A New Wave Classic!. Review on Poomaram

Abrid Shine's long-awaited Poomaram is a docudrama on an arts festival, which unfolds in the Maharaja's College campus. It shows hours of preparation that go into staging all kinds of performance arts for the audience. The joys of winning, the pain of losing, the teamwork and everything in between in a youth fest is what Poomaram is all about.

Shine simply invites the audience to take seats and be observants of fine arts, as mostly boys from Maharaja's College and all girls from St Teresas fight it out to win a rolling trophy. And, having taken an involuntary participation in the proceedings of'Pooram 2016, ' one wouldn't want let go off the seat. The director of Poomaram has his say on fine arts, so stay in the mix. Don't go anywhere for this is an all-time classic.

Poomaram is perhaps an acquired taste for an audience like ours. The first half of the festive movie breezes past, with lyrical gems. It's only when Gautham's team representing Maharaja's gain a slender lead over Irene's St Teresas that do we even feel the heat of a long overdue tussle between the two colleges. Poomaram is closer to real-life campus than most campus stories with politics. This is an ode to fine arts and youth, not the kind of plot-driven cinema with hero/heroine cliches. It's an entertaining new wave film, the kind of which people would love to talk about sitting around a tree.

The people in Poomaram are whom we meet in an arts fest such as volunteers who walk around with flyers, the media who grab bites of participants, and the ordinary joes who derive pleasures in people watching. The Oxford of all dictionaries is yet to come up with a word for'??????????'. For the genuine talents, though, that is an art form on its own.:)

Leaders in a modern campus brush aside ?????????? as a passe, but those in Poomaram take thrills in that and even in bailing out juniors. When one guy from Maharaja's College flirt with a girl from St Teresas; Shine's cinematographer Gnaanam makes us miss the onstage/backstage excess for a while. He occassionally seeps the film on a lone tree in the middle of the campus.

As the events in Poomaram reaches a finale, the mutual observer in a theater becomes a participant of the fest. One may even anticipate a heated brawl to happen, which do come along even as the people in Poomaram are naive. So, when the Maharaja's College leader Gautham(Kalidas Jayaram) strives to bail out his team we realize winning the championship is everything for him, and same goes true for Irene(Neeta Pillai). We also get a sense of things come around full circle, and fortunes turn tides in the fest.

Abrid Shine has put together a montage of a film, with a sense of melancholy that one may associate with Anjali Menon's or Mira Nair's best works. A deft humanist touch is what makes Poomaram a joyous watch, other than the delightful music. Somewhere in Poomaram, Shine dons the hat of an arts connoisseur not shying away from the fact that not all youth fests go as planned. He also conveys that it may be undue criticism of fine arts if that is done on venue. He is also an optimist in an industry, which treats even potboilers as run-of-the-mill thrillers. His previous work starring Nivin Pauly simply shows a cop named Biju, who takes on the city's goons with a genuine love for big chases and the adrenaline rush.

Poomaram is aware of the role fine arts play in campus, and that the long-winding preps can at times get boring for an audience in youth fests. That's the reality as Abrid Shine portrays, not the outcome of the movie. Few films this or any other year, upholds social niceties of the youth like this one. Even if you have not been a part of campus fests, grab a seat and enjoy the feast.

P.S. Whoever that said Poomaram is a passable fare is yet to acquire taste in the new wave. Those to have watched and enjoyed it would certainly love a second watch. The lone tree in the middle of the college campus stands as a symbol of togetherness.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Verdict: As O. N. V. Kurup wrote: ??? ????? ??????? ??????? ??????? ?????????????????????? ????(×2)(I wish to visit the courtyard of my memories once more). Poomaram has that old-school charm right throughout its 2.30 hours runtime.