Pushpaka Vimana aka Pushpak aka Pesum Padam is a movie that still remains in our memories, even after about 20 years. The Economic Times carried an article on it recently. [Don’t ask me what is the connection between such a newspaper and this movie!] The piece hailed the movie as a classic, but had some criticism for Kamal outside it. Highlights:

It was a bizarrely appropriate coda for one of Indian cinema’s daring and brilliant experiments. At a time when only very self consciously art house films eschewed songs, Pushpak went a step further and did away with dialogue as well, creating one of the most sincere silent films ever made.

The primary narrative pays tribute to Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights.

The humour is pitch black at times, in a very politically incorrect sequence, Hassan and Amla take several pheras around the corpse of the owner of Pushpak, while apparently paying their last respects to him.

In a perfect world Pushpak would make it to top of any list of the greatest Indian films. Unfortunately filmic reputations are built around memorising songs and dialogues and Pushpak did not deliver on either count.