Celebrating Mediocrity

When I visited Trivandrum last Onam, I had made up my mind to see a couple of Malayalam films, trying to compensate for the meagre few I had seen during my days at Coimbatore and Trichy owing to a scarcity of theatres showing Malayalam films coupled with a laziness to go searching and hoping to find cd's of the same, a task which seemed next to impossible.

However the very first film I saw at New Theatre made me wonder as to why I had even thought of such an idea. Ali Bhai seemed another stereotyped action film from Shaji Kailas and a last throw of dice from Mohanlal to provide a hit film to his fans. What worried me more was the near hysterical fans who seemed to relish the dialogues and the different action scenes in the film which was nothing short of a preposterous show by an actor of Lal's caliber.

The same film viewers who relished the natural films of Padmarajan and Bharatan and encouraged directors like Sathyan Anthikkad and Sibi Malayil to bring quality movies to the screens were now thriving on a horde of films which are an insult to the films made during the Golden era. The vestiges of the brilliance of the films during the golden era are found only in a few films now.

The fault lay partly with the Directors themselves, who decided that the tastes of the audience had changed with time and that the mimicry style of films was the new name of the art. However I would blame even the experienced actors who never bothered to be selective about their films and instead chose to work on every tom, dick and harry project.Sadly even the film industry seems depleted with its shortage of quality scriptwriters. While directors like Sibi Malayil and Sathyan Anthikkad were assisted to a large extent by brilliant scripts from Lohitadas and Sreenivasan, they failed miserably when the quality and quantity of output from such writers reached a low point. On the lighter side, it can be said that the only person who seemed to benefit from all this was Sreenivasan, who took this opportunity to make a blockbuster film "Udhayananu Tharam" :-)

A relief could be that while this could be a case of flash in the pan as regards the Malayalam film industry (owing to the various factors mentioned), the situation is worse in Tamil Nadu where genuinely good films are sometimes totally neglected by the public. Quality films like Anbae Sivam and Hey Ram were commercial failures though critically acclaimed. Again and again we see mediocre films from the like of Simbu, Vijay and their ilk getting attention from the film viewing public while the genius of Kamal and Mani Ratnam is being rubbished.

The effect is seen when Mani Ratam makes a film like Guru. The climax in that movie which showed the protagonist being questioned by an enquiry committee setup by the Government was nowhere near the levels depicted in the same kind of scene in the movie 'Aviator' by Martin Scorcese. It is not that Mani Ratnam could not have made it better, but the fact that the film viewing audience do not seem to have the sense to appreciate such natural techniques of filming. If an ace director like Mani succumbs to such pressure from the public , then it is no wonder that the others have made no effort in improving the quality of films.

Another example is Sreenivasan who scripted 'Kadha Parayumbol' . The same genius who scripted such high quality satirical scripts like 'Thalayanmanthram' and 'Sandesham' fails to bring out quality satirical humour in "Kadha...". It is really sad to see even Sreeni stoop down to such mediocre levels from the golden heights of success he once enjoyed.

Hero-worship also causes much of the above problems. Hero-worship discourages improvement and encourages mediocrity. The same people who set the benchmark for such high quality films in Malayalam now deal in immature slap-stick and crude comedy flicks. Recently I happened to see the comments section in Rediff regarding the review of the film "College Kumaran". At the end , I didn't know whether to laugh or lament over the bitter truth regarding the quality of present day super-star flicks. The only postive outcome I had was that the comments section provided me with humorous dialogues from fans of Mammootty and Mohanlal, which I thought I would share with all of you ;-).

Ajay, obviously who has had enough with all these flicks says "Super movie, like best of Lalettan clips, but heroine is too old for lalettan, it should be Baby Shalini or that daughter in Kazcha who should be Lal's heroine.Roma , Parvathy and Meera are all to old for our evergreen hero.."

VarunRaj, a die-hard Lal fan retorts " PAAVAM AJAY IS JEALOUS THAT EVEN THOUGH ABOVE 50, LALETTAN REMAINS THE PLAYBOY IN MALAYALAM MOVIES!!! SHAME ON OTHER MALE ACTORS, THAT STILL NOONE IS THER TO COMPETE WITH HIM EVEN WHEN IT COMES TO ACTING OR EVEN GETTIN THE GIRLS...SAKALA KALAA VALLAVANS R ONLY 2 IN INDIAN CINEMA, KAMAL SIR N LALETTAN!"

Girish says "It's total paisa vasool...heartening to see that Lalettan is back with a bang" to which Ajay says "Correct, my friend paid for the ticket and I had a superb nap for 2.5 hours, less mosquitoes than at home, even they are staying away from this movie.., woke up for 5 minutes and liked the dialogue by Suraj Venjaramoodu.. Pazham ..njan tharum.. ha ha funny, then slept again.."

Jiby mentions frequently that arrival of fresh and young talent like Prithviraj and Vineeth Sreenivasan could be a sign of changing times for the better. But my only concern is that I don't seem to find that talent emerging in the case of directors and script writers. GOD save Malayalam cinema!