CLASSMATES

Watched the malayalam movie "Classmates". Almost all media reports that this movie is the hit among this year's Onam relases. Many of my friends told me that this is a very nostalgic campus movie. Anyway myself along with my wife went to watch this movie. My opinion after watching this movie is that this could have been the best malayalam movie based on a campus story to date. But the film just falls short of becomming a masterpiece.
The story is about a group of students in the chemistry batch of 1991 in a campus that has active and violent student politics. The movie begins with a college reunion of this batch after 15 years. All them have changed and on that reunion night, a incident takes place (I dont want to reveal the suspense). The movie then cuts back 15 years earlier in the campus and we come to know the story of this individuals. There is a typical kerala college, lovers, loveletters, strikes, election, friendly and unfriendly teachers, hostel etc.
The main drawback of this movie is that it does not work at an emotional level. The film does not have the same emotional effect as that of the old campus classic "Sarvakalasala". The best thing I liked in this movie was Indrajit in the role of "Pious", he has done a wonderful and faultless job. Balachandramenon, kavya and prithviraj was a total miscast. Towards the end the new actress Radhika who acted the role of a muslim character "Rasia" is commendable. The song "ente khalbile" is okay and Rajiv ravi's camerawork is excellent.
Director LalJose could have done better if could have handled this excellent screenplay with more care. (I feel that he could have told the narrative in a Roshomon style). The film is not structured properly and some of the scenes look forcibly incorporated and the love scenes looks very much outdated fashion. But this movie is far better than the recently released campus stories Nammal, Swapnakoodu, Niram but does not match the level of Bharathan classic Chamaram, Venu Nagavally’s Sukhamo Devi and Sarvakalasala.