Oridathoru Phayalvaan


Oridathoru Phayalvaan is a 1981 Indian Malayalam-language drama film written, edited and directed by P. Padmarajan. The film is a folk parable about the success and failure in the life of a gatta gusthi wrestler in Kerala. It stars Rashid, Nedumudi Venu and Jayanthi.
The film won the first International award for a Malayalam movie, by winning two prestigious awards - for the 'Best Film' and for the 'Best Screenplay' at the "27th Asian Film Festival - 1982" held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, also won The Kerala Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay, 1981.The film was included in the Indian Panorama section of the Filmotsav'82 held in Calcutta, 1982. It represented India in the competitive section at the Nantes Three Continents Festival-1983 in France. It has also been telecasted in the National Network programme of Malaysian Televisions.

Plot

Patronized by a village tailor, a gatta gusthi wrestler becomes a local hero when he defeats all his opponents and claims the prettiest woman as his wife. As a story within a story it also portrays how the tailor makes a profit from the illiterate wrestler. He marries a girl, only for it to be revealed later that he has another wife and is not interested in her more than a trophy. He abandons his wife and the village when his wife falls for other men in his absence and she acknowledges that she does not love him any more. He leaves her his signature drawing of a conch shell. A frog gigging neighbour youth is entrapped by the girl's mother to marry her conceived daughter. It is way more than that, it is about an illiterate man thinking of his craft as being more than money.

Cast