But I suppose thats inevitable because thats part of Abrid Shines agenda, to not just showcase the performance of arts but also showcase the importance of art in the scheme of things.

In 1983, he deposited us in the midst of village cricket though there was still the sense of a story, the sense of a protagonist who would guide us through it.

Action Hero Biju was looser though, again, with a central character holding the episodic narrative together.

Poomaram (Blooming Tree), which is about an inter-collegiate arts festival, dispenses with these fictional tropes altogether, and becomes the cinematic equivalent of a wide-angle shot.

Most films are close-ups, zooming in and directing our eyes to characters and situations.

Look here, and you see a thirsty policeman chugging down water.

Look there, and its a dancer being fed carefully by her mother, so her makeup isnt ruined.

Maharaja College.

There are over 60 colleges participating, but focusing on everyone would be too much of a wide-angle.

So the director, understandably, zooms in on these two institutions.) Looking at the more privileged, English-speaking, bred-to-be-champs students of St.

Teresas (theyve won the trophy five years running) versus the mundu -clad, Malayalam-spouting commoners of Maharaja College, I thought Poomaram was going to be a replay of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (or its source, Breaking Away ), set in Ernakulam but issues of class and gender are relegated to the background.

In the forefront is the artistic process the planning, the preparation, the performance.

But note, also, how the film opens, with a lower form of music and art: the unadorned whistling of a simple painter as he creates the poster for the Mahatma University Youth Festival.

The focus is not just on the heads of the two main college teams Gauthaman (Kalidas Jayaram) and Irene (Neeta Pillai).

Its also on the teacher who reminisces, to rapt students, about earlier fests.

Gnaanams camera rests on the teachers face one instant, then moves outside the room the next, so the frame accommodates other students crossing the doorway, heading to wherever they are headed to.

Do we have enough jasmine flowers, or should we get more, because we might not get more at the last minute How do I exchange our No.

Oh man, will this guitar-playing loser stop wooing me Will the judges respond better to a Bharatanatyam performance set to a varnam or a keerthanam Oh, dont worry that you didnt win.

The editor (Manoj) does staggering work, compiling these fragments into a free-flowing mosaic.

I wondered why a mime rehearsal was going on so long, as spectacular as it is, but we get the payoff towards the end, when a mishap casts a cloud over this performance.

And the songs (by Faisal Razi, Gireesh Kuttan, Gopi Sundar) come with minimal (and sometimes no) orchestration, so the purity of the emotion behind the singing comes through.

In the still of the night, a professor recites the Malayalam version of Nerudas Tonight I can write the saddest lines, and the pensive, melancholic faces of the male students around him make us recall the times we wrote our own saddest lines.

Hes perfectly cast though that could be said, also, about the geeky first-year student who falls for him, or Neeta Pillai, who exudes a cheerleaders relentless enthusiasm without coming off as obnoxious.

The character could have easily been written as a snob who looks down on the lesser mortals from the other colleges, but shes just someone who wants to win.

Forget a romance, the nominal hero and heroine barely get a conversation.

The director is content to have them drift pass one another, nestled in the company of their respective groups.

The closing portions have too much of a climax feel for such a trance-like narrative.

Varnam Malayalam Movie Download