Pada Malayalam Movie
Kamal KM's Pada is the based-on-real-life story of a maoist group that held the Palakkad district collector hostage to draw attention to an anti-tribal law. In 1996, Kerala amended a law that would have allowed for the restoration of tribal land. People from outside took away the land of tribals for years, and the legislative amendment deprived them of any chance to restore it.
A group of activists, known as Ayyankali Pada, wanted to highlight the plight of tribals with guns and explosives. In Pada, actors Kunchacko Boban, Joju George, Dileesh Pothan, and Vinayakan play the activists. Thinking that peaceful protest would not do any good, the Maoists use physical force to barge into the district collectorate office and get the ball rolling. They keep the collector in a hostage situation for hours to make their demands and the demands of tribals heard. This happened in Kerala all those years ago, and Pada is a faithful recreation of the episode.
Kamal KM says that there is an element of fiction in Pada. Perhaps it pertains to the scenes that show the members of the group as regular folks. In an early scene, you see how gently Vinayakan talks to his wife and children as well as a bus conductor. Unfortunately, from the trailer itself, I knew that Vinayakan plays a Maoist here, so the domestic angle did not quite have a surprising effect on me. But those domestic scenes matter because they work as insights into the psyche of these characters. In other words, the scenes show how these people think outside of their activism.
The best thing about Pada is the treatment of its characters. Kamal shows the activists neither as heroes nor as gun-toting extremists. The movie does not judge or justify the characters and their actions. Kamal does not side with the law enforcement system and the government, either.
Another good thing about the film is how Kamal shuns exposition as well as commercial drama elements such as songs, a romantic relationship, a fictional saviour and so forth. This film is in-your-face and trenchant as well as focuses on the plight of the marginalized through dialogues. The lack of exposition means that Pada sometimes has the look and feel of an edge-of-the-seat thriller, like Nayattu. With cinematographer Sameer Thahir, Kamal successfully brings the sense of claustrophobia you usually see in a hostage thriller while making the emotions of the characters palpable.
At the same time, the acting is outstanding here. All the actors play their characters as if they feel the intention of the real-life figures they portray here. They do not merely utter punch dialogues. They act as if they mean everything they say here.
The only reservation I have with Pada is the lack of subtitles for some non-Malayalam scenes in it. I could understand the context of the non-Malayalam dialogues, but subtitles would have made things clearer.
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