During a panel discussion after a screening of the Malayalam movie Virus earlier this year in Mumbai, a passionate gentleman stood up from the crowd and asked director Aashiq Abu, with utmost sincerity and almost pleadingly, what he reads, watches, thinks and aspires to do. The man wanted to know why the Malayalam industry was so ahead of its Hindi counterpart, and what made filmmakers from the little state come up with such well-crafted movies.
After the applause and laughter from the crowd and the panel—which included actors Parvathy Thiruvothu and Rima Kallingal—had died down, Abu said that Kerala also had its share of bad movies, but the difference was that the audience held them accountable. “People [in Kerala] do not look at the star, they look at the writer and the director and the content,” he said. Kallingal, his wife, chimed in with a one-liner: “You cannot get away with shit there.”
Though Malayalam cinema has always had good content, the sudden wave of appreciation, especially beyond the state’s borders, is largely because of the rise of streaming platforms. And it helps that this year has been a particularly solid one for the industry.
“Yes, we certainly are going through a good phase in the Malayalam film industry,” said Neelima Menon, the editor of Fullpicture, a movie portal for Malayalam films. “Films are exploring unbeaten paths in terms of content, narration and techniques.”
The themes are relatable yet quirky, and have found the sweet spot between critical praise and box office success. This harkens back to the era of middle-stream Malayalam cinema a few decades ago, which married mainstream with parallel to produce a string of hits.
One of the people leading the change is Soubin Shahir. A native of Fort Kochi, Shahir started out as an assistant director in the 2000s and became an actor a decade later. He had a breakout performance in Premam, in which he played a physical education teacher. Soon, he soon got meatier parts and won the state award in 2018 for his role in Sudani from Nigeria. This year, he played Saji, the eldest of four squabbling brothers in Kumbalangi Nights and a childlike adult in Ambili.
Another find in Premam was Vinay Forrt, also a Fort Kochi guy. With more than a decade of theatre experience, Forrt first found appreciation in Shutter, where he played an autorickshaw driver. But it was his bumbling, love-struck professor in Premam that made him famous. After a few hits and misses, he starred this year in Thamasha, in which he plays a professor struggling with premature baldness. This was his first film as the lead, and was one of the unexpected hits of the year.
In fact, according to industry watchers, there have been 14 super hits this year. So far. And, of these, only Lucifer, starring Mohanlal, and Mammootty’s Madhura Raja can be called conventional, superstar-driven films. Lucifer became the highest-grossing Malayalam movie, crossing Rs200 crore, but did not inspire many similar attempts. And though the successful Unda did have Mammootty in the lead role, he played an aged policeman on election duty in Chhattisgarh with no trappings of a superstar.
“The age of larger-than-life films seems to be over, at least for the time being,” says Safiya O.C., film critic and writer. “What we see these days are films about the everyday lives of common men and women with interesting twists and turns. It is certainly a welcome change.”
Safiya also credits the local flavour in recent films for pulling in the viewer. While Kumbalangi Nights takes the audience to a ramshackle house by the backwaters of Kochi, Kakshi: Amminippilla told the story of a lawyer in the Malabar region. “That the youth in cities, who have never seen or heard these local slangs or situations, can connect to these characters underlines the cinematic success of these films,” she said.
Kumbalangi Nights was, perhaps, the most well-received film of the year, partly because of the current wonder boy of Malayalam cinema—Shane Nigam. The lanky, curly-haired 23-year-old is part of the Fort Kochi wave that has birthed several offbeat movies. He played a young lover in two films this year—Kumbalangi Nights and Ishq—but he showed different shades in both. Nigam was also part of acclaimed director Shaji N. Karun’s Olu, and has said that the “script is the only criteria for choosing a film”.
Several other actors, too, have followed this credo—picking minor yet important roles instead of leading but vacuous ones. For instance, current heartthrob Tovino Thomas played a small part in Uyare, the story of an acid-attack victim that starred a superb Parvathy. Parvathy, in fact, has been one of the leading ladies of the new-generation movement, and was also in the medical thriller Virus earlier this year.
Another actor who has enjoyed a good year is Rajisha Vijayan. She won the state award for best female actor in her first film, Anuraga Karikkin Vallam, in 2016, and played “an average teenage girl” struggling her way into adulthood in June this year. As she had to play the character from the age of 16 to 26, it required a lot of physical preparation. As did her character of a cyclist in the recently released Finals, which opened to rave reviews.
But, actors aside, it is the new crop of directors who have set the cash registers ringing this year. Most of them are in the twenties and early thirties and seemed to be driven mostly by passion for filmmaking. Some of the notable names include Madhu C. Narayanan (Kumbalangi Nights), Manu Ashokan (Uyare), Ahammed Khabeer (June) and Girish A.D. (Thanneer Mathan Dinangal).
Sajeev Pazhoor, who wrote the script of recent the Sathyam Paranja Viswasikkuvo?, reiterates the importance of the audience. “The Malayali audience is tuned into international films and patterns, thanks to the innumerable film festivals that happen across the state,” he said. “One can win them over only with meaningful content. The fact that [they] accept simple films with novel themes gives us the courage to explore newer terrains.”
And, rest assured, explore they will.