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POKKISHAM movie review .........


Film: "Pokkisham"
Cast: Cheran, Padmapriya, Ilavarasu, Vijay Kumar, Aryan Rajesh
Director: Cheran
Music Composer: Sabesh Murali


Mahesh (Aryan Rajesh), son of Lenin (Cheran), who passed away a few years ago, finds his father’s precious possession (his love letters). The letters reveal that Lenin (Cheran) was working in Kolkata Port in 1970s and that he was in deep love with Nadeera (Padmapriya), whom he met in a hospital.

The letters show the lives of the lovers. Nadhira, a literature student from Nagore, is impressed by Lenin’s helping tendency while Lenin likes her literary sense. After coming back to Kolkata, Lenin writes a letter to Nadhira and she replies it. They start writing letters and predictably, love blossoms.

Predictably again, the Muslim family is in no mood to accept a Hindu boy. Though they pretend to have accepted the proposal, the family makes trick to deceive Lenin. Finally the lovers are separated and Lenin could never meet Nadhira again till he dies.

Having known all these things through his father’s diaries and letters, Mahesh tries hard to trace Nadhira to handover the letters that remain unsent by his father. How he finds her and how she reacts to the whole thing form the climax.

There is no doubt that the basic premise of the movie is interesting. Apart from choosing a sensitive love story director Cheran has opted for a fabulous technical team to tell the story that travel past 39 years. The art director Vairabalan, who has marvelously recreated the Kolkata of 1970s and cinematographer Rajesh Yadav, who has beautifully captured the landscapes of Nagore, Kolkata and Chennai have added immence value to the movie.

The problem with the movie is the screenplay, which staggers from the word go. The narrative is very slow and redundant. But the pace alone is not a problem here. Slow movies by the legends life Sathyajith Ray and Aravindan (Malayalam) have excited us with their content and the way of telling. Pokkisham doesn’t have a good script to make us engaging.

Love developing through letters in a time where even telephone connections are a distant dream is fine. But that doesn’t give the allowance to the director to make the actors to go on writing and reading the letters for more than one hour. The scenes depicting the excitement of receiving the letter, pain of not receiving them are dull and clichéd. Going verbose about love doesn’t serve any purpose in making a good film.

Though Cheran has given scope to the music directors (Sabesh Murali) with a lot of space to give us soothing melodies, the duo has hopelessly failed to come out with impressive music. The song Nila…Nee Kadhal alone sounds good. The background score is loud and irrelevant in many places.

Cheran as an actor could not evoke any interest with his single dimensional acting. Padmapriya looks good and emotes well. Others including Vijayakumar, Ilavarsu, and Aryan Rajesh have done justice to their respective roles.