A legacy of lovable irreverence

October 24, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 05:44 am IST

Some subtle air brushing of ideological shibboleths, a little Daliesque tweak to some defining political images, and potfuls of acidic sarcasm. Even if this was the standard recipe for some of Mollywood’s political spoofs of the past, there were also those that stood out and even turned out to have a near prophetic kernel in them.

Back in 1984, K.G. George, in his iconic Panchavadipalam , took the Malayali to the imaginary Airavathakuzhi panchayat where elections had not happened in 12 years. The movie’s main protagonist Dussasana Kurup, an inefficient and corrupt panchayat president, wants to leave his indelible mark on the place by building a new bridge, after destroying the existing bridge, the Panchavadipalam.

George had, before many others, perhaps smelt the rot beginning to take over the system and brought it on screen, in all satirical glory.

“It was Veloor Krishnankutty who penned the short story on which the movie was based. I have forgotten whether we had hinged it to some real life context. Some exaggeration was involved, though,” says George, now in his autumn.

To an extent, the celluloid licence for sarcastic exaggerations of the 1980s kind may look like a bit of everyday reality three decades later, from the several committees that are set up in Panchavadipalam (one even to send off Dussasana Kurup to the capital to submit a memorandum), to the inevitable palm-greasing at every level, and the tacit understandings between opposing parties when it came to corruption.

Sreenivasan, who played the helpless common man, a mute witness in many scenes, went on to script another classic political satire in 1991– Sandesham .

The story of two brothers from rival political camps bringing their rivalry to the dinner table was used to portray the state of political parties which had lost their original moorings.

The dialogues from it have, over these years, outgrown the movie, with expressions in it such as Polandine patti oraksharam parayaruthu and prathikriya vaatham invading the Malayali’s everyday jabber. Even today, television spoofs still pick dialogue pieces from this movie for effect.

Full-length political satires have been a rarity in the past decade until Jibu Jacob came up with Vellimoonga last year. It had Biju Menon playing Mammachan, the ‘State’ leader of a national-level party with no roots here. I was keyed in to local-level politics, having worked as campaign convener for panchayat elections during my younger days,” says Jibu, who adds Panchavadipalam was his inspiration.

Sathyan Anthikkad’s Indian Pranayakatha released in 2013, about a young politician’s push to make it big, also had rib-tickling sequences, on politics in the age of live TV debates. One of the criticisms many of these movies invited was that they tarred all politicians with the same brush and gave out an ‘apolitical’ message. But few would deny the say they had on our socio-political discourses later.

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