Movie by Balachandra Menon
I got to see the movie as part of Saturday late night art movie screening. This movie stands apart from other Balachandra Menon movies.Samadharangal means Equidistances.Set in the background of railway tracks which are amazingly omnipresent across our country and where the tracks never meet and never come closer nor move away.It is pretty amazing that man has been able to lay so many millions of kilometers of rail track keeping to the equidistance dogma.
The movie is about a big family with many lives running in parallel maintaining their equidistance.There is a bondage in the relationships which forces them not to move further away and there is a selfishness that prevents them from getting closer to each other.We have an idealist well acting Balachandra Menon as the father who cannot concede to his elder son's demands for a nest egg of 10K to establish his own independence on the ground that the son had not studied well when given the opportunity.There is the distance between Balachandra Menon and his wife where the idealist professional cum home-in-charge does not appreciate the day-to-day troubles of poverty that his wife is undergoing to the necessary extent.Balachandra Menon's mother and wife need to work to keep Menon to themselves forcing a distance between them.Conflicting interests with a need for a larger heart to embrace others.The kids who cannot appreciate the grandmother and ask ' Why does Grandma need Roti .. she does not go to school'. The distance between the daughter of Menon's first wife and Menon's current wife.
There is also the separation between organizations.The political party leader who gets a commitment from the eldest son that Party would be all-in-all and family would have no importance.Most of the actors have done good work and Menon has done a good job with good amount of home work.His attempt has clearly been to make an award film par excellence.But this is where some of the short comings in the film brings out the excellence that other masters like Adoor , Aravindan have displayed. There were many points in the film where the lighting was not natural enough and you see looming distracting shadows.
Menon has tried to blend many social insights into the movie.He has done to a much more subtle extent than say a Sathyan Andhikad movie where in you have an elderly actor providing gospel service to the protagonist as well as to the audience.
On the whole , a satisfying movie.The climax was also well taken.With so many tracks in the movie , blending has been very natural.Climax while striking again blended in leaving many open ends but with completion.Menon has used one song near end of the movie cleverly where he closes many open issues through quick easy sequences closing many of the threads that had been open just before the song.Sukumari has done excellent acting as Menon's mother.
