Akale | posted by Sabarinadhan

I am not any kind of conventional film analyst,but after watching Syamaprasad's "Akale" I can swear that I would have made a better film ....

The film is based on Tenesse William's "The Glass Menagerie"(which i haven't read) but from the mood of the movie its sure that Syamprasad hasnt tampered with the original.The greatest flaw of the movie is that sprasad harps on the original without introducing any other element in the movie.

The movie starts off in calcutta(any art film directors delite),camera runs through the hoogly river and the tram way(best place for an aged pritviraj to retrospect) and soon we land @ someplace in kannur/thaleserry where anglo Indians and Portugese reside in plenty.Rose(Geethu Mohandas) is Neil(Pritvi)'s sister- a cripple who has lost interest in life and who confines herself to the four walls of her room and plays with her glass animals.Pritvi is a typical 1975 angry young man- a frustrated youth who is ambitious ,reads DH Lawrence and more than anything else wants to extricate himself from the problems in his house.Sheela is their mom who somehow wants to get Geethu married off to any " good lookin,non alcoholic" anglo Indian youth.

Then enters Freddy Ewans(the producer himself) who brings in a ray of hope into Geethus life but finally deserts her.She is grief stricken and never returns from that dilemma and finally dies.In between this Pritvi walks out from his house in search of greener pastures and finally becomes a bearded buji story writer....How pritvi feels for his sister Geethu after her death is the crux of the story,,,,,,,

The main problem with Akale is the approach to the story.The life of Geethu makes us sad but never haunts us after we leave the theatre.The relation and break up of Freddy and Geethu is also half baked....

What makes me really angry is that the film gets over in barely 1 and quarter hours.He could atleast have worked on the relation between Pritvi and Geethu instead of shrinking it to a scene or two,.....

I heard Syamaprasad say somewhere that only films based on novels can help malayalam cinema revive, but I think there's no point in making films like this.His earlier work "Agnisakshi "was commendable only because of Rajat Kapur's acting and the dialogues(taken ditto from the novel "Agnisakshi")...I think Syamaprasad has to realize that film making is something much more complex than serial and documentary making....

About the acting,Geethu Mohandas does a really good job.She emotes really well and never looks strained....Sheela is just ok.The young Pritvi looks good,acts well but the aged Pritvi fails to impress just because of his makeup.His dialogues also seems strained...He really has to go a far way to reach the league of Mohanlal n Mammoty...The producer as Freddy Ewans deserves some words because he scores well as a sober,romantic person.

On the whole "Akale" has its good bits but on the whole Syamaprasad and co could have made a far far better movie....The promos on tv are really good but i think that's not enough to woo mallu audiences.They still remain "Akale" from Sree Theatre, because on a saturday noon I could find only about 25 people in the theatre,most of them hapless people like me who desperately want to see good malayalam cinema.




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