Oru Pennum Randaanum

Medium : Malayalam
Starring : Nedumudi Venu, Manoj K Jayan, Jagadeesh, Praveena, Sukumari
Director : Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Music : Issac Kottukappally

The custom of giving awards for non released films is happening these days. The main criteria for submitting a film for award jury is that the date of censoring should come within the particular year. Anyway, I am against such a practice happening in malayalam. Every year, controversies happen while the state awards are announced. The film technicians itself plays the role in such things. Viewers don’t want to be the part of the debate. This is mainly due to the fact that they are not getting a chance to watch the particular film and to grade it, since it is not released in theatres.

We have witnessed the argument happened between Adoor Gopalakrishnan (director of ‘Oru Pennum Randaanum’) and TV Chandran (director of ‘Bhoomi Malayalam’) after the recent announcement of state film awards. The latter one criticized the jury for giving best film award for ‘Oru Pennum Rendaanum’ which looks like a television serial only while the former welcomed it by saying that the jury’s decision is excellent. One of my friends asked me about the authenticity in TV Chandran’s comments. I was helpless since I didn’t get a chance to watch “the controversial film” so far.

Like Adoor’s last film ‘Naalu Pennungal’, this film ‘Oru Pennum Randaanum’ is also based on four short stories by notable writer Thakazhi like ‘Kallante Makan’ (done by MR Gopakumar, Indrans, Seema G Nair), ‘Niyamavum Neethiyum’ (done by Nedumudi Venu, Vijayaraghavan, Jagannathan, Krishnan, P Sreekumar), ‘Oru Kai Sahayam’ (done by Jagadeesh, Sudheesh, PC Soman) and ‘Pankiyamma’ (done by Sukumari, Praveena, Manoj K Jayan, Ravi Vallathol, Babu Namboothiri, Krishnaprasad). The first story is shown on the child’s views and reactions whose father is a local thief. Corruption is the main issue discussed in the second story. In the next area, friendship is shown in a different way. The last story deals with a beautiful girl in a village and the three men associated with her life.

These stories are happening in the Kuttanad region in the 1940’s. The director has followed the same format of the previous film here also. That time itself I told that the director should have made the film for the mini screen. Here also the co-producer is Doordarshan, thus tele-series format is more suitable. The performances of all the artists are good. But, each and every scene reminds us of a seriously made tele serial in the late 80’s or early 90’s which came in Doordarshan. The question is that whether the big screen is necessary for Adoor Gopalakrishnan to visualize this. Among all, the last story, ‘Pankiyamma’ is serious and good though its is lengthy. We don’t know the significance of the story ‘Oru Kai Sahayam’. Camera is handled by MJ Radhakrishnan. Issac Kottukappally gave the background score.

These facts helped us to reach an assumption that TV Chandran was correct in his stand. “To give the best film award for a tele serial is not fair”; hence ‘Bhoomi Malayalam’ was far better than ‘Oru Pennum Randaanum’.

If you are too desperate to watch a product from Adoor Gopalakrishnan, then you can proceed to ‘Oru Pennum Randaanum’.

Rating : 6 / 10