Chocolate, Romeo, Rock and Roll, Kangaroo, Classmates, Ring tone, Laptop, Flash, Sound of Boot, Alice in wonderland, Lollypop, The Tiger, Casanova, Colours, Body guard, Daddy cool – no these are not some mere strings of unrelated English words that I have compiled; they are names of Malayalam movies that were released over the last 2 years or are in the pipeline for release!!
It is difficult to place a finger correctly on whether it’s the need to look “cool” or the pressure of “globalization” of movies, or if this is what the Kerala audience now demands, but the trend in naming movies and the overall quality of Malayalam movies that’s being released off-late is pitifully sub-standard. It irks to see movies of such genre getting released every other week, flooding the theatres and also coagulating the minds of the average movie watcher. Creativity, that quite withstood the trial of time in our movies, seems to have vanished into oblivion.
I had grown up watching Malayalam movies and had admired its simplicity and its ability to tell us powerful tales by fiercely guarding its originality. At the time when the Hindi film industry was being coined as “Bollywood” (I never quite liked that word; a lame copy of the famous Hollywood), and movies were being marketed in more Indian cities and abroad, Malayalam films were “nice” and “authentic” and were mostly confined to viewers within Kerala and through some late releases to viewers in a few other cities. They had that old-world-charm in its stories, its heroes, its heroines, its plots, its shooting locales; everything helped one relate easily to them. They did not take you on a “dream-trip” to aspirational Switzerland or Holland, nor did the protagonists try to appear “super-human” or “god-players”. The aesthetics of movies of that by-gone era had delighted me and the movies from those eons are a pleasure to watch even today.
The blockbusters which were released then were thought-provoking. The low-budget movies demonstrated communal issues, the kerala political scenarios, the belly-bursting comedies, the campus and mature romances, the tragedies that made you weep along with the lead characters in the movie; everything captured the viewers’ intellects. Adaptations of a lot of literary works into movies helped the not so avid readers to look into the minds of M T Vasudevan or O V Vijayan and understand their writings. It was a treat to watch the likes of Mammootty, Mohanlal, Sreenivasan, Thilakan, Nedumudi Venu, Jagathy Sreekumar, Innocent, Shobana, Urvashi, Kaviyoor Ponnamma, KPAC Lalitha and a host of others in movies such as these.
The Kerala film industry has got itself muddled into unwarranted controversies, the silent, unconfessed dual between the “senior” and the “new/junior” actors, the confused movie associations unsure of the reason for their existence and baffled at the sides that are supposed to support, rising costs of actor/actress remunerations which is not quite withstanding with the movie’s success or failure, production houses funding movies that are not “off-beat” or “original” but always surrounding around the “never-aging” superstars, members of the star “fan clubs” who are set out to hoot away movies that do not feature their favourite actor(s) have become the norm. I recently read an article by a pained and an observant audience who couldn’t help lamenting on how the stage programs in all the award ceremonies in Kerala had participants dancing and singing to the tunes of Tamil and Hindi movie songs only. “Can you see anyone in the Tamil or the Hindi film industry dance on stage to a Malayalam movie song?”, asked he. Well, we all know the answer to that one.
M. Karunanidhi, the Tamil Nadu CM had announced a discount in entertainment tax for Tamil movies that have a Tamil title and the latest movie to honour this commitment of TN Govt is Rajnikanth-Shankar’s movie, Robot. The team is considering renaming it to a Tamil name, Yenthiram!! I sincerely hope that V S Achudanandan takes a leaf out of the book of his Tamil Nadu counterpart and contribute his 2 cents in saving this drowning industry; ensuring mandatory Malayalam movie titles to begin with!!....on second thoughts, any idea if someone’s offered the Malayalam film industry tax sops for naming the movies in English??
It is difficult to place a finger correctly on whether it’s the need to look “cool” or the pressure of “globalization” of movies, or if this is what the Kerala audience now demands, but the trend in naming movies and the overall quality of Malayalam movies that’s being released off-late is pitifully sub-standard. It irks to see movies of such genre getting released every other week, flooding the theatres and also coagulating the minds of the average movie watcher. Creativity, that quite withstood the trial of time in our movies, seems to have vanished into oblivion.
I had grown up watching Malayalam movies and had admired its simplicity and its ability to tell us powerful tales by fiercely guarding its originality. At the time when the Hindi film industry was being coined as “Bollywood” (I never quite liked that word; a lame copy of the famous Hollywood), and movies were being marketed in more Indian cities and abroad, Malayalam films were “nice” and “authentic” and were mostly confined to viewers within Kerala and through some late releases to viewers in a few other cities. They had that old-world-charm in its stories, its heroes, its heroines, its plots, its shooting locales; everything helped one relate easily to them. They did not take you on a “dream-trip” to aspirational Switzerland or Holland, nor did the protagonists try to appear “super-human” or “god-players”. The aesthetics of movies of that by-gone era had delighted me and the movies from those eons are a pleasure to watch even today.
The blockbusters which were released then were thought-provoking. The low-budget movies demonstrated communal issues, the kerala political scenarios, the belly-bursting comedies, the campus and mature romances, the tragedies that made you weep along with the lead characters in the movie; everything captured the viewers’ intellects. Adaptations of a lot of literary works into movies helped the not so avid readers to look into the minds of M T Vasudevan or O V Vijayan and understand their writings. It was a treat to watch the likes of Mammootty, Mohanlal, Sreenivasan, Thilakan, Nedumudi Venu, Jagathy Sreekumar, Innocent, Shobana, Urvashi, Kaviyoor Ponnamma, KPAC Lalitha and a host of others in movies such as these.
The Kerala film industry has got itself muddled into unwarranted controversies, the silent, unconfessed dual between the “senior” and the “new/junior” actors, the confused movie associations unsure of the reason for their existence and baffled at the sides that are supposed to support, rising costs of actor/actress remunerations which is not quite withstanding with the movie’s success or failure, production houses funding movies that are not “off-beat” or “original” but always surrounding around the “never-aging” superstars, members of the star “fan clubs” who are set out to hoot away movies that do not feature their favourite actor(s) have become the norm. I recently read an article by a pained and an observant audience who couldn’t help lamenting on how the stage programs in all the award ceremonies in Kerala had participants dancing and singing to the tunes of Tamil and Hindi movie songs only. “Can you see anyone in the Tamil or the Hindi film industry dance on stage to a Malayalam movie song?”, asked he. Well, we all know the answer to that one.
M. Karunanidhi, the Tamil Nadu CM had announced a discount in entertainment tax for Tamil movies that have a Tamil title and the latest movie to honour this commitment of TN Govt is Rajnikanth-Shankar’s movie, Robot. The team is considering renaming it to a Tamil name, Yenthiram!! I sincerely hope that V S Achudanandan takes a leaf out of the book of his Tamil Nadu counterpart and contribute his 2 cents in saving this drowning industry; ensuring mandatory Malayalam movie titles to begin with!!....on second thoughts, any idea if someone’s offered the Malayalam film industry tax sops for naming the movies in English??
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