Today, watched the 90's classic malayalam movie "Thazhavaram-The valley" once again, in a TV channel,after a long period. But this time ,thought of writing something here about the movie . This movie, I would say, one of the best movie by Bharathan,. I know that there is no point in describing the story of the movie and tell you repeatedly that the movie is excellent ,because its already known to all . So I will point out some of the good features of the movie which I was attracted to ."Thazhavaram" is a masterpiece in all aspects. A well crafted movie, which makes us remember some Hollywood classic thrillers. It can not be considered fully as a dramatic movie . By genre, it's a thriller , in my opinion.Bhartahan was keen to make this movie, grammatically perfect as well as thematically strong. The theme of the movie is not so unusual, ...a man who reaches an isolated valley in search of his old pal, the murderer of his wife , so as to have his vengeance. What makes it different is the treatment .
Technical ##########
First thing that can be noticed is the technical quality of the movie. First of all Venu has done an excellent cinematographic work. Next one is, director, Bharathan, has composed each frames very carefully. I haven't watched much more movies, in which a director keeps the grammatical aspects of movie-making so brilliantly. The film consists of so many beautiful wide-shots, which nowadays can never be seen in any reginal movies, but is an essential part of a visually stunning movie. Another brilliant composition ,in which director used "Golden Mean" which is a dynamic balancing technique , usually got to see in western movies..(the scene in which the character "Balan" played by Mohan lal walks through the valley ,just after passing a hanging brdge,and some cattles crosses him. ;two by third of the frame occupied by the sky and rest by the surface,and the character moving from left towards right of the frame...) This technique is very rarely used in our films. Almost all of the frames are geometrically perfect. Visual elments are well composed in the frames to achieve good depth to the scenes which makes them visually brilliant. Sound recording was also remarkable. One of the best feature of the movie is that the background music coming only in required situations. (Remember ,in Hariharan's classic movie "Oru Vadakkan Veeragadha" , a major drawback we can point out is the mishandled background score.)
Performance #############
There are not much protagonists coming to main plot, the main characters are played by, Mohan lal, Sumalatha,Sankaradi and Salim Gouse, all of them has done their job well...The performance of Saleem Gouse is especially remarkable. And of course, Mohan lal is brilliant in his lead role.(A scene in which he is listening to Sankaradi explaining the fake story told by the anti-hero ,he is responding to the narration of Sankaradi and at the same time he is shocked hearing the story.His expression at that moment is simply amazing)
Screenplay ###########
Script by M.T Vasudevan Nair is outstanding . There are no signs of any particular time period in the script.That makes the movie a unique one ,.No matter after how many years since it's release ,you are watching this movie, you will feel the same freshness. But credit goes to the director who was able to screen a beautiful script without losing its soul, in a well disciplined manner, avoiding disturbing action scenes and gimmicks which could have been added easily in this kind of themes. Usually flashbacks in a movie would become little bit irritating and may affect the flow of the central theme.But in this movie, Bhartahan shows flashbacks in certain intervals and complete it at a point and move forward with the current theme from that point , which is a classic style of storytelling, so that the audience will be immersed in the central theme, without breaking the flow, cinematically speaking,creates a suspension of disbelief.
Definitely,Thazhavaram is a movie which deserves a place in your personal movie collections.
Overall I'd give 9/10 for the movie.
