When Mahesh (Fahadh Faasil) and Jimson (Sujith) roll in the dirt, beating the life out of each other, the viewers in the hall go extremely silent. Each slap Mahesh delivers feels like a personal victory and each blow he receives knots the tummy. In Dileesh Pothan’s Maheshinte Prathikaram, the story builds up scene by scene, slowly, to culminate in this naturally crazy, original fight sequence.
Similarly, when gangster John (Vinayakan) slaps one of his aide-turned-adversaries in Sameer Thahir’s Kali, our reaction is almost visceral .
Over the past few years, stunts in Malayalam cinema have been veering towards real, raw action. A new thing for those who have been brought up on a staple diet of Indian movies in the past decades, whose fight scenes always had jarring music, bellowing laughs of the villain, occasional shrieks of the maiden in distress, and the echoing yells of the revenge-seeking hero.
Action today is more of an organic extension of the plot. “In Maheshinte… fight is the central aspect of the story — a man who is assaulted physically in front of his own townsfolk and how he fails miserably. Humiliated, fighting back his honour becomes the sole reason behind his existence,” says director Dileesh Pothan. Of the two fight sequences in the film, the first one was treated with a considerable “build up”, thumping background score et al. “But for the climax, I felt it would be better to film it without its cinematic nature. To be able to relate to the scene, it had to look natural. Fahad and Sujith had a tough time while shooting,” Dileesh says. The climax fight was shot over a period of three days, Dileesh adds.
According to director and cinematographer Sameer Thahir, Big B (2007) was the starting point of a particular stylised filmmaking in Malayalam. The stunts were stylised, too, sans melodrama. “The audience has evolved with cinema. They have become more aware of the technical aspects of filmmaking. The filmmakers and actors themselves have evolved too. Though Tamil has been producing starkly realistic experiments in cinema, the entire country trains its eyes on Malayalam cinema to gauge emerging trends,” Sameer says. In his Chaapa Kurishu (2011), the climax has Fahadh Faasil and Vineeth Sreenivasan engaged in a prolonged, nasty duel. “Filming it was fraught with complications, because as a filmmaker I want my perfect shot, even as I can see the actors getting hurt. Filming a live fight is extremely strenuous for the actors as well as the director,” Sameer adds.
However, live fights are not the template. “It depends on the script and the treatment of the film,” says Mafia Sasi, one of Malayalam cinema’s favoured stuntmen. After 20 years of choreographing stunts, he says exposure to international cinema and advancements in technology and graphics have radically changed the entire cinematic language. Even a few decades ago, when stunt sequences were the formulaic dishoom-dishoom, Malayalam cinema carefully exercised restraint. The largesse of Tamil and Telugu was always regarded with suspicion in Malayalam. “While in Telugu and Tamil, 10 to 15 days are allotted for filming a stunt, in Malayalam, the whole scene has to be shot in maximum three days’ time,” he says. Sasi has done over 1,000 films in all South Indian languages and a couple of Hindi films as well. “Ultimately, a good action scene depends on the subject that you are dealing with. Also, it has to be designed in a way the actors involved can handle it,” Sasi says.
The history of action scenes in South Indian cinema is fascinating, says stunt choreographer Silva. “From period movies with sword fights to the 70s and 80s when action was completely composed, to the high speed frames of the 90s, action has come a long way. Today, everybody wants live fights where the protagonist’s characterisation comes out. His emotions, the story, are all essayed through the fight. Today’s stunts are those that will make you ‘feel’,” he says. Silva, who has been in the industry for 15 years and has done countless big budget films in Tamil including Mankatha, Jilla, Vettai to name a few, and Loham in Malayalam, says stunts have rhythm. “It is about movement and timing. And when the two come together, there is a rhythm.”
The anatomy of the fight has changed too. Instead of the punch, it is the slap that gets the clap. “How do you think you can deliver the most well-crafted punch in a street-fight? Or the most well-timed kick? If live fights are the order of the day, there is going to be slapping, pushing, blocking, running, falling, and unbalanced movement. It has to be spontaneous. It is not rehearsed,” Silva explains.
Malayalam cinema, even in its dishoom-dishoom phase had a fair share of films that portrayed fight sequences realistically. Many of Padmarajan’s, Bharathan’s, Sibi Malayil’s, Lohithadas' and Ranjith’s (to name a few) films showed believable fights.
After all, slap or punch, what’s cinema without some adrenalin pumping moments?
