Aayirathil Oruvan

Last week, one of my friends asked me whether I have watched the new film, ’Aayirathil Oruvan’ by Kalabhavan Mani. I told him that I have not and also corrected his statement by informing that the film is not new; it is an old movie by Sibi Malayil, which was censored almost 6 years before and was about to release at that time. But due to some unknown reasons it was unreleased. This film also bagged state award for the best story writer for TA Razaak at that time. Now the distributor Siyad Koker feels that it in the current era of films like ‘Veruthe Oru Bharya’, ‘Makante Achan’, ‘Bharya Santham Suhruthu’ etc; this is the right time to release ‘Aayirathil Oruvan’ also, which is a pakka family subject.

The team behind had also arranged an aggressive marketing strategy for the film, so that the hero himself, who is always ready to cry in public for the popularity, took the initiative by taking part in maximum number of promotional programs in TV channels. The publicity poster is designed with faces of many top most directors and a superstar in malayalam and they even claim that “this is the Oscar of Malayalam”.

The poverty of lower middle class families has always been a sure bet theme for the malayalam films in the past. Here also the hero (Kalabahavan Mani), who hails from such a family, runs a ration shop. The story mainly revolves around his wife, his mother, his other relatives and their whereabouts, the dowry issues, loan repayment troubles, failure of settlement and problem with the financiers etc. The first scene showing the broker visiting the hero’s house, seeking an alliance for him and the reply given to him is a cliché and we will be able to understand what is going to happen here after.

Director Sibi Malayil with the script of TA Razak, has tried his best to allocate maximum sentiments and crying in each and every scenes till the climax. The previous hit given by the same pair was ‘Kaanakkinavu’ and I still believe that it is the only script that the latter can claim as his best work so far. Maybe he has written ‘Perumazhakkalam’, but a variety of films like ‘Parunthu’, ‘Mayabazar’, ‘Aakasham’, ‘Nadodi’, ‘Vesham’, ‘Bus Conductor’, ‘Valkkannadi’ etc. also came through his pen.

There is no big star cast in this film. The heroine role is done by Suchetha. Some of the familiar faces from the serial field has done the sister characters. Mother role is done by KPAC Lalitha, she is crying or harassing her daughter-in-law through words, most of the time. Shoby Thilakan and Senthil (tamil actor) plays the financier’s role. Thilakan comes in the end, as a person with helping mentality. Anyway after so many hazards and sadness, there is some happiness comes for the hero in the climax. Since this film stayed in the lab for years, it lost its freshness; such an old feeling can be quoted using a saying in malayalam, “aariya kanji… pazhankanji.”

‘Aayirathil Oruvan’ is for those people (especially ladies) who want to see family oriented films which contains problems, sorrow and troubles happening to the hero from the beginning to the end.

Rating : 2 / 5 (revised)