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“I just want people to see my film. But, that’s all. After that, they do not have to think of me or be concerned about my life. As a person and as an actor, I should exist till that film is over,” said a new-generation Malayalam film star recently when a journalist quizzed him about his take on fan clubs being formed for him. Fahadh Faasil, who won the National Award for the best supporting actor this year for his performance in Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum , a police-room drama, is the man behind these words. Unlike his more glamorous contemporaries such as Dulquer Salmaan or Nivin Pauly, Fahadh has no intentions to play to the gallery or subscribe to a certain image like his superstar ancestors, Mohanlal and Mammootty. Like an artistic chameleon, he has been changing colours and diversifying roles since his first film. And the audience has been revelling in his versatility, a quality which Mohanlal possessed in his early years, before he sold himself to fan sentiments.
“What gives Fahadh the courage to do realistic, niche films? Is he beyond commercial success?” my Tamilian colleague asked me the other day. It set me thinking. Something about these young stars set them apart from their seniors. They seem to be working with a strong belief that quality ultimately delivers the moolah. Be it Nivin Pauly, who acts in a populist Sakhavu or a romantic comedy like Premam (for which my 14-year-old cousin wolf-whistles) and at the same time enacts a character with Asperger’s Syndrome in Hey Jude , a middlebrow film; or Dulquer, who traverses Malayalam, Tamil and Bollywood industries and refuses to be chained by an image, like his father, Mammootty, who is the quintessential tough macho hero.
“Now, this is definitely not the case in Kollywood,” my colleague said, shaking her head vigorously. Mass, big-budget cinema is considered the natural graduation for an aspiring actor from small-budget, script-oriented films. You can see this trajectory in the growth of Vijay, Surya, Simbu and the younger stars like Siva Karthikeyan and Vishal. They also gun for the crowd hysteria and mass fanfare, a legacy which the thalaivar and ulaganayagan have left behind.
However, it is fascinating to see how the boundaries between mass and art keep blurring in Malayalam cinema. Take the case of Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum , which unfolds in a suburban, rustic police station in Kerala. People talk in a diction which is not the standardised Malayalam you hear usually while watching the region’s films. It does not cater to any mass sentiments in terms of how heroic the characters are or the premise of the plot. For instance, Fahadh plays a thief and the entire crowd turns against him towards the end of the film. Their sympathy goes out to the woman whose chain he has stolen and her husband, a man struggling to make ends meet. The film still raked in the moolah and garnered critics' praises for its subtle treatment and the narratives of power imbalances between the police and the common man.
This is a trend you do not often see in other industries. We too have our Baahubali -like counterparts, vying to enter the 100-crore clubs. Pulimurugan was one such and created quite a stir in the other South-Indian film industries too. And, boy, how we celebrated it. Because, it is only once in a blue moon that Malayalam cinema comes out with a block-buster to that scale. Partly, because the industry is a small one and cannot afford the money, as my Tamil friend pointed out the other day as he gloated about how beautiful some of the song-picturisations are in Kollywood. But, it is also because of a deeper cultural reason that does not encourage mass hysteria in Kerala.
The spring of real money-making superstardom arrived in the Malayalam film industry in the late 1990s. Around this time, several fan clubs mushroomed in different parts of Kerala. However, the life-span of the superstar wave in Kerala was short. Around 2000, Mohanlal began repeating himself so often as the superhuman feudal rowdy that the actor, once touted the most versatile star in the State, fell into an image trap. “Give us our old Lal back,” the fans roared, referring to his acting persona in the ’80s — likeable and relatable ordinary layman, laced with humour. Mammootty too had to give a rest to his machismo and boldly went through a revamp by foraying into the unchartered territories of humour, dance and entertainment. When that happened, several raised eyebrows. Especially the middle-class “family” audience, who compared it to Kollywood films (the Malayali film community tends to look at the Tamil film industry’s mass culture with some condescension, finding it to be unrealistic and hyper commercial. This cultural taboo has always held back Malayali directors and actors from participating in ‘masala flicks’ — even if they do, they make sure to purge themselves of that terrible sin by acting in middlebrow films or art cinema, popularly known as ‘award padam ’, a balancing act which Malayali actors are quite adept at).
The new generation of filmmakers entered the scene as saviours precisely around this time. Actors like Dulquer Salmaan and Fahadh instantly struck a chord with the Malayali millennials, educated in cities outside Kerala. I remember Fahadh from way back in 2009 when he entered the Malayalam silver screen and our hearts. I was in college, cooped up in my hostel dormitory, watching Kerala Café , a first-of-its-kind anthology of 10 films, produced by Ranjith, the man who delivered mass hits in early 2000s. He acted in the short film, Mrityunjayam , where he is a cosmopolitan young man visiting a haunted, feudal house. He exuded a new cultural diction, body language and suavity of disposition that Malayalam cinema had not seen till then.
The absence of a female presence in Malayalam cinema is glaring, and proof of the predominantly male narrative that has ruled the industry since its inception. But, an exception to this was Anjali Menon, who entered the script-writing arena, which was and is still monopolised by men. Bangalore Days , Ustad Hotel and Happy Journey (the short in Kerala Café ) brought in the female perspective that was missing in our silver screen till then. Women, who read books, travelled outside Kerala, dreamt of being performers and radio jockeys, who were self-independent and boldly pursued their loves against their family’s wishes, started to speak to us from big screens. And, these fresh voices used a new cinematic language that was not burdened by literary texts. Take a film like North 24 Kaatham , a quirky take on how strangers from disparate walks of life come together during a Hartal day in Kerala. These films did not go by the traditional norms of “films with a good story”. In fact, some of them just offered us a new cinematic experience, like Amen , a surreal film unfolding in the backwaters of Kerala. Apparently a love story, it ends by subverting the romance genre, and concentrates more on the visual flavours that make up the region. It ended with a carnivalesque climax featuring a musical duel between two rival families.
Till then, we were tired of being fed the same old Mohanlal-Mammootty superhuman action narratives or slapstick humour delivered by second-rung actors like Dileep and Jayaram. By 2004, Malayalam cinema had reached a dead end. And, these films, with its set of new stars, expressing unconventional masculinities and femininities and fresh narratives, was a promise. Films like 22 Female Kottayam and Chappa Kurishu handled grey subjects of rape, exploitation, class divide and urban-rural dialectics. A new cinematic milieu of places ruled by gangsters, mafia and shady businessmen opened up before the Malayalam silver screen. These films, released over the last decade, brought to fore small towns and their culture, which was marginalised in the Malayalam cinema narrative till then. Be it the lush green landscape of Idukki in Maheshinte Prathikaram or the dingy, second-hand markets and dusty alleys of Kochi in Chappa Kurishu , or the booming pork business in Angamaly in Angamaly Diaries , the new generation of filmmakers were showing us new vistas within our own State.
In order to know why these films also became commercial successes, despite not being star vehicles or masala flicks, one must travel back to the 1970s. This was the time when the film society movement unfolded across the country. And Kerala was not late to catch up to the trend. According to an article titled “Film Society Movement in Kerala History and Present”, written by V.K. Joseph, a film critic, a world of films was opened up before the Malayali when Chitralekha Film Society started working in Trivandrum in 1965. “The society began to flourish with the association of Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Kulathoor Bhaskaran Nair, K.P. Kumaran and Sreevaraham Balakrishnan. An All India Writers’ Conference was held at Ernakulam in 1966. M. Govindan and M.K.K. Nair, Chairman of FACT, led the conference from the front. As a part of the conference, a festival of classic films was also organised. M. Govindan was the master brain behind this concept. Adoor Gopalakrishnan was given the charge of conducting the festival. Nine other districts also followed suit.”
Fifteen to sixteen films from Russia, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, along with the films of Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, were screened. These festivals gave momentum to film societies in Kerala. A person like Adoor Gopalakrishnan stood with them by spending a lot of time, guiding and advising. “Just like the Library Movement in Kerala opened the doors to world literature, film societies enhanced film literacy by acquainting film lovers with new visual aesthetics and techniques... It was an attempt at overcoming the dry experiences of seeing through and understanding the different streams of film aesthetics,” reads the article. This opened up a new window for Malayalis to look at world politics, religion and literature, and helped him/her in reinventing his literary and cinematic idioms. Some of the directors of the new-generation films got inspiration from the screenings and activities of the film societies, which gave birth to most of the film critics in Kerala. Many of the cameramen, film editors, sound recordists, etc., got into the Film and Television Institute of India after being inspired by the film societies.
The culture of the film festivals has cemented our sensibilities even more. For instance, I have been hitting the International Film Festival of India in Goa with my film crazy family every year. It is almost an annual pilgrimage.. Here , half the film-buff community are Malayali intelligentsia, who will also be catching up on their children’s wedding plans and local politics in Kerala over mugs of beer, as they hop from one screen to the other. Every year, apart from the major International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), there are also the small, metro film festivals that unfold in towns like Thrissur, Paravur and Kochi, because of the initiative of like-minded, strong-willed film societies there. The film literacy, coupled with an innate sense of the political, makes even an ordinary Malayali passionate about cinema. Like I heard someone saying the other day, “In Kerala, every Malayali male dreams about making a film one day.”
RT @jeggusays : box office reports shows that kerala started accepting new wave in malayalam cinema! 'traffic' movie is super hit
— KERALAM (@rtkeralam) January 15, 2011
One must place the new-generation wave in Malayalam cinema in that context. The Kerala society has been brought up on the films of the Andrei Tarkovskys, Ingmar Bergmans, Akira Kurasawas, Satyajit Rays and Ritwik Ghataks. Maybe, it is this subconscious reel history that makes the Malayali gravitate towards neo-realistic cinema even in the commercial spectrum. The incorrigible demand for a story at times can cripple all kinds of formal creativity. The Malayali’s innate intolerance towards the song-and-dance spectacle seen in Bollywood, and the fan-craze and melodrama so typical of Tamil mass films ensures that they value the form over the content.
So, when Fahadh, a young star in his mid 30s, a student of philosophy educated abroad, says, “I will only choose scripts that excite me”, while clarifying, “I am not thinking of awards, but commercial success,” he gets the courage and conviction from being a part of an industry that values formal experimentation over star value and entertainment. At the same time, like other industries, Malayalam cinema is also falling into the 100-crore club game. But, the history of a strong cinematic consciousness seems to be lighting the way for its new stars, encouraging them to remain distinct from their counterparts in other industries. One wishes their predecessors Mohanlal and Mammootty had the same guts to say “no” to commercialisation and image traps in their heyday. These new actors seem to promise a tomorrowland in Malayalam cinema, filled with stars who shun titles and crowns. They’d rather let cinema rule.
(The article has been modified post-publication to reflect the correct year of Kerala Café ’s release.)
