An Ode to Malayalam Cinema

I saw a couple of movies in the last few days which made me feel maybe, just maybe, there is still hope left for Malayalam cinema. Once the pantheon of path breaking and intelligent cinema made on shoestring budgets with fantastic actors, Malayalam cinema since the turn of the century is a sorry shadow of its former self. These days a true fan finds it hard to find a few meaningful and worthwhile movies every year. While Bollywood seems to be moving in the right direction with its new breed of filmmakers and actors, Malayalam cinema seems to have moven in the opposite direction. This may be because of the demise of such great auteurs as Padmarajan, Bharathan etc, as well as the slow corrosion of cinema of the neighbouring states, including the superstar culture. While Mohanlal is one of the finest actors i have ever seen, the number of worthy movies he has done in the last ten years are very few and far between. Ditto for Suresh Gopi. Mamooty might have fared a bit better.

Coming to the movies that I saw, the first was "Thirakatha" (Screenplay). The story was that of a young filmmaker who wanted to make a movie on the life of a yesteryear starlet and her relation at the time with a current reigning superstar. The subject was an intriguing one for the protagonist, as the starlet faded away as swiftly as she came to the limelight, and no one seemed to know of her whereabouts. The main protagonist was played by Prithviraj, who in my opinion is a brilliant young actor, and who seems to genuinely want to do good cinema, rather thn cashing in on crass starry roles. The starlet and her lover were played by Priya Mani and Anoop Chandran, both brilliantly. While this one atleast got a decent run in cinema's in Kerala (probably because of the popularity of its director, the gifted Ranjith), the next one I saw probably hardly saw the light of the day in the state.

This one was called "Sanchaaram" (The Journey) and was the story of two adolescent girls in a village in Kerala. After being together since childhood, they realise that they have feelings for each other. How they and others around them in conservative Kerala society deal with this forms the rest of the story. I felt it beautifully evoked the alternative sexuality the girls had to come to terms to and captured their angst, as compared to certain overhyped Hollywood productions ("Brokeback Mountain", "Milk") on the same. Those movies to me seemed to give way too much preference to the sex and physicality between the characters rather than their feelings. The director, writer and producer of ths film, Ligy J. Pullappally, supposedly came across the story after she heard of two girls in Kerala who wanted to kill themselves because society wouldn't let them be who they were. In her own words: "On January 25, 2000 I received an email about a young woman at a university in the South Indian state of Kerala. She and her girlfriend had fled the school, presumably under the threat of expulsion as a result of the rumors of their love affair with each other. The women were recovered and sent back to their respective families. The next day, one of the young women’s body was found floating in the reservoir of a dam. It was a tragic loss of young life and potential, a suicide. It was, I would learn, an all too familiar circumstance in the South Indian state of Kerala." This was a beautiful movie which i feel, sadly, a large section of the movie going public wouldn't have seen.

Maybe there still is hope for the lover of the Malayalam cinema of yore.