Bullet Point Review: Parava
Published in
2 min readNov 22, 2018
- What I really enjoyed about Parava was the masterly weave of two different sets of stories, without feeling like you are watching two separate movies. There is the story in the present, of Ichappi and Haseeb (a brilliant Amal Shah and Govind Pai), two young boys, dealing with adolescence, set against the backdrop of pigeon racing and then there is the story set in the past, of Shane (an effective Shane Nigam) and Imran (an extended cameo by Dulquer Salman) and their cricket club and the unfortunate events that befall them, that forms the crux of the plot.
- The execution of the onset of the flashback was innovative, and I thought it was ingenious to use a school sports days as a background for a romantic song, and combined with the clean-cut cinematography, it was a captivating watch. Even the opening montage, that introduces us to the colourful people and buildings of Mattanchery, was a delight to watch.
- The story does a stellar job of capturing a childhood that seems to have ceased to exist nowadays or has become unseen or unheard of in metro cities. Tuition centres and coaching classes are a myth here.
We follow Ichappi and Haseeb, as they steal back a fish, by carrying it in their mouth filled with water; as they make manja, all by themselves; as they navigate the bylanes of the narrow alleys of Mattanchery, or race pigeons in the contrasting open blue skies above. They are always out of the house, always up to something, be it playing cricket, or catching more pigeons to rare. On the one side the movie presents them to us as heroes; watch the scene where Irshad successfully captures Surumi’s attention with one loud clap, and you sense his confidence, and a style that sets him apart from the rest. But we are also exposed to their vulnerable side like when they bawl out their hearts after they find their pigeons stolen, or when they hang their head in shame when they are caught watching porn.
