Review of Film- Padman

Today we watched Padman film. Total eight students went to watch the film. This film is not ordinary one, it is different from common love story based film. R. Balki is the director of the film, this film is based on the real life story of the real Hero Arunachalam Muruganantham. Here I am going to highlight basic points about the film.

i) Male protagonist

The main character of the film is "Lakshmi", and Akshay Kumar played this role very effectively and proved himself  "a true man in real sense" at the end of the film. Even if this film based on female menstruation problem, it needs a male protagonist who can resolve the problems of costly sanitary pad. In this film Lakshmi wishes to make sanitary pad for the convenience of his wife Gayatri, who normally used untidy napkins. Lakshmi was worried about his wife's health that's why he decided to make pads.

ii) Backward thinking of society

In this film most of the women were shown as too much shy and obedient. The very first shy character is Lakshmikant's wife Gayatri. She obeys each and every warning given by her family. All five days of menstruation, she spent outside of her room and remain untouched with her husband. She never think about to break these all rules. When her husband think about 'change' all the society members treated him as characterless person. He still goes on selling his handmade pads but from all places, he finds disappointment. The main thing to consider is, Women herself becomes the enemy of her own health, and denied to use sanitary pad which was sold by a man.

iii) Mechanization of God- Deus ex Machina

In some scenes we can see that, the God is present as a machine. The very first scene about the mechanization of God is 'Hanuman temple scene' where Hanumanji is presented as a machine. The Devotees can insert rupee coin in the hand of Hanumanji and when they put coconut in the mouth, it goes down in the body of Hanumanji and comes out in pieces.
 The satire was used there that all the devotees moving towards machine God and besides it the temple with ordinary idea remained uncrowded. It signifies that this is time to moves towards modern inspite of following only ancient idea. It also shows the impact of machinery on humans.
In the second scene also we saw that The Machine God himself comes out to take money from the devotees and then went inside behind the curtains.

iv) Pari as a representation of strong woman character

In the film Sonam Kapoor played the role of Pari. She is too much strong and confident personality. She supports Lakshmikant, a lot to make him the real hero who made pads at minimum price by himself, even Lakshmi gave name of Pari to the pads he made. Pari left her job interview and goes on to help Lakshmikant. In last scene also when Lakshmi was not able to speak in front of huge audience, Pari supports him and encourage him to speak.

v) Climax scene

In the film climax came when the wife of Lakshmikant left him all alone and went to her mother's home. At some point we feel that Lakshmi may be put off his business of making pads because all things was not going right with him. But he din't do that and decided to move towards city and there he can prove his genius.

vi) Catharsis

In the last scene when Lakshmi get confused whom to chose, his wife or his friend Pari we feel a kind of fear, that what should done with Gayatri if Lakshmikant leave her, but we feel relax when he chose his wife and his friend Pari helps him in doing so. So there is kind of fear and after sometime, we feel satisfaction and get relieved of that fear. This brings Catharsis.



The protagonist is whatever doing, he is doing for the benefits of his wife, but his wife was believes in him in the last scene of the film. The main Idea that the  director wants to show is the making of healthy and not much costly sanitary pad for the benefits of the women in village, as well as in cities too. Somehow the idea is justified also, the village women also started doing business of selling pads with Lakshikant. There is one dialogue in the film which is spoken by Sonam Kapoor that a woman can talk with other woman about the problems of womens in far better way then to talk with man. That's why the women refuses to take pads when Lakshmikant went to sell it door to door and takes all pads when it were sold by Pari.

Contrast

 The whole film is not ordinary one but a satire on the society who still remains under backward thoughts about the menstruation. At one side it also shows the celebration of a teenage girl who first comes in menstrual cycle and on the other hand it shows the the shy women who refuses to takes pad from man. This is totally contrasting situation that a society doesn't feel shame when they celebrate the festival of a teenage girl who comes of her age, but feel shame when someone wants to help that girl to use sanitary pad for her better health.