Oru Kuprasidha Payyan
A film that did not get the limelight it deserved
In the opening credits it is mentioned that this is a work of fiction and that the characters do not resemble any characters in real life. Wrong! This movie IS based on a real-life incident, the sensational Sundari Amma murder case. Even the post on Wikipedia says that. Why the makers of this film mentioned it otherwise is intriguing. Anyway this is is one of those films that I think did not get its due credit. Maybe it lacked some professionalism and I wish it also had a little more fast pace and energy to it. I must admit, I did forward several scenes that were either too slow or lacked pace and energy. Nimisha Sajayan did win the 49'th Kerala State Film Award for Best Actress in 2019, thought I will not call it an award winning performance I would still give full points to the Director for the scenes in the court and the way a novice in her occupation would have handled the case. The court scenes involving Nimisha, Nedumudi Venu and the Judge are the best scenes of the film but they could have been made better. More interesting personalities such as Dileesh Pothan and Shwetha Menon keep popping up to the list of interesting cast as the movie proceeds.
Another very interesting thing I learn was how criminals with Muslim and Christian names are more susceptible to be arrested than those with Hindu names. This was a revelation and accordingly the Police and the CBI, give the victim Ajayan an alias, “Ajmal”. The real life victim, Jayesh was also given an alias, “Jabbar” in a similar fashion.
Nice music pieces and songs punctuate throughout the film and you wish they were longer. Nice to learn that the music director was good old Ouseppachan.
Certainly more energy in the dialogues from the Nimisha especially during the final parts of the movie would have injected more spice into the film. The unnecessary fight scene in the prison should have been totally avoided.
The full movie is available on YouTube and below are the links to the video of the actual victim. It is heartbreaking to see how a person’s life has been destroyed. Unfortunately even after he was found not-guilty and released he was constantly on the Police radar and even the target of a subsequent arrest for theft. The links to his video and exoneration are below.
The makers of the video (DoolNews) even took Jayesh for a screening of the film. It is certainly heartbreaking to watch how a person’s life has been shattered thus. In the video the very first line that he says is actually spoken in the film too. Must mention the names of the advocate M Anil Kumar and Special Additional judge S Krishna Kumar who got justice for Jayesh. God bless them.
