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Showing posts from June, 2018

Accepting our disabilities

Kalyanaraman is a movie I really like and I have watched it countless times.  It is, of course, famous for its humour, which, however, is not the topic of this article.   In the movie, Jyothirmayi is a mute.  After various attempts, her marriage is fixed.  The groom, however, elopes the day before marriage with someone else.  The girl's father requests some of the relatives present at the wedding if one of their sons could marry her.  But, they were evidently uninterested and giving excuses.  In fact, they were trying to push it on to each other. Finally, they suggest that it is better to find another "disabled" person for her.  This infuriates him.  He says "It is better if she remains unmarried.  I will protect her till I am alive and after that God will". It is understandable that under such situations one might get hurt and angry.  I do not find fault in that.  At the same time, I feel the same is true about the other party.  I agree unsolicited ad

Seetharamaiah gaari manavaralu: Telugu over Malayalam

I recently realized that the Malayalam movie Santhwanam (Consolation) is a remake of the Telugu film Seetharamaiah gaari manavaralu (Seetharamaiah's granddaughter).  The basic story is as follows.  After a love marriage, the relationship between a father and son goes bad and they never communicate afterward. Years later the granddaughter returns to meet her grandparents.  The movie is about the relationship between the granddaughter and her grandparents.   I confess I generally feel the Malayalam version is superior even when the original is not Malayalam.  This is especially the case with Priyadarshan films.  I feel he is a master at adapting films to Malayalam.  The comparison between these two films is however tricky.  I think they both have their merits, but the Telugu version is a bit better in my eyes.   To begin with, Seetharamaiah gaaru (the protagonist in Telugu) is a much deeper and laudable character than Rajashekharan Thambi (his counterpart in Malayalam).  Fo