One of the stalwarts of Malayalam cinema, K. S. Sethumadhavan has been consistently exploring human values in his films. Two of his better-known films are 'Adimakal' and 'Oppol'. A prolific filmmaker and a man of progressive ideas, Sethumadhavan has directed over 60 films in many languages, including Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi and Sinhalese. He has made several poignant works based on novels and stories by eminent writers such as Parappurathu (Panitheerathaveedu/Unfinished House), Malayattoor Ramakrishnan (Yakshi/Demon) and M T Vasudevan Nair. He has also won for three consecutive years (1970-72) the Best Director Award from the Kerala State Government. Not an especially flamboyant director, he has an unerring knack for capturing the hopes, dreams and disappointments that shape his protagonists' lives. As he puts it 'human behavior cannot be contained in codified rules'.

At one level, it is a simple story of an illiterate woman totally faithful to a man whom she intensely loves. The story has another dimension to it, i.e., the psychological resolve of the opposing forces: strong, self-willed, aggressively possessive nature set against the other, which is weak, frail and submissive, apparently in contrast but complementing each other in effect defying all logic. Human nature cannot be contained in codified rules and regulations and it is this unpredictability that makes human life forever interesting.

The story is also a comment on the institution of marriage. Rangi is not married to 'her man' If marriage is an affirmation of middle-class morality as Bernard Shaw says, her relationship with 'her man' is far from any such 'institutionalized virtue'. She likes him, is passionately devoted to him and as such, wants to own him totally. She cares little for such sanctimonious niceties as marriage, but is as chaste as any of our mythical heroines.