Bench Talkies

3/13/2015

The opening film, The Lost Paradise by Anil Krishnan, is a silent film about a convict who is released from prison and makes his journey home. It is cloyingly sentimental and the background score is filled with wailing violins that keep nudging us to empathize with the character. Gopakumar's Agavizhi is a genuine head-scratcher (it's a compliment, by the way) involving a triangular romance that as the filmmaker puts it in the end is about the collision of subconscious minds. It if filled with inner monologues (and English dialogues) that will make Gautham Menon blush. Puzhu is perhaps the most audacious film of the lot. The director, Charukesh Shekar, throws us directly into the climax of a story and we see two fatally injured men, burning with hate for one another, scrambling to kill