Paka (River of Blood)

The performances by the cast, a blend of amateurs and professionals, capture the everyday rhythms of the region even as the actors rise to the challenge of fleshing out characters who are caught in situations that are anything but ordinary.

Generally as a cinephile I used to watch atleast 1 movie per a day, recently i started watching underrated Malayalam movies and as a part of it I got to know about this PAKA movie and after knowing "Anurag kashyap" produced this movie i immediately downloaded and Started watching this movie. From the beginning onwards the film went so interestingly and the film was so good. The Nativity of that village the characters and the people all of them was so perfect,and the climax was also perfect,and the length of the film is also less so it was short and best movie,every cinephile should must watch this film.

I was privileged to watch this movie during its screening at TIFF. The story of this movie was built up on various real life events including an incident from the director's life. The beauty is, all the actors in the movie are from the same village where they shot.

The story line is based on two parallel tracks. One is Revengeful and the other one is love angle. The back drop voice of an old lady who narrates about the river is evocative. Though it's a revengeful story, I didn't feel much of a violence.

Over all the movie went like a smooth flowing river without any unwanted gushing effect.

The visuals and sound effects are the heart of this movie.

Though I do not understand Malayalam, I throughly enjoyed the movie.

• Krishna Komandla.

The main reason I watched Paka was only because of one man, Anurag Kashyap who is onboard as one of the movie's producers. The trailer gives me a glimpse of what might be the core and the movie's treatment. Paka is a raw movie, that seems to be an alien thing to the Malayalam film industry (some of Lijo Jose Pellissery's movies are exceptional) and looks like an art-house thriller product. It has some sort of reference from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet where the subject revolves around the love affair of Jhonny and Anna both of them from two rival families. They look forward to the unity of their families through their marriage. But something disastrous is going to happen when the protagonist's father's younger brother comes to the place after a long term of imprisonment. The tagline or the subtitle of the movie is River of Blood and it is so suitable for the movie because the river plays an important role in the movie. Every moment or the hypes in the film are connected with the river. We can experience and entertain through a small remote village in the outskirts of Kerala where the majority of the people are illiterate and doing simple jobs. So we can see some sort of wild nature in each and everyone which pleases the entirety of the movie. Most of the actors are new ones but that doesn't reflect while they performing their particular characters. The most important thing that I found special in the movie is the sound design. We can feel the minimal usage of background score in the movie because the sound of nature got its prominence here. The entire graph of the movie can be judged through the progression of the sound. As I early said, the story takes place in a remote village, so the beauty and the visual imagery have gained something important which gave us attention to the movie. When we look out the river seems to be a little one and the director doesn't intend to shoot the river with a wide lens but the situations happening around shows us the violent as well as raw nature of the river. Director Nithin Lukose's debut attempt was a good one and he can do better with his next one.

What makes PAKA stand out is how well it is put together. Once you see the film it's hard to believe that it's a small production film. The actors, the setting, the narrative, the music, the tone of the film all seamlessly blends together to bring in a thrillingly well crafted visual treat. My favourite thing about the film is how it presents the river. The river as a space becomes a character in and of itself. It is the one place where everyone's thoughts are tied together for better or for worse. Another interesting aspect of the film is it's circular nature. It ends where it began but it also doesn't end exactly as it began. This small difference is precisely what makes a large impact in the film. All in all PAKA is definitely worth a watch as it pulls our thoughts into questions surrounding ancestry, tradition, masculinity, familial bond, the circle of life and of course 'revenge'.