Contemporary Malayalam Cinema
by C S Venkiteswaran
In the last few decades, Malayalam cinema has carved a niche for itself in world cinema.
Malayalam is a language spoken by over 30 million people in Keralam (or Kerala), a tiny state at the southernmost tip of India. Keralam is considered an enigma by economists and international agencies for its high achievements in social indices such as literacy, longevity, low infant mortality and very low economic indices.
Cinema also came early to Keralam; a decade after the Lumiere Brothers' historic show at Grand Café, Paris. And, like Vasco da Gama four centuries earlier, cinema also arrived at the shores of Kozhikode, when, with his Edison Bioscope, the itinerant showman, Paul Vincent, screened some films there in 1906. But film production came much later. The first Malayalam movie Vigathakumaran by J. C. Daniel was made only in 1928. It was followed by another silent movie Marthanda Varma (V. V. Rao, 1931) based on a renowned literary work. It took another seven years for the first Malayalam talkie, Balan (S. Nottani, 1938), to arrive.
In the absence of an established indigenous production and distribution system, films in other languages, especially from neighbouring Tamil Nadu, dominated the Keralam film scene. There were only a handful of Malayalam films till the 1950s - when film production began gathering momentum. Since then, it has not looked back.
The Seventies - From Social Realism to Self-expression
If films of the 1950s and 1960s were dominated by literary influences, social realism and dramatic treatment, the 1970s mark a departure.
The 1970s saw a new awakening due to a combination of factors. At the national level, several state institutions were set up to support 'new cinema'. The Film Finance Corporation, Film & Television Institute of India and the National Film Archives were established and a new crop of trained professionals entered the scene.
In Malayalam too, old forms, styles, themes and narratives started giving way to new ones. The literary scene was already undergoing a 'modernist' revolution of sorts. For filmmakers of the earlier era, even when dealing with individual struggles and dilemmas, the resolution and rendering was essentially bound with social liberation. The fate of Neeli in Neelakuyil (P. Bhaskaran/Ramu Kariat, 1954), or Appu and Sankaran Nair in Newspaper Boy (P. Ramdas, 1955), or of Pappu in Odeyil Ninnu (K. S. Sethumadhavan, 1965) was embedded in their class identity and position.
P. N. Menon's Olavum Theeravum (1970) is considered a watershed in the history of Malayalam cinema. Shot almost entirely on location and fired by the realist aesthetic, it broke the claustrophobic ambience of studios and a theatrical mode of rendition. A far more definitive rupture was brought about by Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Swayamvaram (1972), which is supposed to have inaugurated 'new wave' cinema in Malayalam. Although the plot of Swayamvaram is conventional - the trials and tribulations of a runaway couple - with regard to form and treatment, it was a trendsetter.
Backer (1940-1993) was another maverick filmmaker whose cinema consistently dealt with the oppressed and the marginalised - orphans, sex workers, landless peasants, labourers and rebels. His significant films include: Kabani Nadi Chuvannappol (1975), (a bold, avant-garde film about an underground activist and his love, made during the dark days of the National Emergency), Chuvanna Vithukal, Manimuzhakkam (1976), and Sanghaganam (1979). Other notable films of the period were Nirmalayam (1973, M. T. Vasudevan Nair), Swapnadanam (K. G. George, 1975), Aswathama (K. R. Mohanan, 1978) and Yaro Oral (Pavithran, 1978).
The Eighties - The Rise of 'Art' Films
The 1980s were dominated by the prolific Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Aravindan. Adoor's films, noted for their thematic versatility and mastery over form, probed into various aspects of its life and polity and were firmly situated in the Malayalee milieu. Kodiyettam (1977) was about a village bum (played by Gopi, one among the many finds of the 'new wave'), coming to terms with his life. Elippathayam (1981) graphically portrayed the claustrophobia of a feudal mind that refuses to change in a changing world. Mukha Mukham (1984), which ruffled many a feather locally and was widely admired outside, was an introspective look at the leftist movement and its decadence. Mathilukal (1987), based on a celebrated story by Vaikom Muhamed Basheer, explored the blocks that militate against freedom, love and creativity. Vidheyan (1993) clinically analysed the sado-masochistic dimensions inherent in master-servant bonding, and Kathapurushan (1995) was an autobiographical gaze at recent Keralam history.
The films of Aravindan (1935-1991) have an oneiric quality. They were formally innovative and explored new realms of experience and imagination. His second film Kanchana Seeta (1977), was a celluloid adaptation of a play by Sreekantan Nair, which dwelt upon the all too human conflicts of the mythic Rama in a tribal setting. Thampu (1978) was a lyrical film about the arrival and departure of a circus troupe and the ripples it creates in a sleepy village. Kummatty (1979) was one of the most imaginative in children's film, still an unexplored genre in Malayalam [1]. Estheppan (1979) is a magical search into the roots of a legendary character in a fishing village, and Pokkuveyil (1981) took the theme of the disillusioned youth of Uttarayanam to its extreme, imaginatively using poetry, long takes and elevating music. Aravindan's later films, Chidambaram (1985), Oridathu (1986) and Vasthuhara (1990) exhibit a growing concern for the linear narrative.
One of the most enigmatic figures in Malayalam cinema during the period was John Abraham (1937-1987), in whom Ritwik Ghatak (the great Bengali filmmaker and his teacher), saw 'the future of Indian cinema'. As erratic and unpredictable in life as in his films, John's works are imbued with a deep humanity. In a way, they dealt with the very impossibility of being human and creative. His first film, Agraharathil Kazhuthai (Tamil, 1977), centred on a donkey in a Brahmin village and was a blackly humorous look at a caste-oriented society. A strand of dark humour also runs through his next film Cheriyachente Kroora Krithyangal (1979).
The untimely death of John Abraham and P. A. Backer dealt a severe blow to the alternative cinema movement in the region.
Shifting Terrains
Unlike other parts of the country, Malayalam 'new wave' was not a state-supported phenomenon. It was made possible by enterprising producers and cooperative efforts. (For instance, the Chitralekha Film Cooperative produced all the early films of Adoor Gopalakrishnan. An industrialist, Ravindran Nair produced some of his and Aravindan's later films). This freedom from dependence on the state was a major reason why 'art' films continued to be produced in Malayalam while they met a natural death elsewhere in the country. With regard to its audience base also, the Keralam situation was different: it was not limited to the cities, but spawned all over the state and was nurtured by a vibrant film society movement. Thematically, while the new cinema in other languages returned to rural life, portraying the cruelty and injustice behind its idyllic surface, the concerns of Malayalam films of the period were different. Various films of earlier decades had already dealt with questions of class and caste. The films of the Malayalam 'new wave' were engrossed with dilemmas of the educated, upper caste, middle class and male youth. Their angst was more often existential in nature combined with that of survival and a struggle for expression. Unlike their counterparts in other languages, the journeys of the heroes of Malayalam were not from the city to the village, but in the opposite direction. The Malayalee protagonists looked forward to the cities for survival and also for self-expression. Viswam and Seetha of Swayamvaram elope to the city to pursue their dreams. In Uttarayanam and Aswathamavu, the city is an alluring presence, though pretentious and sometimes hostile.
While 'new wave' filmmakers were hogging attention and placing Malayalam cinema on the world map, commercial cinema was also slowly undergoing significant change.
The Commercial Stream - Sex, Violence and Political corruption
By the 1980s, a kind of osmosis was under way with the gradual dissolution of the boundaries separating the commercial mainstream from the elitist 'art' cinema. A crop of filmmakers - the practitioners of 'middle cinema' - burst onto the scene. Among them were prolific filmmakers such as Bharathan, P. Padmarajan, Fazil, Satyan Anthikkad, Lenin Rajendran and Balachandra Menon. The formal and thematic distinctness that separated the 'art' and the 'commercial', had thinned, and as a corollary, the rationale of the film society movement.
In the mainstream, the work of P. Padmarajan and K. G. George dominated the 1980s. Padmarajan (1936-1991), a novelist and short story writer of repute, started his career as a successful scriptwriter for Bharathan and I. V. Sasi.
K. G. George, a graduate from the Film Institute, started as an assistant to Ramu Kariat, and made his debut with Swapnadanam (1975) a psychodrama about marital love. In the 1980s he went on to make a series of significant and commercially successful films about women and the traps that society lays for them: Kolangal (1980); Yavanika (1982); Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback (1983); Irakal (1985); Kathakku Pinnil (1987); Mattoral (1988); Ee Kanni Koodi (1990).
I. V. Sasi, Bharathan and Fazil were the other commercially successful directors of the period. While Fazil's concerns were adolescent love and filial relationships, I. V. Sasi's canvas was broader. After Avalude Ravukal (1978), a trendsetter of sorts that made forays into the national soft porn market, Sasi, in association with his scriptwriter T. Damodaran, made a series of political melodramas based on newspaper reports and public political scandals of the 1980s. The major themes of the period were entanglements in marital/love life and corruption in public life. Sex and violence formed an inevitable part of the narrative.
The Nineties - Knee-jerk responses to Globalisation
The 1990s saw a sea change in themes as well as audience expectations and tastes. Nehruvian dreams about a 'mixed economy' receded. The new buzzwords were liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation. The opening up of the sky and the proliferation of TV channels released a flood of images and narratives from all over the world.
Meanwhile, the spread of cable television (at present Keralam has four round-the-clock channels - one in the public and three in the private sector), was also gnawing into the thematic terrain of cinema. The plethora of tele-serials (as many as 25 a day!) that dominate Malayalam channels, are almost all family dramas or centre around man-woman relationships, limiting the thematic choices of the film industry.
The Slapstick and the Sleaze
Working within limited economies of scale, unable to compete technically and with no substantial outlet outside the state, Malayalam cinema of the 1990s retreated to slapstick and sleaze - the only areas where the indigenous had an assured market and could not be combated from without. In recent years, the Malayalam cinema industry has been dominated by two kinds of films. One, a number of low budget, 'full-length' comedies, and the other, soft porn films with second line stars and shoestring budgets. The comedies are all dialogue-based and depend entirely upon mimicry artists who are making a beeline to films. And, at the crest of the soft porn wave that is lapping the shores of Keralam at present, is an un-crowned super star Shakeela. Last year (2001), about a third of the films released in the state were of the 'Shakeela' genre.
With the obliteration of the difference between the 'art' and the 'commercial', a new breed of filmmakers comfortable with both the worlds, emerged. Prominent among them are: Sibi Malayil, Fazil, Priyadarsan, Srinivasan, Kamal, Jayaraj, Balachandra Menon and Lohitadas. Their films dealt with socially relevant themes treated with a tinge of élan and humour. Their strength rested basically on the script. Many of them were commercially successful and have also won acclaim abroad.
In a way, commercial films were rediscovering 'art' cinema as yet another formula - films that were low budget, angled for awards, and packaged for the Festival audience. One of the most prolific and successful among them, Jayaraj, represents the Janus face of contemporary Keralam life and polity. His body of films reflects the contradictions of a people caught between nostalgia and pleasure, the aggressive rise of communalism, on the one hand, and the inescapable forces unleashed by globalisation on the other. While in one set of his films (Johnny Walker, Highway, Millennium Stars), we encounter unmistakable icons and markers of a 'global' culture, in another we come across obscurantist notions and a return to 'traditional values' (Paithrukam, Kudumba Sametham, Sopanam). Yet another set of his films have attracted international attention. These include Desadanam (1996), Kaliyattam (1997), Karunam (1999), Santham (2000) and Kannaki (2001), all of which are low-budget and deal with various aspects of contemporary life, and are more often intended for international audiences.
The Rise of Communalism
The 1990s saw a spate of films centred on the upper caste milieu; their rituals, costumes, concerns and mannerisms were established as the normative/narrative centre. The Valluvanadan Malayalam (a slang term used by the upper castes in central Keralam and popularised by the highly successful scripts of M. T. Vasudevan Nair), became the mothertongue of popular cinema. The minorities, especially communities such as Muslims and members of the lower castes, were gradually marginalised and forced into stereotypes, tending to appear more as exceptions to the 'norm' and the 'normal'.
If packaging the local and the exotic is one side of Malayalee ambivalence about the conflict between tradition and modernity, the other side is nakedly communal and violent. An undercurrent of communalism runs through most of the commercially successful films of the 1990s. Sometimes, it manifests itself in a subtle manner (dress, demeanour, slang, double-edged dialogues, character anatomy and traits), but in the films of directors like Shaji Kailas, it is flaunted to great box office effect. His recent hits Narasimham and Valyettan (2000), portray the lumpen and blatantly communal macho heroes played by the super stars, Mohanlal and Mammootty respectively. These have a deadly mix of feudal values and the physical exploits of a superhuman hero.
The two major conspicuous filmmakers of the 1990s are T. V. Chandran and Shaji Karun. Chandran began his film career as an actor in Backer's Kabani Nadi Chuvannappol and made his debut with Krishnankutty in 1980. It was followed by a Tamil film Hemavin Kathalargal (1984) and Alicinte Anveshanam (1989). The latter is a disturbing film about the chasm that separates the lives of man and woman. Its narrative is about a wife in search of her missing husband. She ends up realising that she had never known him at all. His next film Ponthan Mada (1993) is centred on the life and relationships of Mada, a peasant who is a mute witness to the tides of history. Ormakalundayirikkanam (1995) deals with a period in Keralam history when a democratically elected communist government was overthrown by the Centre. The film unfolds through the eyes of a teenager who, torn between a tyrant-father and a local toughie who is his hero, is gradually forced to come to terms with life.
Shaji Karun, who was cinematographer on most of Aravindan's films, made an impressive debut with Piravi (1988) which won several international awards. Shaji's latest film Vanaprastham (1999) which won the national award for the best film, dealt with the inner and outer struggles of a traditional actor in a society that no longer supports his art, nor recognises his worth.
The most striking development in the first decade of the new millennium is the entry of a number of young filmmakers who, fighting against all odds and despite the so-called crisis in the film industry, have managed to make interesting films. Most of their films are low budget, formally adventurous, thematically introspective and engage with the present in all its complexities. One hopes they will be the harbingers of Malayalam cinema for the new millennium.
Dr.C S Venkiteswaran is faculty, Centre For Taxation Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. He has published a number of articles on Malayalam Cinema in Deep Focus, Lights Camera Action and South Asian Cinema and writes regularly on film and media in New Indian Express.
[1] Curiously, 'film' always meant 'full length features' in Keralam. Even when the so-called new wave was at its peak, there were no innovative attempts worth mentioning in genres like the short film, documentary, children's film etc. All discourses and experimentation in cinema were limited to the feature films. Even the film societies held similar notions. Only in recent years, has there been a re-awakening in these areas with a crop of new filmmakers entering the field.
