Outsiders and Malayalam films

Posted by Vipi at 22:00

Have you seen a Malayalam movie?

"The Malayalam cinema is a South Indian film industry in the Indian state of Kerala, which makes films in the Malayalam language. Malayalam cinema has pioneered various technical, thematic and production techniques among films in India. The industry is one of the largest producers of Parallel Cinema in India."-That's what wikipedia says about Malayalam cinema.

The industry WAS one of the producers of Parallel cinema in India.Malayalam films were deeply rooted in Kerala's culture.That could be a reason why most of the film lovers outside the state stepped back from them.Here is a classifications of some film lovers oust side Kerala or Non-Malayalees based on their 'attitude' towards Malayalam cinema.Purely based on my reading experiences on internet.

class 1- Malayalam? what kind of a stuff is that?

class 2-All they know is some b-rated Malayalam movies(they call mallu movies) and some b-rated actresses acted in them(both Malayalees and non-Malayalees).So they have a theory of their own-"Malayalam film industry is a porn film industry".

class 3-People in this class know that there is a film industry in Kerala and it produced some 'award winning' movies without no entertainment values.They are 'slooooow' and we may get bored easily if we are going to watch them.

class 4-The class 4 people came to know the existence of 'Malayalam films' only when they read most of the

Priyadarsan's super hit bollywood movies are remakes of Malayalam super hit films released in 80s.

Now this class 4 can be divided into two sub classes.

class 4.1-Since all of the Malayalam remakes were introduced to other languages with unwanted songs/fights making them a typical masala movie,some people think the 'so called Malayalam classics' are masala movies.

class 4.2-Those people who enjoyed this remakes made with masala doses, have an opinion that Malayalam movies are good!!Oh...I didn't knew that!!After watching the original version, some would say 'that villager here in dhoti could have danced in some foreign locales' and some say 'this is better than the remakes!!'

Following is about some serious movie maniacs

class 5- These people know Malayalam was(or is) a quality film industry with three great talents- MohanLal,Mammootty and Adoor Gopalakrishnan.The only Malayalam film they have seen would be 'Vanaprastham'.

class 6-These are fans of mainstream commercial and yet quality movies.They like to watch all good movies in all languages.In Malayalam they first watched 'Bharatham',a Mohanlal movies,in which he got a national award for best actor.After seeing his stunning performance, they decided to watch some other Malayalam movies like 'Kireedom'(MohanLal got a special jury mention) and 'His highness Abdulla'.Then they thought I should watch recents movies of MohanLal and after watching one or two recently released movies of MohanLal(most of them are craps!),they decided Malayalam movies do not produce quality movies anymore.They stopped watching movies in Malayalam!!

Bharatham-poster

class 7-Some people go beyond MohanLal. They watch Mammootty films.They know who was Lohithadas,Shaji N Karun etc.They have seen both 'Bharatham' and 'Thaniyavarthanam'.They summarize Malayalam movies are 'realistic'.But they still don't know Gopi , Murali,Nedumudi Venu , Jagathy Sreekumar or Sreenivasan.

Scene from Thaniyavarthanam-Mammootty,Saritha

class 8- People of this class know some Sathyan anthikkad movies,some Priyadarsan Movies and of caurse some Siby malayil movies.

Scene from Vadakkunokkiyanthram-Sreenivasan,Parvathy

Vaishali movie poster

Utharam-movie poster

They never heard of those Jayaram-Mukesh movies or Murali-Venu-Gopi movies.They didn't get a chance to a movie scripted by M T Vasudevan nair.They didn't see Vaishali or Thazhvaram. I'm very disappointed that most of these people who likes good cinema from India/Kerala haven't heard the dialog "don't talk about Poland"...

Note:I don't know the classic movies in other Indian languages or those from Hollywood.

All pics from the Internet.