Having been homebound for sometime now and with enough clutter in the TV channels,watching movies suddenly has became very appealing. But I have to confess that am no longer in the rampant watch-any-movie age where I could digest anything from a Saajan to a Hero No 1 but clearly not also yet there to enjoy a Satyajit Ray or Pedro Almodvar movie.Anyways its regional cinema that I am talking here.
All this movie watching started with me giving company to my mom and she restricts her staple of movies to only Tamil and Malayalam films. After a point of time comparison was just bound to follow...
Best things first - Malayalam films are quite a revelation. From being funny,melancholic, enchanting, tragic, uplifting to plainly being entertaining the range and depth of malayalam films has simply awed me. And am not even talking here of the well-known, superhit mad capers of Mohanlal or Mamooty that the outside world knows of. Let me confess I dont even understand the language completely.
Here are a few movies that caught my attention - "Gaja Kesari Yogum" has
Innocent starring as an ex-mahout who passionately dreams of owning an elephant one day. Taking a loan from a local bank he unwittingly buys a circus elephant that has been trained in Hindi. The rest of the film is about the troubles the entire family take in learning hindi, their hilarious trials in re-training their elephant and on being unable to repay the loan their efforts in retaining the pachyderm with them. Its one superb entertainer of a film with no big names to boast of.
There was this movie (I dont seem to recollect the name) that had Srinivasan as the lazy, good-for-nothing son of a village ayurvedic doctor played by Thilakan. When his younger brother (who is an MBBS doctor) is preferred over him in marriage to his cousin, by his own uncle he is utterly dejected. He revolts and runs away from home only to return as a fake Siddha swamiji who dupes & lures all his brothers clients by mixing allopathic medicines with few harmless herbs in the name of Ayurveda. Another complete laugh riot.
Then there was this fantastic movie - Perumthachan
based on folklore of kerala's legendary master carpenter. As already said I am no fan of "art movies" but this movie had me rivetted and I dont think it can also be classified under the category of art.
And despite not being any kind of movie expert I have to say that this movie is classic stuff. Should be on the must-watch list of every movie-goer.
[Pic courtesy: Cinema of Malayalam]
The list hardly stops here and I have not even made it to the commercially well
done films of reputed stars such as Jayaram, Dileep, Mukesh, Mohanlal etc.
Most of the Malayalam movies are made on a shoe string budget - No foreign
locales, no expensive or elaborate costumes (c'mon how much can a mundu/dhoti
cost?), simple sets but amazingly different & refreshing storylines. The dialogues are simple, funny with lots of pun and very enjoyable. And they best of all is the portrayal of their leading ladies. When they could manage to make Ramba also look beautiful and graceful, need I say more?
Sadly their audience is very niche and limited.
And then there is the bizzare world of Tamil movies.
I picked up the much hyped Madhavan movie Aarya on reading reviews that it was a
thorough entertainer. To say the least my stomach churned to think that there are
people who enjoy this nonsense in the name of cinema and even more worse post
reviews that goes like this -"When an irresistible Arya ignores deepika's angry
shrieks and refuses to salute her, she goes ballistic, destroys his bike, kidnaps
his sister and is out for his blood. Predictably, since Arya stays cool and pays
her back in a fitting manner, she falls for him, his valour, his manliness..."
"Madhavan is simply superb. As a suave student of Medical college, he even holds
his stethoscope and apron with panache!" ..Hehehe God save us!
This is no biased blah blah against Tamil movies nor is it the case of citing one bad egg. Actually Aarya even seems better when compared to others. While am not
denying that for every Nee Venunda Chellum, there are films such as Mozhi,
Paruthiveeran and Vettiyadu Villayadu. But they are more an exception than the
rule. 98% of Tamil movies are still run-of-the-mill love stories with the usual all-powerful hero, his comic sidekick, the virtuous heroine and hamming villians.
'Sivaji' sucked big time and to hear that it is being considered for the state award makes one snort 'n snigger.
I don't understand this at all. While there isn't much of a difference in the
demographics of Kerala and Tamilnadu why does the taste in movies differ so vastly?
All this movie watching started with me giving company to my mom and she restricts her staple of movies to only Tamil and Malayalam films. After a point of time comparison was just bound to follow...
Best things first - Malayalam films are quite a revelation. From being funny,melancholic, enchanting, tragic, uplifting to plainly being entertaining the range and depth of malayalam films has simply awed me. And am not even talking here of the well-known, superhit mad capers of Mohanlal or Mamooty that the outside world knows of. Let me confess I dont even understand the language completely.
Here are a few movies that caught my attention - "Gaja Kesari Yogum" has
Innocent starring as an ex-mahout who passionately dreams of owning an elephant one day. Taking a loan from a local bank he unwittingly buys a circus elephant that has been trained in Hindi. The rest of the film is about the troubles the entire family take in learning hindi, their hilarious trials in re-training their elephant and on being unable to repay the loan their efforts in retaining the pachyderm with them. Its one superb entertainer of a film with no big names to boast of.
There was this movie (I dont seem to recollect the name) that had Srinivasan as the lazy, good-for-nothing son of a village ayurvedic doctor played by Thilakan. When his younger brother (who is an MBBS doctor) is preferred over him in marriage to his cousin, by his own uncle he is utterly dejected. He revolts and runs away from home only to return as a fake Siddha swamiji who dupes & lures all his brothers clients by mixing allopathic medicines with few harmless herbs in the name of Ayurveda. Another complete laugh riot.
Then there was this fantastic movie - Perumthachan
based on folklore of kerala's legendary master carpenter. As already said I am no fan of "art movies" but this movie had me rivetted and I dont think it can also be classified under the category of art.
And despite not being any kind of movie expert I have to say that this movie is classic stuff. Should be on the must-watch list of every movie-goer.
[Pic courtesy: Cinema of Malayalam]
The list hardly stops here and I have not even made it to the commercially well
done films of reputed stars such as Jayaram, Dileep, Mukesh, Mohanlal etc.
Most of the Malayalam movies are made on a shoe string budget - No foreign
locales, no expensive or elaborate costumes (c'mon how much can a mundu/dhoti
cost?), simple sets but amazingly different & refreshing storylines. The dialogues are simple, funny with lots of pun and very enjoyable. And they best of all is the portrayal of their leading ladies. When they could manage to make Ramba also look beautiful and graceful, need I say more?
Sadly their audience is very niche and limited.
And then there is the bizzare world of Tamil movies.
I picked up the much hyped Madhavan movie Aarya on reading reviews that it was a
thorough entertainer. To say the least my stomach churned to think that there are
people who enjoy this nonsense in the name of cinema and even more worse post
reviews that goes like this -"When an irresistible Arya ignores deepika's angry
shrieks and refuses to salute her, she goes ballistic, destroys his bike, kidnaps
his sister and is out for his blood. Predictably, since Arya stays cool and pays
her back in a fitting manner, she falls for him, his valour, his manliness..."
"Madhavan is simply superb. As a suave student of Medical college, he even holds
his stethoscope and apron with panache!" ..Hehehe God save us!
This is no biased blah blah against Tamil movies nor is it the case of citing one bad egg. Actually Aarya even seems better when compared to others. While am not
denying that for every Nee Venunda Chellum, there are films such as Mozhi,
Paruthiveeran and Vettiyadu Villayadu. But they are more an exception than the
rule. 98% of Tamil movies are still run-of-the-mill love stories with the usual all-powerful hero, his comic sidekick, the virtuous heroine and hamming villians.
'Sivaji' sucked big time and to hear that it is being considered for the state award makes one snort 'n snigger.
I don't understand this at all. While there isn't much of a difference in the
demographics of Kerala and Tamilnadu why does the taste in movies differ so vastly?
12 comments:
A good write...congrats.
In my opinion Tamil and Telugu movies are too "stars" driven and not script driven. ofcourse there are exceptions but I am like you refering to the 90%.
But off late even Mallu movies are falling intot he trap with movies like Praja, Alibhai. which are getting star driven and aping their neighbours
Your only post till date that I dont fully agree with.
Tamizhan
@friend
Thank you. Lets hope better sense prevails and mallu movies dont go the same route as tamil ones.
@Anon,
What can I say?..We may not agree on everything but thats fine as long as we are entitled to our opinions and respect each other's. Right?
I comletely agree with you:)
Oh come on now. You mean to say that the sooper-star walking down the aisle, the earth shaking, the women crooning, the bad guys shivering, dust and water rising up to form a magnificent cyclone, the poetically synchronized finger-movement through the thick mane of wig, the all-world laugh that will launch a thousand ships (err..) isn't enough to convince you of the superior quality of tamil films?
It's an interesting write-up, but the reasoning has a lot more to do with the culture, commercialization and the sheer size of the population (and automatically - revenues) - various sub-stratas of demographics. Then comes the differences in the speed of life (undeniably a little faster in TN) and mindset.
Dear (yet-another) Anon,
Sweet sarcasm but I wonder how & why sheer population should have a detrimental effect on the culture and taste? Not that population of Kerala is as low as that of Mongolia or something...
Hmm, faster life? Ooh are people there already hovering around in computer-controlled driverless cabs? Now you c'mon...
[And next time pls pls leave a name. Its kind of getting tired talking to anon's alone :) ]
"Hmm, faster life? Ooh are people there already hovering around in computer-controlled driverless cabs? Now you c'mon... "
What??! You mean to say that you haven't seen the state-of-the-art "maatu-vandis" yet? Girl, you've got a LOT of catching up to do. :-)
We aren't comparing them to Mongolian movies now , are we ? Here are some quick facts:
Kerala average about 70 films a year, with TN doing 110 films a year or thereabouts. Now, I'm not even going to contest the fact that the quality of some of the malayalam films more often than not better (in fact lets just say much better) than those released in tamil. However, a lot of it has to do with perception. A breakdown of those numbers would reveal a slightly different story. Let's take for example the year 2001, where about 89 films were released in Malayalam. Now, 59 of those films were those of a specific genre. Would you like to take a guess as what that is? Soft porn!!! That's right, close to 65% of the films released on a good year were soft porn films. Upon further research, one would find that the average in recent years still hovers between 60-65%. Should Malayalam films be then classified as more of a soft-porn industry and thus make a conclusion on the general taste of the keralite? Most definitely not. Another quick point I'd like to add here. You'd also find a handful of tamil/telegu films (the commercial hit ones) either re-made , or dubbed in malayalam. Not much work required there. And thus, a quick re-cap:
1. Over 60% of the movies are "jhingi -chakka" movies
2. about 10-15% of the movies are dubbed.
This leaves a handful of movies that the producers and directors need to make on their own. Which niche space is left out? You guessed it - the "alternate/art/different-theme" films.
There are two things:
1. Quality of good tamil movies vs quality of good malayalam movies. Like I said earlier, I am not even contesting this one. Both have their own kinds of quality films. However, quality malayalam films have more often than not dealt with a range of topics which tamil films haven't even dared venture into. Tamil films too have their own gems, but the diversity isn't seen yet.
2. The numbers. The numbers of "quality" though would be quite similar. One cannot pick a specific sample from Population I and compare it to all of Population II. Violation of stat principles :-)
Another reason is the sheer population size , which then becomes a matter of commerce.Kerala has a population of over 31 million. TN stands at twice that number at 62 over 62 million. More than 80% of the average movie goer in tamilnadu is below 25, appreciative of the more "generic" movie theme. The producers simply look to it as a money-making cow and make high-budget movies according to taste and recover the costs rather easily. Now, you'll find the same trend in Kerala too in recent times, with a much younger crowd in the theatres, and the movie-makers of kerala will invariably follow suit.
Have I made any sense at all?I hope so! It's just a matter of perception I guess.
*disclaimer : I'm just a regular movie-buff. I watch all kinds of movies. The meaningless hindi movies with ridiculous taglines like "hero-love story of a spy", "aap ka surooor, the mooovvvieee", "dung -the junk " and what not are my personal favourites.
Vicky (Anon sounds like akon , ugh)
@Vicky: Really good analysis. Am not going to contest anything you say..just that to dumb-me it looks like you are but defending the present scenerio. Sure, we all enjoyed nursery rhymes but we just didnt stay put over there right?
And also I can't buy the theory that 'all' 25 years only want masala movies. If so every such masala movies should be doing bumper business but haven't you noticed that offlate offbeat movies are making a bigger splash?
Moreover I am not against this genre (if we can classify them so) of movies but troubled when this is almost the only thing available. The first scene in Mozhi, though shown comically, is actually a true fact of most Tamil movies.
There are so many different aspects of relationships that can be explored apart from plain love stories. The art/dance culture, middle class issues, middle-aged couples, so many that I can think of.
Leaving it here...its time for my medicines. :)
Thanks for your response. I am, by no means, defending these kind of movies. You're right, there are many more movies with alternate themes that have come up in recent times, and that's heartening to know. Let's hope that the movie-makers don't fall into the money trap too deep.
I'm all for variety. I like all kinds of movies. Let me know if you ever need a good list of must-watch movies :-) . You'll be truly appalled by what you've missed!
Malayalam movies have limited budget to get the money back .
So that means , they can't grow any bigger ..because no matter how much they Grow ( Bigg investments ) There is NO guarantee they will get it back . unless we have a will smith or tom cruise..hmmm
"A Frog in the Well" article
why dont you pick and choose movies in tamil too as you did in malayalam. from of kerala "chosen" films are projected. my humble opinion is tamils know the best movies in malayalam than in tamil. why are you unable to pick uthiri pookkal or veedu or sandhya raagam and hell lot of new movies (2011 onwards)(have you ever watched them even?) in malayalam movies the slapstick comedies you mention are shameless copies of silent movies and rowan atkinson and jackie chan movies. if you are comparing good movies please select such movies from both the sides. if you want to compare craps you have them on both sides. but you are stereotyped may be becuase you are smitten by a mallu girl in your office and you are so impressed by her boastings. have some self respect.
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