ‘Sargam’, ‘Ek chadar maili si’, etc. He has also directed a 19 minute documentary tribute called ‘G Aravindan’ for Films Division. Who better to direct a tribute to Aravindan. But then the film leaves you with too little.

NB : ‘Floating Weeds’ second project, and my Directorial debut ‘Where the gods give up caste’, a 26 minute documentary produced jointly with Films Division, will be screened at 18:30 hours on Saturday, 07 August, 2010. More useless trivia when there. 🙂 Venue : B 11, Gurukripa, Off Veera Desai Road, Andheri (West), Mumbai.