ORU PAKKA KATHAI (2020)

 

Critic - No. 187

Director: Balaji Tharaneetharan

Produced by: Vasan’s Visual Ventures

Casts: Kalidas Jayaram, Megha Akash

Language: Tamil

Music: Govind Vasantha

Genre: Drama

 

SYNOPSIS: 

A young couple, Meera (Megha) and Saravanan (Kalidas), are all set to get married after their parents approve of their long-standing love. But all hell breaks loose when Meera reveals a secret.

 

REVIEW:

Balaji Tharaneetharan is one upcoming director in Indian cinema who has finely gripped on the idea of dark comedy quite well, delivering exciting ideas through his stories. Even though Oru Pakka Kathai is a film that was in cans for 6 years, the film’s originality makes it fresh and engaging throughout.

 

The film follows Saravanan and Meera who are madly in love with the approval of their respective families. All is well in their lives until Meera ends up pregnant but there is some mystery behind it that the family is left to handle. The film’s main strength is how the director embeds a bizarre, larger than life concept within a realistic middle class society, which brings the stakes closer to the audience. Like Balaji’s previous films, the director takes on a tragic incident and coats it with a dark comedy.

 

The film deals with a sensitive topic of superstations that have engulfed the Indian society and portrays how merciless people can get due to their blind belief of it. I really liked how Balaji inserts a parallel story about a boy who claims that he is a God himself. That parallel track beautifully evolves at the side with the main story and finishes off with a punch that tells us the director’s main aim of making this film. Kalidas and Megha who are quite a star now, started off with this film and they would have made a stellar debut if this film was released in 2014. Govind Vasantha (96 fame) also got introduced in this film and his haunting score is as arresting as the concept of the film.

 

On the flipside, the Balaji’s trademark long-expression shots even though work well to mirror the audience’s confusion with the point of view of the characters in the first half, they become repetitive in the second half. The pace also takes a toll on us towards the end where the narrative becomes stagnant for a while. Despite the minor flaws, Balaji should be commended for making yet another unique film that will very well qualify as one of the best Tamil films in 2020.

VERDICT:

Director Balaji comes up with another out of the box dark comedy, addressing the catastrophic nature of blind superstition.

 

 

CELLULOID METER- 3.5/5: 

 

Watch the full film at ZEE5: https://www.zee5.com/global/movies/details/oru-pakka-kathai/0-0-285534