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Film Review: Once Again (Pinneyum) (2016) by Adoor Gopalakrishnan

came back into the scene of filmmaking after a long  absence of eight years with ‘' or “Once Again”, but the movie fails to live up to expectations.  A poor narrative and a slow and predictable script have made the movie a damp squib.

Once Again” screened at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles

Purushothaman Nair (Dileep) is a thirty one year old man, unemployed for eight years. He has been trying to get a job for a long time but with no luck. Purushothaman is married and has a six year old daughter. Purushothaman's wife Devi (Kavya Madhavan) , teacher in profession, runs their family. Purushothaman is always blamed by his family members and even by his wife for this depressing and hopeless situation. He is insulted often by close relatives and people do not bother to use harsh words against him.  Trapped in the midst of this uncertainty, he, unexpectedly, gets an offer from the Gulf for a job as accountant in a big company. He moves to the Gulf and starts earning quite well and his socioeconomic condition changes drastically. Suddenly, he becomes a sought after person even in his own hometown where he was ridiculed by many before. 

Purushothaman buys a life insurance policy in the Gulf with high premium and comes back to his home town. Suddenly the emotion of greed takes control over his mind, and in the attempt to become richer, he involves himself in a gruesome crime with the help of few other members of his family. And the narrative flows into a detective story and unfolds with few twists and turns.

“Pinneyum” has a poor script and the dialogues are mostly theatrical. Dialogues of Purushothaman sound predominantly unrealistic and repetitive. The artless script fails to justify the certain feeling of greed in the family and the reason they decided to proceed with such a horrendous criminal act after a discussion of only a few hours. Moreover, the story slows down in the second half and becomes predictable. There are few entertaining moments in the movie, but the means of entertainment cease to exist too fast for audience to feel the essence of that. The cinematography of M. J. Radhakrishnan is monotonous, except for a few scenes where Devi's melancholy is portrayed, after Purushothaman leaves for the Gulf, although the use of rain as metaphor is quite common and lacks originality

“Pinneyum” is neither thought provoking nor it has a cohesive script to be a perfect entertainer. The lack of content and focus has made it a huge disappointment for me, as I was expecting another marvel from Adoor Gopalakrishnan.

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