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It’s the bustle of life, a collage-like approach that recalls Robert Altman’s Nashville (which was about the country music scene), or closer home, the superb stretch in Balaji Sakthivel’s Kadhal set around the heroine’s coming-of-age celebrations, where we seem to be, at once, everywhere and nowhere in particularĪs in Nashville, the performances aren’t just glossed over but shown in their entirety – and for a reason. I hope they don’t win this time.” The editor (Manoj) does staggering work, compiling these fragments into a free-flowing mosaic. We have other events where we can catch up in points.” “I am so happy to see St. 1 performing slot with someone else, because we aren’t ready?” “Oh man, will this guitar-playing loser stop wooing me?” “Will the judges respond better to a Bharatanatyam performance set to a varnam or a keerthanam?” “Oh, don’t worry that you didn’t win. “Do we have enough jasmine flowers, or should we get more, because we might not get more at the last minute?” “How do I exchange our No.
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Poomaram is a carefully assembled jigsaw. It’s the bustle of life, a collage-like approach that recalls Robert Altman’s Nashville (which was about the country music scene), or closer home, the superb stretch in Balaji Sakthivel’s Kadhal set around the heroine’s coming-of-age celebrations, where we seem to be, at once, everywhere and nowhere in particular. Gnaanam’s camera rests on the teacher’s face one instant, then moves outside the room the next, so the frame accommodates other students crossing the doorway, heading to… wherever they are headed to. It’s also on the teacher who reminisces, to rapt students, about earlier fests. The focus is not just on the heads of the two main college teams – Gauthaman (Kalidas Jayaram) and Irene (Neeta Pillai). Poomaram is an extraordinarily inclusive film. But note, also, how the film opens, with a “lower” form of music and art: the unadorned whistling of a simple painter as he creates the poster for the Mahatma University Youth Festival. We get glimpses of higher forms of music, high art – Thiruvathirakali, Ottanthullal, Mohiniattam (the results of which lead to a hilarious dispute, with a typically Keralite sit-down protest involving cries of “ Inquilab zindabad!”).
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In the forefront is the artistic process – the planning, the preparation, the performance. Teresa’s (they’ve won the trophy five years running) versus the mundu-clad, Malayalam-spouting “commoners” of Maharaja College, I thought Poomaram was going to be a replay of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (or its source, Breaking Away), set in Ernakulam – but issues of class and gender are relegated to the background. So the director, understandably, zooms in on these two institutions.) Looking at the more privileged, English-speaking, bred-to-be-champs students of St. (There are over 60 colleges participating, but focusing on everyone would be too much of a wide-angle. This design isn’t immediately apparent, for the film – at first – sets up convenient (and conventional) oppositions: the girls of St. Look there, and it’s a dancer being fed carefully by her mother, so her makeup isn’t ruined.ĪLSO READ: BARADWAJ RANGAN’S REVIEW OF “NAACHIYAAR” Look here, and you see a thirsty policeman chugging down water. Most films are close-ups, zooming in and directing our eyes to characters and situations. Poomaram (Blooming Tree), which is about an inter-collegiate arts festival, dispenses with these “fictional” tropes altogether, and becomes the cinematic equivalent of a wide-angle shot. Action Hero Biju was looser – though, again, with a central character holding the episodic narrative together. In 1983, he deposited us in the midst of village cricket – though there was still the sense of a story, the sense of a protagonist who would guide us through it. Cast: Kalidas Jayaram, Kunchako Boban, Meera Jasmine, Neeta PillaiĪbrid Shine makes star-studded (or at least, star son-studded) feature films, but he has the heart of an empathetic documentarian.