Paipin Chuvattile Pranayam

Spreading awareness and making an impact are the primary targets of the new movie Paipin Chuvattile Pranayam. To an extent it succeeds in letting the audience know about the reality of lack of water supply. The problem is the way they have constructed a story to convey this thought. While depicting the life of the underprivileged effectively, this film by Domin D’Silva isn’t becoming that influential movie.

Govindan Kutti is this young man from this small place named Pandara Thuruthu. The people there are struggling for decades to get good water and it’s a huge struggle and has been causing issues in their lives. The film Paipin Chuvattile Pranayam is talking about that particular phase in their lives where they finally decided to speak up against this irresponsible behaviour of the system.

Like I already said, this film captures the texture of the lives of these people very effectively. The way they talk, their attitude towards life, the influence of lack of water in their routine etc. are depicted neatly. But the lack of flow in the way things are narrated as a story causes issues. The love story and the revolution are on different tracks and the love track doesn’t have many conflicts to keep us excited. The disjoint nature made me feel that their primary aim was to make a documentary, but decided to add commercial flavours so that the message can reach more people.

Neeraj Madhav is confident and adaptive as Govindan Kutti. From dialect to his performance in certain emotional scenes, he shows his calibre and the movie uses his dancing chops effectively. Reba Monica John gets a role that’s a little lengthier than her debut movie. The actor I liked the most in this film was Sudhy Koppa, who was outstanding in that hospital sequence. Dharmajan was hilarious. Aju Varghese appears in a very brief role. Sarath Appani gets a character pretty similar to the one he got in his debut. The cast of the film is really huge and some of them were good while some weren’t that convincing.

Domin D’Silva tries to give it that realistic touch by making the conversations more sensible even though humour was there. It is the scripting that shifts between two narratives that reduces the fire in the film. It doesn’t really feel like a love story and the pattern they have chosen to depict the revolution isn’t an entirely fresh one. The music is really catchy and adds a bit of uniqueness to the film. The frames were also pretty good.

Paipin Chuvattile Pranayam isn’t an irrelevant film. It has theme of contemporary relevance. But the path they chose to shed light on it wasn’t entirely convincing.

Rating: 2.5/5