The greatest movie ever made..!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Considered as one of the evergreen classics of Malayalam cinema, Thenmavin Kombathu is always a fresh watch even after watching it a number of times. The beauty of village life that is clubbed with some of the precious moments of nature have been preserved so subtly in each and every frame of the movie. The plotline never ever misaligns with the setting of the movie that marks a key feature of this art work. The music also fits right into the plot that is of the type which is quite unheard at that time. Some of the songs from the movie are still being downloaded and remains in the playlist of people who love nostalgia. Movies centered around rustic life will have some special traits of that place to present. Here it is the bullock cart race, agrarian country life, lord-servant dependency, folkways etc. However chief among them is the belief of the community in superstitions. Thimmayya, the soothsayer subtly becomes the innocuous pivot that gears the movie quite unawaringly. The fact we can find if we watch closer that can be understood is that it is nothing but the very same set of superstitious elements that the movie is criticizing at the same time showcasing the goodness of the village people and their wishes to climb up the social ladder sometimes throgh crookedness.

This movie has beautiful images, cinematography, scenery. The story could've been better instead too many curves and twist and drama. Great acting from all.

The film is centered around a village in which panchayat meetings are held to determine the fate of adulterers, cows and people wash in the river, tribal women wear special saris, and Pongal is celebrated with exciting bullock-cart races! It sounds like one of *those* village films, but it actually stays pretty lighthearted and silly until the intermission.

Firstly, this review does not contain any spoilers whatsoever so read on. Frontier melodrama about Kerala's Thazavad manorial system which is based on matrimonial Kinship. Sreekrishna (Venu), the brother of the Madambipura House's leader, Yashoda, is extremely friendly with his servant Manikan (Mohanlal). Another servant, Appakala, envious of Manikan's favored status, is the film's official villain. The Madambipura House is locked in an ancestral rivalry with the equally large establishment run by Ganjimuda Gandhari, which usually finds expression in the bullock cart race at the annual Pongal festival.Both Sreekrishna and Manikan fall in love with the beautiful itinerant theater actress Karuthumbi (Shobhana), causing Manikan to briefly fall out of favor with both Yashoda and the local law. The film's camera-work adopts the glossy style (diffusers and angled lighting calibrated to the exposure of high-speed color stock) made fashionable by Tamil cinematographer P.C.Sriram. Shot mostly at dawn and dusk, the camera-work creates a glittering fantasy world than in turn determines both plot and performances.