KERALA--MOVIE SCENE--"KALAPANI" LACKING IN MANY RESPECTS
Dr. P.K. John
'KALAPANI ' lacking in many respects
=========================== July 15,1996
At Rs 3.5 crore this was the most expensive Malayalam movie ever made.
The movie created news when it failed to win the best picture award of
the government of Kerala. I know now why.
The movie is different from any Malayalam films I have seen before. It is
multilingual with dialogues switching from Malayalam to Hindi, Tamil and
English. There is even a bit of Telugu in it.
Special effort was made to make the film look authentic in terms of the
period it was portraying. Six wings of the cellular jail in Kalapani were
created on the set. Indian railways loaned old trains and eight vintage
cars were recreated.
The sound track was recorded on DTS system. Illayaraja scored the music
for the film and there are couple of memorable songs in it
"ATTIRAMBILE--------------------"' (M.G.SRIKUMAR AND CHITRA) and
"CHEMPOOVE-----" (M.G.SRIKUMAR and CHITRA).
Imported from Bollywood, Tabu, Amirish Puri and Anu Kapoor brought some
glamour.
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Dr.P.K.John, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
E-mail VE3OGZ @sympatico.Ca
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The movie has been playing in theatres in North America during the last
few weeks. Back home it was not a box office success. Admirers of the
movie are however claiming that it may even receive an Oscar nomination
in the foreign film category, that a dubbed English version is likely
and so on. I don't think that such hopes are well founded.
While the story is good and the technical aspects better than average
Malayalam films the movie lacks in several respects. I went to see the
film with my two sons ,one of them a drama student and we found the movie
too long (3 hours) and melodramatic. It was almost like three movies in
one. The first flashack was unnecessarily long and took the focus away
from the real theme of the movie which was about the hardships and
cruelty suffered by freedom fighters in the Andaman jails. The flashback
to Govardan's past could have been told in smaller bits and the song and
dance scenes could have been avoided for a serious movie of this sort.
The director seemed to lose focus .Is this a movie about prison
conditions? Is it about India's freedom struggle ?Is it about revolution
by the ill-treated prisoners?
The scenes of fighting are too numerous and sometimes outright clumsy.
There is no need to show long sequences to make a point. The attempted
escape of a group of prisoners and the eventual capture of two of the
perpetrators could have been handled in a briefer more focused way.
Instead it was dragged out to give opportunity to include island scenery.
The encounter between the escaped Indian prisoners and natives smacksof
hypocrisy .In a movie which portrays British attitudes of superiority
towards Indian prisoners, it was sheer hypocrisy for the prisoners
themselves to look down on the natives as inferior cannibals.
The movie ended with three question marks after a statement asking the
viewers should we misuse the freedom we gained at great cost? This was
like "spoon feeding" a bunch of seventh graders.
Malayalam movies(with the exception of a few art movies) have to improve
a lot more if they want to reach international standards. Movie makers
may have to forget a lot of the old formulas to ensure box office
success. Even the home audiences are getting more sophisticated and for
those of us who have become used to seeing good western films KALAPANI
will leave us with feeling Priyadarsan ought have done better, and that
the direction should have been tighter.
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