Chillu (Malayalam VCD)

Those self-pitying 80s...

Chillu
(Malayalam VCD)
Cast: Venu Nagavally, Ronnie Vincent, Adoor Bhasi, Jagathi Sreekumar, Shanthi Krishna, Jalaja
Lyrics: ONV
Music: MB Sreenivasan
Editing: Ravi
Camera: Vipin Mohan
Script, direction: Lenin Rajendran
Speed Audios (Arm Video in Dubai)

It was a goof-up. Played VCD 2 of Chillu, a film by Lenin Rajendran, released in 1982. Was hooked. In flat 55 minutes, the film was over. Realised there was a CD 1. And found it all superfluous.
Indeed, Rajendran says everything he has to in 55 minutes. So was the first 55 minutes absolute waste? Not really. The build-up to the tale still looked convincing and though there was no further value addition to the story per se, it defined a few characters further.
Chillu is more like reliving a nostalgia. Of the 80s, when our college campuses bred "bujis" and we believed every word that Kalakaumudi wrote. Existential dilemma was a fad; beard and jubba were the order; and beedi was the inevitable flavour of those days.
But it is to the credit of Lenin Rajendran to take what is essentially a simple love story set in the campus and convert it into a statement of the human psyche.
No one wrongs anyone willfully here. The artist, Ananthu (Venu Nagavally) cannot marry his sweetheart (Jalaja) — he is a struggling soul; the cricket-player (Ronnie Vincent) envies his fiancee, Annie's (Shanthi Krishna) affection for Ananthu and flirts with someone he doesn't love; his brother Jose (Nedumudi Venu) finds solace in the house maid...
The poignancy of Chillu is in the bittersweet, love-hate relationship of Annie and her fiancé, and in his self-destruction. It is also in the detached helplessness of Ananthu. Chillu also haunts for that memorable poem of ONV, composed awesomely by MB Sreenivasan, Oru vattom koodiyen...
And what the heck, if you have lived in Thiruvananthapuram, any time in the 80s, you still won't mind falling in love with a girl like Annie.
That, perhaps, says something about the timelessness of this cinema.