Rating: ***
Like Om Puri’s Lahnaya Bhiku in Govind Nihalani’s Aakrosh more than forty years ago, Binu Pappu’s Lakshmanan in Sohan Seenulal’s Tamil film Bharatha Circus gives voice to the oppressed .
Sections of our society still live in fear of being victimized.A day after I saw this hardhitting bit uneven film I read of a hotelier in Gujarat thrashing a Dalit to death. Nothing has changed since Nihalani’s soul-searing Aakrosh. Lahnaya and Lakshmanan are interchangeable.
Binu Pappu is so credible as Lakshmanan that I wondered if he was real tribal. How can any actor be so close to his character?
Regrettably some of other actors playing cops are too leery to be anything more than caricatures. M A Nishad as the primary antagonistic cop Jayachandran who first wins Lakshmanan’s confidence and then traps him in his own daughter’s attempt-to-suicide case, is all twirling moustache, gleaming eyes and sneering lips…His character is too crudely conceived to convey the evil that grips Lakshmanan’s innocent life.
The film didn’t need these kind of patent props to effectuate a defence for the poor protagonist. We know what he is going through. The pounding and hammering of his predicament considerably reduces the impact of the proceedings.
One look at Lakshmanan’s eyes, and one gladly overlooks the film’s sins of excesses.
Muhad Vembayam’s writing lacks subtlety.Except for Sunil Sukhada’s cop Ashokan who midway begins to question his senior’s brazen attempts to demonize the victim,the characters are all ramrod straight/crooked.
Interestingly the women too are shown to in collusion with the lewd lawmakers-turned-lawbreakers.In that sense, this film doesn’t spare anyone in the festering bureaucratic system.
Interestingly, the ever-dependable Shine Tom Chacko, known to play antagonists’ roles, is cast as a social activist. Since he is known to play shifty characters, audiences are unsure till the end in this film whether Shine’s character Anoop really means well for the persecuted underdog…Or will he stab Lakshmanan in the back, just like others?
My favourite moment in the erratic excursion into conscientious cinema is when Lakshmanan tells the cops to continue treating him like Dalit even if he is not one.
If only the rest of the film matched up to the ironic summits of the above sequence.
