Between Reviews: The Stoic Little Soldier
THE STOIC LITTLE SOLDIER
“Pokkisham” proves, yet again, that for all the frustrations with Cheran’s films, they’re not easy to dismiss.
AUG 30, 2009 – IF THE EPISTOLARY ROMANCE is an anachronism in this age of tweeting and instant messaging, the director Cheran’s career is a greater anachronism. His new film, Pokkisham, outlines a love that blossomed across the barricades of religion, between Lenin and Nadheera, in the early 1970s – and you wonder if the director himself wouldn’t have been better off in that era. His cinema is suffused with old-world goodness – even the villainy, as required to thwart the romance, is played at such a low pitch, the villain comes off looking like a victim. (Circumstance is the only villain in Cheran’s films.) The characters are uniformly respectful and loving. They have no base impulses. They don’t even have the temerity to crack a joke or indulge in the occasional bout of mischief. To the last person, they’re embalmed – not real, live human beings but abstractions of every great, godly ideal known to mankind (and some known only to Cheran). Munching popcorn during these three hours would be an egregious insult – you’re required, clearly, to light incense and purse your lips over a conch shell.
If I say this as someone who genuinely looks forward to Cheran’s films, and unashamedly enjoys parts (if not all) of them – I confess I misted up during entire stretches of Thavamai Thavamirundhu, the way Cheran often does on screen – I can only imagine the frustrations that are endured by his detractors. (It’s never the bad films that frustrate you as much as the films that could have been great and somehow lose their footing along the way.) And there were a lot of detractors in the theatre that Friday afternoon, emitting howls and simulating hara-kiri each time a letter was unfurled on screen, and leisurely – very leisurely – read out in its entirety, from salutation to signature. (That is the film’s format, after all – Lenin writes letters to Nadheera, Nadheera writes letters back to Lenin. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.)
I wanted to shake these bratty SMS-era youngsters by the shoulder and tell them that this story needs this pace – if it’s a slow film, it’s because it isn’t set in a fast world. I wanted to tell them that this was, after all, the 1970s – an India of tonga carts and unsliced loaves of bread and two-rupee notes, and when people had to wait for days to hear from one another, either through letters or the tiresome mechanics of booking a trunk call over staticky communication lines. How easy it was, back then, to lose touch with people, who didn’t leave permanent footprints of their journey through life on, say, Facebook. (Today, you cannot shake off even the friends you want to lose.) It wasn’t unusual to graduate from school or college and have an entire set of people – and along with them, an entire part of your life – vanish into the ether, oftentimes without the comfort of closure. That’s the era this film attempts to evoke. When Lenin does not hear from Nadheera for weeks or months, we need to feel the length of this time elapse on screen – and the noonday-lethargy pacing of Pokkisham is very much a part of its design.
And yet, at an entirely different level, at a practical level, I could sympathise with these youngsters squirming in their seats. It isn’t the longwinded letters that are a problem – though there’s always an amount of ungainliness when words that are meant to be read silently are vocalised endlessly on screen. It’s the unrelenting effort to stuff every nook and cranny of these letters – and indeed, every nook and cranny of the film – with poetry. “Ilakkiya vadiviloru iyalbaana thiraipadam,” announces a legend at the beginning, that this is a naturalistic feature in the form of a literary work – but it appears otherwise, that all the naturalism has been sacrificed at the altar of purple prose. You know those films where the hero sits under a tree and writes a letter to a loved one, and a flower floats down onto the paper, like Cupid’s benediction from the heavens? This is that kind of movie – even a calendar on the wall betrays its literary leanings, bearing the image of Thiruvalluvar.
It’s one thing that the heroine is a student of Literature, and that she begins letters with such silken sentiments as her only friends thus far being the rain, the trees, the ocean, the wind and silence – and had we been given a hero who’s more down-to-earth, who respects and yet gently mocks her overbearing seriousness, who tries to loosen her up by replacing the copy of Tholkappiyam in her hand with a Barbara Cartland, we might have taken to this couple. But Lenin, too, is the kind who hopes that “the doors of their friendship will be reopened through this letter.” (At one lovelorn instant, he requests her to slide off her veil and reveal her face, but the words he employs – the wish that the crescent phase of her visage would transform into a full moon – makes you wonder if his love for her can ever match his love for the overdrawn literary metaphor.)
The film’s structure appears to echo a minor popular work like The Bridges of Madison County – a child stumbles upon letters that reveal unknown chapters in the life of a parent – but with Cheran’s aims being so lofty, it’s useful to remember how, in Love in the Time of Cholera, great literature was created from a couple that wrote incessantly to one another. The lovers there express, through their letters, the joy of being in love – but also the agony. There is a great segment in Pokkisham where Lenin, in a petulant pique, decides not to talk to anyone until he hears from Nadheera. That’s one of the rare moments you feel the love he bears for her, and you’re not just told about it – you’re made aware of the frustrating madness of his infatuation. Another segment impresses on us the ridiculousness of being in love – when Lenin pursues a postman in anticipation of a letter from Nadheera.
With more “normal” stretches like these – as opposed to the suffocatingly poetic longueurs – this would have been a sober counterpoint to something like Love Aaj Kal, if not a rom-com, a drama about love yesterday versus love today. (Lenin’s son has a girlfriend who suspects him despite his being a phone call away, whereas Lenin and Nadheera trust each other across great distances, both in terms of geography as well as communication facilities.) And yet, for all its problems, Pokkisham isn’t something you can easily dismiss. In a cinema culture where a film like Mozhi is hailed as being “sensitive” – clearly, all eyes were on the heroine’s handicaps; no one took heed of the irony that, simultaneously, an overweight child was being used as an object of ridicule, the way Bindu Ghosh and Gundu Kalyanam were in an earlier era – Cheran’s films stand out in unexpectedly refreshing ways.
The delicacy with which the character of Lenin’s wife has been shaped is something to behold. She married her husband knowing full well that his heart would never be hers – but apart from the expected shot of eyes brimming with long-suppressed tears, she’s remarkably accepting of her lot in life. Besides, she genuinely has no regrets that her husband continued to search for that missing piece of his heart. The character is on screen for about five minutes, but she brings with her a lifetime of memories and shows us how unsuspecting civilians can become collateral damage in the wake of a love so all-consuming. Cheran respects his women as much as he respects his audience. Another filmmaker would have used the thundering revelation that Nadheera is about to be married off to someone else to signal the interval point – leaving us hanging about the fate of Lenin – but Cheran lets this moment unfold just after intermission. You have to admire his steadfastness in the face of the derision his films evoke in certain quarters. For all my frustrations about his cinema, I cannot help hoping that this stoic little soldier continues to march on his chosen (and lonely) path.
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“And there were a lot of detractors in the theatre that Friday afternoon, emitting howls and simulating hara-kiri each time a letter was unfurled on screen, and leisurely – very leisurely – read out in its entirety, from salutation to signature.”
BR, this is something that probably deserves a separate column. I have always wondered as to how the reviewer manages to distance himself from succumbing to crowd psychology. Like how you are prompted into smiling/laughing for certain scenes just because the crowd prompts you into it. Or how they ruin certain scenes that are meant to be quietlyu absorbed. Our junta has been conditioned like you said before, to expect bursts of activity with a “swoosh” sound every 2 mins. I think films like this and Pirivom Sandhippom need to be watched in the confines of your home.Although you are already probably doinga good job of keeping yourself aloof. But you at least deserve a better viewing experience.
Although I have not seen this film yet some of the stupid reviews I read complaining about the movie using letters and such in this era of cellphones and so on, irked me. Hello, this is the 70s, not the 00s. Unfortunately these are the kind of clueless reviewers who are being read by the vast majority of folks out there.
I am glad that at the least you are willing to give Cheran’s films a chance.
For instance, I wouldn’t expect someone like Raja Sen to even sit thru these kind of movies. He would dismiss them as sentimental melodrama and move on. For him everything has to be subtle.
The problem is Cheran knows only one way of making movies-much like Bhansali-but without the gloss.That’s his strength as well as weakness. But his movies have enough slice-of-life moments and a certain honesty which is refreshing.
Also why this repeated criticism of Mozhi?
Its not like as if the movie won several National or film festival awards or something like that. It was just a feel-good film that ran well. I have read glowing reviews of films far worse.
Pokkisham and ChEran are fighting a linguistic phenomenon.
Few of our films can be accused of subtlety. Melodrama works, as do long monologues, from time to time. The tedium is exacerbated in Pokkisham because ChEran, as you mention, decides to have two wannabe’s impose their prose on us. The difference in the spoken and written Thamizh and the rather serious intonation (unlike like 23AM PulikEsi) make an already difficult job even more so. I tried really hard to give the movie a chance. The cinematography is excellent as are the throwaway women characters (the wife, as you rightly mention, and the Bengali girl who might have held a passing fancy for Lenin). And yet the movie seems frustratingly short of what it is attempting to achieve.
Rangan…nice piece. Perfectly captures the trials and tribulations of the film. You were right – Kandasamy is awful. Biggest waste of every resource known to man!! Irony is that they should taken the money spent on the movie to good social causes like they preach! Any interviews coming up or still doing K2K work?
kamil: My work on K2K is done. I think they’re waiting to shoot the last 20%, plus some songs.
Good one! I loved the way you WANTED people to understand the ultimate thing in the movie.
There are some other things which I obeserved while reading those letters. It would start with the person who wrote the letter and then switches to the reader’s voice and then a gap (indicating unimportant conversation) and finally the writer’s voice. It’s a nice usage of the voice over.
In fact, the director has also intented to stress the difference between love (currently) and 70s love with Lenin’s son fighting with his lover because he didn’t answer her call and kept messaging him.
Superb review Baradwaj. Cheran’s films for me have gone downhill, beginning with the best (Autograph), and going downhill from there. I have hopes Pokkisham will be better than a Thavamai Thavamarintu, but do confess that however hokey a Cheran film, I don’t skip it… I just wish he would sometimes cast someone else…
PS– forget casting someone else, I guess he also wants a full-fledged acting career (I recently saw Pirivom Santhippom); I don’t mean to be harsh — he isn’t a bad actor, but strikes me as somewhat limited, and doesn’t make much of an impact.
PPS– I realize that my previous comment had assumed that Autograph was Cheran’s first film (it had a debut-feel to it, and I was quite smitten by its determined modesty and low-key vibe, reminiscent of many of the 1980s Malayalam films I have seen) — but is that true?
Vikram: Yeah, those asides were nicely done. Like how there’s suddenly a musing during a power curt where Lenin points out that people earlier *have* existed without electricity. This is the sort of thing that makes his films frustrating — so much good stuff. and yet… It would be far easier to give up if they were just *bad* films.
Qalandar: Seen “Pandavar Bhoomi?” Oh, and he *is* a limited actor, no doubt.
Have you also seen the korean movie ‘Classic’? Pokkisham is a one line inspiration from ‘Classic’.
I think Cheran’s first movie was Bharathi Kannamma (considering the subject, it had appropriate amount of melodrama) followed by Porkaalam (you want melodrama ? this one has it in spades. Cheran buries you in melodrama in this one), then desiya geetham (a good idea completely negated by production quality), vetri kodi kattu (another good idea terribly executed and acted).
I havent watched pokkisham though.
Vikram: I haven’t seen “Classic.” I thought he was inspired by “Bridges of Madison County,” what with the child uncovering a parent’s secret past and all.
Thanks guys — wow, never realized Cheran had made so many films prior to Autograph…
Regarding your crib about Mozhi, I am almost sure that the laughs were derived NOT out of the kid being over-weight, but out of the kid’s liking for food. Isn’t there a difference in that? Besides, Mozhi wasn’t even about how we *treat* differently abled people, to make the treatment of Arjun as “ironic”. Yes, it had its flaws; but where do we differentiate between the director/writer’s views and the character’s views. I don’t remember any scene where any of the protagonists berate/preach someone for being “insensitive”. Finally, the bad parts were outweighed effortlessly by all the good things. Probably why I saw the movie twice in 3 days.
And regarding Pokkisham, wish I could say something, but not released yet in Bangalore. But, of course, we have had Kaadhal Kadhai, Madhavi, etc. here. Whoopeee!
Sridhar: Gawd… these “Mozhi” fans… I tell you, they’re everywhere!
I mean it. They *are* everywhere. I just got back from a party, where I was introduced to someone. The talk naturally shifted to films. She said she doesn’t watch too many films these days because they’re too violent — and she wished more movies like “Mozhi” were made. In her defense, she had grey hair
And oh, I know opposites attract and all that, but this is too much. I say “Poongathave Thaalthiravaai” and you say “Darwaza Bandh Rakho”? (the link on top of KANK) Now you know why I HATE you (cue Aman, Kal Ho Na Ho)!
“In her defense, she had grey hair”
ROFL! “Mrs.Robinson, are you trying to annoy me ?”
you don’t have to be a mozhi fan but why the repeated digs at it?i still don’t understand why
you are so ruthless with that nice little movie especially when you so merciful towards a lot of trash.
Siva – That’s Brangan for you. Sees what other’s refuse to. And refuses to see what others do…
His USP, I think?!
Brangan – I have liked every idea of Cheran’s every film – but have seen none. Not accessible – being out of Chennai.
And yeah, I am not a fan – but am quite comfortable with the way Mozhi is made. There is this compulsive obsession, I think, to include ‘comedy’ in movies – almost as overt as item songs! Anyway.
I know this thread is long dead but i could not resist – i just saw Pokkisham with the elders at home when it is raining outside . This film was made for just such a time and place , the slow pace , the long-drawn out scenes and dialogues , perfect.
You had exactly the right idea – “that for all the frustrations with Cheran’s films, they’re not easy to dismiss”.
P.S : did you review his “Maya Kannadi”