The Bold and Beautiful.....Hats off to a master craftsman

State Annual Film awards has been announced yet again. A relative new comer has been nominated the best mallu actress. A relief came into my mind. At last a female acting power house from Kerala has come after a long time. But I was soon to be saddened. My friend went for the movie. I learnt that the performance was nothing but fountains of tears and acting resembling lunacy.
This is not an isolated incident. This phenomenon has been repeating for the past few years. The good movie goers will be sitting down to analyze what is missing. Many will be rubbishing Dileep for marrying Manju Warrier. Many will be lamenting the erosion of mallu’s movie tastes.
Once, here in our own little Kerala there was a great director, Padmarajan. To me he is one of the best in the world. He revolutionized Malayalam industry with his path breaking movies. Standing within the budgetary constraints of Malayalam films he set a benchmark for rest of them.

One of his greatest piece of work is ‘Thoovana Thumpikal’. It had two female characters- Radha and Clara and one male character- Jayadevan(JD). Radha and Clara are two women that comes into life of JD. They come somewhat simultaneously and due to strange circumstances. They know existence of each other in his life although they haven’t met each other.
But the attitude and reaction that each of them show towards their situation is amazing. In today’s cinema we would have seen both the actresses shedding bucket loads of tears plus the mothers, in laws, etc. The protagonist would have been shown as a villain for cheating these innocent girls.
Padmarajan showed the courage to give character and strength to his female characters.
JD asks her if he can marry her because it was him who led her to the cursed life of a call girl. Clara could have escaped from her life by marrying him. But she runs away quietly after asking him to marry Radha.She is shown as bold and ambitious character who chooses the call girl profession to escape from her rotten life. But she shows intelligence when she runs away from the pimp refusing to be ruled by him.
JD is broken man. In to this broken life Radha enters. Radha on hearing about Clara from JD takes a sensible and bold stand. He asks him only to meet her after telling her. We do not see any tears or anger from Radha.
Two beautiful moments which I saw in this movie-
Radha on learning that JD has gone to meet Clara, asks him to promise her that he won’t do so again. JD says he can’t. Radha tells him that ‘Give me a promise, you can break it without my knowledge’.
JD takes him to a registrar and asks her to marry him, when she delays the marriage arrangements. She tells him if she ever signs a marriage register it would be beside his name. ‘But I don’t want to do it now. Not in this way.’

Radha comes into his life silently, without much noise, but strongly. She takes bold decisions when it matters and is understanding towards JD’s predicament.
We don’t see any of these characters showing any masculine strength. Standing with in their feminine charms and grace they show the true strength of womanhood. But still they don’t play second fiddle to male character and asserts themselves independently.
Has our directors failed to understand the essential strength and capablity of a woman?