ORE KADAL: In search of sea within

Supriya Suri


Directed by
Shyam Prasad.
Starring
Mammotty,
Narain,
Meera Jasmine,
Ramya Krishnan





ShyamPrasad, having achieved kudos for his first film Agnisaakshi, for which he received the National Award, ventured into his third project with Ore Kadal, an adaption from a novel Heerak Deepti writen by Bengali writer Sunil Gangopadhya. His films usually deal with themes, that of, love and redemption.

The book might have been written way back, which Satyajit Ray once dreamt of making into a film, it was finally by Shyam Prasad that the novel was put on screen but with a modern touch. It was not something new for the director since all his past films were an adaptation from a novel or play.

The film had wonderful performances by the very well known Mammootty and Meera Jasmine; both of them have also been winners of the national award. It talks about the growing relationship between two people, Dr. Nathan, an economist, also an alcoholic and Deepti, a simple middle class house wife. It was not quite surprising out of a woman, leading a simple life, living in poverty to fall for intelligence. Her fall was more of physical leading onto an emotional one. While on the other hand, Nathan still believed in living an isolated life, without love, busy with dealing the issues of poverty and finding solutions for them. Soon the values and the ethics dawn upon Deepti, when she confesses his love for him and Nathan is still running away from love, she decides to never meet him again. And the movie raises questions about the pathos in a relationship? Whether having a physical relationship is a sin or not? How does a human decide what’s right in this world and what’s wrong? What are the restrictions that are imposed in a relationship? The question of betrayal and loyalty and trust. Well this movie is more a film that evokes questions than delivering a message.

Deepti continues with her life and Nathan goes on travelling for work. She gets pregnant and is about to give birth to Nathan's child. After his return, she does go to meet him in a hope. His refusal to her once again gets her more firm this time to never come back while he is still oblivious about his own child. Deepti gives birth to a girl, but finds it extremely difficult to overcome her guilt, the fact that she’s unable to share such a thing with anyone around her. She deals with the entire situation inside her, the sense of being loaded with something that needs to be off a her mind and shared with someone, her rejection of being loved the way she wanted to be, gets her mentally unstable and she goes on to recover through a medical treatment.

While she's on her trip to recovery, Nathan goes through his life major transformation and starts changing as a human- indulging more and more into alcohol. He feels the need of being loved by someone, he realizes the isolation he was living in, that how important it is in a society to be with another person, how interdependent we humans are, and to live one needs another person to be happy. He waits for her, there's a sense of longing.

After her recovery, Deepti returns home with a promise's to live a true and an honest life and that she’s learnt from her mistake to not get into such a thing again. She starts leading a normal life, and finds strength in God by praying everyday. Soon Nathan visits her and she resists by not opening the door, but finally looses all her strength, indicated by the broken god pictures we see all over.

At last she again breaks her promise and returns to Nathan, where he reciprocates to love, commitment which he once rejected. The movie deals with a possibility of falling in love after having the physical relationship first.

Ore Kadal is a sublime, powerful and refreshing filmmaking- where the treatment allows the film to transcend boundaries, and the film proves, yet again, that their is plenty of good films beyond Bollywood.

Rating-****

Comments

nitesh said…
Did u see the film in a screening in paris? Nice review, looking forward to watch the film
supriasuri said…
yes I did.
Thank you nitesh.

Popular posts from this blog

Satyajit Ray, 'What's wrong with Indian Films?

Postmodernism and Cinema

Narrative Style of Satyajit Ray- in context Godard, Eisenstein and others.