A few years ago during a discussion on Malayalam cinema in
Orkut, I held forth that I rarely watched the latest Malayalam movies. I said I
preferred watching – repeatedly even -- movies of the 1980s and 90s. I found
them honest, unpretentious and uplifting.
I was absolutely bored and utterly disgusted by the crap that
Lal and Mammooty were churning out in the name of performance in the late 1990s,
’00s and ’10s. The plots were horrendous, the music was simply forgettable, the
dialogues plain unconvincing and the acting came across as worse than those by
debutantes.
Commercial Malayalam cinema had stagnated. And as always, it
was the pigs, as represented by the reigning stars of the day, who ruled in the
dirty stagnating waters.
Fresh faces like Dileep (I dare call him fresh for the sake
of contrast with the bulging behemoths Lal, Gopi and Mammooty) Surya and
Kunchacko Boban, though pretty talented, were trapped in the mores, styles and
other entrapments of traditional Malayalam cinema, which was so obviously stale.
The so called art movies – ones such as Ore Kadal and
Vanaprastham – were bloody pseudo. Classic examples of movies that were made ONLY
to win awards, fuelled by a narcissist star’s aesthetic ambition.
Malayalam cinema had, in short, stopped evolving. It lived under
the fading limelight of its heady days.
However, that was then.
In 2011, on a trip to Kozhikode, I decided to splurge on
movies again. I was taking a risk. But I was desperate for a taste of the
latest in Malayalam cinema. So Rs 2,000 was not a huge amount for an assorted 20
movies of the past one year.
What I found was nothing short of a revelation -- a revelation that has today forced me to
retract my earlier stand that I’d rather not lap up the latest wares of the industry.
While I must accept that there are miles to go, Malayalam
cinema is certainly undergoing a renaissance – in style, content, technique,
tone and performances.
It’s a transformation that fits the bill as the next wave after
the change that swept through in the 1980s. Ushered in by such stalwarts as
Padmarajan, Bharathan, Lohitadas, Satyan Anthikkad and others, that was when the
movie-buff Malayalee began to expect a new standard that rendered almost everything
of the previous era outdated.
Movies such as Traffic, Cocktail, Kerala Café, Chappa Kurishu,
22 Female Kottayam, and the like, though hardly complete and worth being called
the best or great, have literally opened a can – a can of ideas, talent and
vision.
They have dug a deep divide, as BC and AD. Although, the
exact date of the transformation is difficult to locate, it has been a revolution
– and I suspect a revolution spread over some five years ending in 2012.
It struck me only last week though.
I was watching Pranayam – a movie I liked some time ago – on
Sunday.
While the plot was endearing and performances convincing in the
conventional sense, my perspective had undergone a sea change.
Pranayam – with the background score inevitably following every
frame and sequence (someone enlighten these guys about the importance and depth
of silence) -- was clearly a BC movie on the Malayalam cinema timeline. Dialogues
were jarringly lyrical and preachy. Acting was, of course, still reminiscent of
the era when Anupam Kher and Lal epitomized the skill.
Pranayam was a complete movie, but so outdated in its craft.
In contrast was Chappa Kurishu, a movie that had so many
loose ends – it was boring at times, the acting department was far from
convincing (particularly of Vineeth Sreenivasan and his lady love), music was forgettable.
But Chappa Kurishu, with its plot, Fahad Fazil’s performance and the ‘punchy’ climax,
was emblematic of the new energy, sensibilities, style and narrative of the new
Malayalam cinema.
Chappa Kurishu and Pranayam are contemporaries. But clearly,
they represent two different eras. The former is I guess the last gasp of a
dying breed so badly tarred by the latest specimen of its kind. The latter is
the future.
It’s painful to call the likes of Lal, Padmarajan and Satyan
Anthikkad outdated. But that’s what should be. And I welcome that all-changing next
wave.
