Padmarajan

Padmarajan often ventured where no one else dared to. He brought out linkages between various aspects of the human nature, which one either didn’t realise or refused to acknowledge. At least, I felt he was suggestive about it, if not totally open.

He traversed the human mind like no other director. Almost in a Hitchcockian fashion. Remember the rope hanging on the wall, the twisted coconut tree,

In several ways he shared traits with Satyan Anthikkad and Venu Nagavalli, while also demonstrating strong differences.

Like Satyan Anthikkad, he often dealt with social mores, taboos and beliefs. But while Satyan gave each of the mores, taboos and beliefs a place to exist without being too critical or effusive about it, Padmarajan ensured his alternate viewpoint was clear and solidly embedded in the viewers’ mind.

Like Satyan, Padmarajan’s movies were about ordinary men and women. But while Satyan’s plots discussed the ordinary—as in related to everyday lives—Padmarajan explored the extraordinary in our mundane lives.

Padmarajan, like Venu Nagavally, depended a lot on tragedy and pathos to rip open the conditioned facades of human beings.

But where he differed was that the culmination of his movie itself ratcheted up confusion and agony in us, unlike in Nagavally flicks where the tragic turn of events was ‘turning point’ in many people’s lives.

Like Nagavally, Padmarajan too depended on dialogues that best mirrored the common man’s conversations. But the similarity ends there. Because, while Nagavally’s characters, besides delivering intense lines, also indulged in banter (without any meaning or profundity whatsoever, like you and I), each dialogue of Padmarajan’s characters carried a certain depth.

But what put Padmarajan in a different league is that perhaps he was the only director whose characters used urban and contemporary language, bereft of literary trappings.

All in all, the best. Period.

Best: Moonnampakkam, Thovaanathumbikal, Namukku Paarkaan…, Innale and others

Worst: Parannu Parannu Parannu, Season