Swa Le

Cast: Dileep, Gopika, Innocent, Jagathy Sreekumar, Salimkumar, Nedumudi Venu, K P A C Lalitha, Ashokan, Ganesh Kumar

Direction: P Sukumar

Music: Biji Pal

‘Swa.Le’- the first offering from Cinematographer turned director P.Sukumar has Dileep as Unnimadhavan, a humanist, and committed reporter of Janachintha, chasing for stories in his old bicycle, with an ill mannered part-time photographer Chandramohan (Salim Kumar). He has signed for a seven year bond with the small daily, which is in full throat activity to increase the circulation. With his meagre salary, Unnimadhavan finds the going tough. Moreover, he also struggles to find enough time to devote to his pregnant wife Vimala, who is staying in a rented house away from the city in a quiet village with no proper health facilities and transportation. Since they have married without the consent from their parents, there are none to help them.

Things gets to worse as Unni is fielded to report the affairs of famous writer and Gnanapeed award winner Palazhy Sivashankara Pillai (Nedumudi Venu) who is in his death bed with all his organs down, waiting for the final call. The acclaimed writer had spent some time with Unni when he was a child and was an inspiration for him. But as he is asked to stay at the writer’s house daily till 3 am in the night, until the last edition is out, Unni is bombarded with agitative mindset, but has to keep all for himself due to fear about the impending bonds. The movie follows on to tell how his struggles with time and emotions, finally provide fruitful, making him a big name in the media business.

Bottom Line

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Swa Le - is a good attempt

It's late eighties - an era before the proliferation of twenty-four hour news channels and mobile phones. It was also the same period when the two big dailies of Malayalam started to fight over circulation, with each of their staff reporters trying to do something overboard to support something anew, exclusive for their news papers. The present day generation who are used to the technology jump that happened afterwards, will find it hard to digest the fate of many working with specific deadlines. Same was the case of the news man who had to really travel distances to fetch and create scoops and stories. ‘Swa.Le’ is a look into the life of a local reporter of a modest daily of that times “Janachintha”. With such a promising premise, the movie definitely opened to tons of interest and perhaps kept the proceedings moving in the first 90 minutes. But with no big twists happening and nothing more serious to convey than what was told by then, the movie meanders here and there to end up as an average fare.