Ivide Swargamanu

Cast: Mohanlal, Thilakan, Sreenivasan, Lakshmi Rai, Priyanka

Direction: Roshan Andrews

Production: Aashirwad films

Music: Mohan Sithara

Going back to the theme of love for land and labour, the movie has Superstar Mohanlal as Mathews, a self taught agriculturist and a farm house owner, who with the help of his family is maintaining a highly productive farmland, named after his father Jermias (Thilakan). Into their peaceful life arrives Aluva Chandy, (Lalu Alex) a wealthy scheming but idiotic businessman, who is hell bend to grab this beautiful piece of land in the banks of Periyar, as he has got heavy advances from an industrialist from the north eyeing to develop it into a big resort. Chandy and the big land mafia operating under him, goes by the routine, advertises their plans to develop the serene hamlet into a township, pushing up land prices, offering the local men big jobs, acquiring their pieces of land and pressurising Mathews to sell his farmland which is in the centre of the proposed project. He also uses the government machinery to create new troubles for Mathews in the form of pollution control boards, State financial corporation’s loan debts and so on. The movie goes on to tell how the simpleton Mathews finds ways to fight this 'land mafia' and to survive the impending pressures to maintain his land for ever.

Bottom Line

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Ivide Swargamaanu - is worth a watch

The movie makes an ordinary start but gradually builds up tensions and curiosity and the final hour of the movie is a scream, 'the best' in the offering with finely worked out scenes, few good wits and one liners. Though some sequences remind you of scenes of Midhunam to the recent 'Khosla Ka Ghosla', James Albert’s story lines had got that sincerity in every dialogues and the protagonist also maintains his 'agrarian' directness in all his proceedings. Mohanlal as usual, has a cakewalk through the role of Mathews, who is never projected as a superhero, but as a helpless ordinary man with right dose of emotions and strains. But it is to Lalu Alex, the film rightly belongs to. Portraying the villainous Aluva Chandy in a peculiar manner that is characteristic to his own style, he has his best role of the decade, in the movie. The three lead ladies presented by Priyanka Nair who appear as Betsy, the Television journalist, Lakshmi Gopalaswamy, in negative shades of the SFC manager, and Lakshmi Rai, who appear as Sumathy, the lawyer, does their parts well. The director has been able to bring out the best from every one in the cast lines including Thilakan, Sukumari, Kaviyoor Ponnamma, Raju and Shankar.