Christian Brothers

In tough economic times a paisa vasool movie is a blessing for the audience. Paisa vasool is desi way of saying, ‘to get bang for your buck’. Movies that fall into this category give you a chance to see all the major heroes in one place and will be also be a veritable avial showcasing comedy, tragedy, songs, romance, hot babes, cool cars, reunions, breakups, action, reaction and whatever else you could ask for in a 2.5-3 hour package. You purchase a ticket to watch a movie and come out feeling like you’ve watched 5 movies for the price of one. The producer is pleased and the audience satiated and Christian Brothers avial clinches number #1 spot at the box office.

Mohanlal (who else can play a Mumbai underworld don in Malayalam cinema) is the foundation of this movie’s brotherhood. Mohanlal has the copyright of don roles from the early nineties ever since he became the good boy turned goonda in Kireedom and moved to Mumbai in Adhipan and came back to Kerala in His Highness Abdullah. Too bad that Mammootty missed that boat. 

Dileep is the other brother and he fields all the comedy balls and Suresh Gopi is the brother(-in-law) who like Mohanlal has a copyright on a certain type of hero -  the police officer who swallowed an English dictionary. (Isn’t it time we awarded a honorary IPS to Suresh Gopi like Lt.Col title conferred to Mohanlal by the Indian Army (122nd Infantry Battalion)?) Sharat Kumar, the manliest of actors from Tamil in the 50-60 age group is imported to be Mohanlal's buddy.An interesting face that flickered by was Vivekandan, the actor who played the teen lead in 1990 movie - Kshanakkathu, as one of Mohanlal's sidekicks.

Saikumar is the father who created these brothers and the entire Christian brotherhood is often challenged by another set of brothers from a different mother, this one led by Biju Menon and fathered by Vijayaraghavan. Mother figures are non existent, no wonder the boys are running wild. Female actors are all damsels in distress waiting to be rescued by the appropriate Christian brother. In fact cars and guns play more important roles than ladies in this movie. This is our very own Guns, Gems(of actors) and Steel, for your daily dose of the aforementioned three items watch this movie in installments.

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Gaddama (Khaddama)

Women in flight (no, not Amelia Earhart), escaping their wretched existence make good movie material. If they are fleeing Middle-East, the place already has a shady reputation when it comes to women’s rights, it is even more convincing. Or ask Betty Mahmoody. Hollywood took a stab at this subject with Mahmoody’s real life escape from Iran with her little daughter in the film "Not Without My Daughter" adapted from her book of the same name.

Kerala, the Indian state which sends the largest number of workers to the Gulf countries in the Middle East should definitely have some stories, right? But who cares about the stories of maids and ayahs, drivers and construction workers unless there was a Cinderella factor at the end.

Looks like Malayalam director Kamal does. He knows a sellable story when he sees one.  He chanced upon the harrowing real life story of a maid named Subaida from a Malayali journalist in the Middle East, K.U.Iqbal . It had the makings of a best-seller, no doubt. If it was in the US a paperback would have been out first. To Kamal’s credit he put Subaida’s story on fast track, skipping the book stores and direct to the big screen.

Kavya Madhavan gets to play the role of Aswathy, the Khaddama(Gaddama or the house maid), the lead character. Since it is a story of escape, the captors(or the employers) are not shown in a flattering light. Suck it up, one family does not make a country, the director is not here to make generalization he is presenting a story, of which he does a commendable job. He is aided by a set of talented actors including Kavya, Sreenivasan, Suraj Venjaramood and Murali Gopi. Kavya as always, has acted well, she is such a seasoned actress. Then again this is like "the" default role for a Malayalam actress – defenseless, teary eyed, at the mercy of man- her protector, speaking volumes with huge helpless eyes rather than using real dialogue.

It was interesting to get a peek into the social fabric of Middle East composed of two distinct layers (maybe more if you count the Western expats, but I am not going there)– one, of the rich natives and a nether world of their coterie of servants and aids, two streams running parallel but never polluting each other by crossing. Khaddama is a window in to this sub strata of Middle Eastern society, made up of foreigners, whose survival in the desert is at the mercy of their rich Arab employers. Definitely worth a watch.

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Twenty Twenty

This movie is a buffet lunch for Malayali - all the various dishes for the price of one dinner. Although how much of a dish each Malluwood actor is, is a question of debate. You get to see M & Ms , Dileep, Suresh Gopi, Mukesh - all in one movie. Of course there are female actors included for the sake of inclusion - like Bhavana, Kavya Madhavan, Gopika and a bone in the form of an item number thrown to the Generation Y of Malayalam cinema viz Prithviraj, Jayasurya, Kunchako Bobban and Nayantara. There, that took care of them, most of the movie belong to the mighty M & Ms - Mohanlal and Mammootty, the Generation A or B or something which has not exited Malayalam cinema even when they have completed half a century on the screen of life.

A mega hit in Kerala, all the actors play the part they are now assigned to in Malayalam cinema, not the one assigned to by the script, not that the script was very different. It was written with the signature elements of each actor and their place in Malayalam filmdom. In that way you can say the actors were not really acting, just living their real life roles in film industry.

20-20 was produced as fund raiser for AMMA by Dileep and directed by Joshi.Mohanlal is Devaraja Pratapa Varma, a character he should by now play in his sleep after doing a slew of such roles in the nineties and noughties. Mammootty is the astute lawyer with a conscience and a sister, Bhavana. Siddique and Sai Kumar are their devious villian selves, again playable in their sleep. There is the usual coterie of comedy characters composing of Kalpana, Salim Kumar, Innocent etc.Suresh Gopi gets to do his cop act, peppered with his usual cache of English swear words. Dileep's natural comic sense is the only thing I could tolerate in the movie.Again, if the box office is any indication the average Malayali movie-goer is at the other end of the spectrum compared to me.

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Naalu Pennungal

Naalu Pennungal or Four Women or Four Ladies or Four Females of the Human kind however you want to translate it is one of the recent offerings from renowned Malayalam film maker Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Adoor Gopalakrishnan and G.Aravindan were the stalwarts of parallel cinema(we used to call these 'award padams') in Malayalam during the last three decades of the last century.

It is good to see Adoor still going strong. His 'award padams' were the easier to digest of the lot. Naalu Pennungal, carries forward that tradition of bearable intellectualism. Infact I did hear that the film ran in packed houses in Kerala which is a notable achievement for a parallel/alternative/indie Malayalam film. Adoor himself confesses that Naalu Pennungal is not complex like his other films.

The process in which this movie was made could be deconstructed thus: Adoor selected four female oriented stories from Thakazhy Sivasankara Pillai's(Jnanpith winner) short stories. Padmapriya, Geethu Mohandas, Manju Pillai and Nandita Das were given lead roles in each one. He made the cinematographer set a really shallow depth of field which ensured any element in the landscape which might have dated or showed an intrusion of modernity(say an internet cafe near boat jetty) in the film was made permanently out of focus. The writer being Thakazhi and the director being Adoor ensured that film would be set in the scenic locales of the Venice of the East aka Alleppy.

Serious analyzes of this film are littered all over the internet so I wouldn't dare to do that. Since all four stories are female-centric, the film provide ample fodder for discussions about latent feminism in Kerala society in the fifties and the sixties. As far as I am concerned, I liked the movie - four interesting stories about four different women who inhabits the same landscape of Kuttanad. It has also renewed my respect for Thakazhi, supposedly one of the greatest writers Malayalam ever produced but I had known him as Thakazhi of the Doordarshan's notorious drag or a TV serial by the name, 'Kayar'.

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Nadiya Kollappetta Rathri

Suresh Gopi is at it again: Playing a brainiac cop who punches hard and uses English for his punch lines stressing words at the wrong points. Along with a bunch of dumbass assistants who are there for the purpose of doing the hard work and asking crucial questions which could only be answered by His Braininess Mr.Super Cop himself, this is another cop character for Suresh Gopi who doesn't want to shed his police gene. Can't blame him either. If all the roles the producers are willing to offer him are the cop roles, with the meaty ones going to the superstars - Mammootty and Mohanlal, the man has to do something to survive in the industry. 

Nadiya Mather, the main character in the movie is played by Kavya Madhavan. This is one of the rare times a female lead gets a double role. Kavya also plays the role of Nadira, Nadiya twin sister. While Nadiya is an ace shooter, Nadira is the more docile classical dancer. On the fateful night, Nadiya boards Sowparnika Express which goes from Chennai to Mangalore and she is murdered in her First AC compartment. The movie has shades of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, but it is not a good copy. Two other murders happen in the same AC coupe on that same night, both are women traveling alone. One is Shreya Mariya(Suja) an NDTV reporter and the other is Thulasimani, a dancer played by Suja Karthika. If you ask me, both murders are totally useless to the plot, probably that's why Agatha Christie left them out in the first place in the original story. 

Director K.Madhu succeeds in keeping the audience from leaving halfway thru' the film, which is an achievement considering the fact that if you have seen one Suresh Gopi (as)cop movie you have seen 'em all. Kavya gives a good performance in the roles of twins showing as far as acting is concerned she could be trusted with any role. The most serious flaw of the movie is a scientific one. We can see that Nadiya and Nadira are identical twins and not fraternal twins. Let me put it this way, atleast no effort was put into making them look not identical. Identical twins have the same blood group because one egg and a sperm creates two people by splitting one fertilized egg. Super cop Sharaffudin Tharamasi IPS (Suresh Gopi) solves the murder case based on the fact that Nadiya and Nadira have two different blood groups. Hard to believe if you know science. They could have gotten Kavya and say some one like Gopika and claimed them they were twins or they could have had Kavya do both the roles but had a good make up expert work on Kavya so that she could look as two different persons, the argument of different blood groups would have worked. In a story where the murder is committed by a surgical blade, they should have cared to get the medical facts straight.  

There are other interesting characters who inhabit the confines of the first AC compartment which is the scene of three brutal murders. Suraj Venjarammoodu as Thattamangalam Muthu the Ticket Collector with his trademark Thiruvananthapuram accent which stays put no matter what the name and place of origin of his character is one of them. Bindu Panicker excels as the stereotypical mother of female actresses, one of the passengers. Shammi Thilakan as Tharamasi's side-kick Sudarshan wearing colorful pants and turtlenecks with a belt over the turtleneck, is bound to unleash a red/yellow/orange jeans fashion tsunami in Kerala! Siddique has a funny wig and is a music maestro called Ghulam something, then there is a heavily made up Urmila Unni and a bevy of the other characters that one tends to forget. All in all because of the suspense element the movie is bearable and the director has somehow succeeded in keeping the audience interest barely alive till the very end. Good for him.

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Inspector Garud

What makes money is what is made. So we have Inspector Garud. A corrupt but entertaining police officer, Garud(a) nicknamed after his swooping(money-off other people's hands) prowess. Corrupt by default is entertaining, in the same way straight talk is not. Dileep who stars as the inspectors and the producers have tried to cash in on the entertainment value of corruption. But since heroes cannot remain the bad guys for long, Dileep has a life-changing accident, comes back a new man from the verge of death to annihilate all the real bad guys off the face of the planet.

Kavya Madhavan is Dileep's wife in the movie, wears a sari like a strait-jacket with an expression to match. Guess that is the image of female IAS officers the movie intends to promote, the other IAS officer being Aishwarya (daughter of actress Lakshmi.) She is also seen wearing similar outfits along with blouses with collars which signifies a no-nonsense approach. Neither of the ladies have much to do in the movie, except act tough and ultimately show their vulnerable side.

Another presence worth mentioning is Vijayaraghavan who is the main villian Chettiar. In addition to speaking Tamil like a Malayali, he goes thru' the entire movie looking like someone slapped his face after he had a paralytic seizure. Probably this movie might have kept the ticket counters ringing for Dileep and cheap seats clapping and the rest rattling their jewelry.

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Dor or Perumazhakkalam

What I watched yesterday was Dor(a thread, a connection in Hindi), from the NRI turned RI director Nagesh Kukunoor. If Hyderabad Blues - his path breaking first film was a true original in Indian 'movie-wood', Dor cannot be called so. The story is based on a real life event and first time it hit the screens was in 2004, away from the Bollywood spotlight, when Malayalam director Kamal, made a movie out of it by the name Perumazhakkalam. Perumazhakkalam went on to win the National Award for the Best Film on Social Issues in 2004 and numerous awards for its two leading protagonists played by Kavya Madhavan and Meera Jasmine. Kukkonoor supposedly bought the story from the Malayalam film makers. There is still a lot of controversy surrounding it.(Read Here.) I'd say better he than anyone else, Priyadarshan might have cast Akshay Kumar and Suniel Shetty as the two leading female protagonists who happen to be behroopiyas(person who takes on different roles/costumes to make a living aka an actor) and gotten away with it under the cover of a few kaleidoscopic dance numbers.


What Dor has going for it is the finesse, Kukonoor has certainly evolved as a director since the amateurish Hyderabad Blues(despite being a big hit of the times.) Technically Dor is a cut above the usual Bollywood films. Then again I am wrong in two counts. First, Kukunoor is not a usual Bombay masala movie-maker, he is from the contemporary alternate cinema in India, he just happens to be successful(which is a quality that sometimes evades parallel cinema makers.)Second, Bollywood is not what it used to be. Most of the Bollywood movies now have a certain level of perfection which places them far above the majority of mediocre regional flicks. Money could be an element here, but whatever it is the grade of the Bollywood end-product is commendable these days.

Gul Panag and Ayesha Takia have the leading roles in Dor. Gul has the more stronger character and she is the right actress for it. Ayesha Takia is ok, but something is amiss, I cannot point my fingers on to it, but it is there. Shreyas Talpade is funny, a very likeable guy, although he falls a little short of the Rajasthani behroopiya. He'd have been great if he was a Maharashtrian or a Hyderabadi. It looks like he had immigrated to Rajasthan in his teens and could never quite cut-off his central Indian roots. Oh..and the cameo by Kukonoor, is a total misfit. I couldn't take the clean-shaven, too well-mannered to be corrupt Nagesh as the scheming lecherous Chopra Saheb. I mean Nagesh Kukonoor could be a lot of things but he cannot yet copy the flitting evil glint of Gulshan Grover.


Perumazhakkalam on the other hand had an excellent choice of actors. I saw it a couple of years back and my memory is getting rusty befitting my age. So I'll start off with what is easiest to recollect, the title. To captivate the Kerala audience who feast on tears, the title of the movie aptly means the Season of Incessant Rain. The rain is one of the important characters in the film, so much so that it is over-used and you can really make out that most of the rain is coming straight off a fire hose. Kavya Madhavan won the State Award for the Best Actress of the year(2004) for her restrained and teary-eyed performance. Same award cannot be given to Ayesha Takia who plays her role in the Hindi version.

There are no beharoopiyas or Chopra Sahebs in the Malayalam version which is truer to real life. Cannot blame Kukonoor for making Dor a li'l vibrant because the film should be packaged to suit the tastes of the audience. Where Keralites pride in their work horse tear glands and prefer the exact portrayal of the grittiness of real life on screen, Northern Indians fancy fantasy and colorful scenes. Dor is set in two of the most touristy destinations in India - the green snow capped mountains of Himachal Pradesh and the stark, sandy and colorful Rajasthan. Had Kukunoor gotten this 'original story idea' from T.A.Razak(the story and script writer of Perumazhakkalam) before Kamal got hold of it, he might have won the Best Picture award for National Integration, bringing together the Muslims of northern-most Northern India and the Hindus of the cow-belt - Gujarat, Rajasthan, UP region. Alas, original happens only once!

The story of Perumazhakkalam is about a death(or a murder?) which happens in Saudi Arabia and involves two young-men(one is murdered and the other one ends up accused) from India who had gone there to work. Saudi court rules death penalty for the accused and the only way the sentence can be reduced is if the wife of the victim forgives the accused. With the males in the story killed or imprisoned, the film takes on a feministic edge, because the females has to do all the work, like in real life. Gul Panag(Dor) / Meera Jasmine(Perumazhakkalam) is the wife of the imprisoned man. Ayesha Takia(Dor) / Kavya Madhavan(Perumazhakkalam) is the Hindu widow. The untimely demise of her husband has the widow in charge of a super power - the power to give or take the life of a human being(one particular human being, her husband's supposed killer.) After that it is the power play between two women of two contrasting cultures - Hindu and Muslim, translated by two different film makers(Kamal in Malayalam and Kukonoor in Hindi) for two widely differing sets of audience.

Perumazhakkalam is a mature take on the subject for a grown-up gallery who doesn't know or care much about Shah Rukh Khan. Dor is for a congregation of devotees who had just finished watching a King Khan movie, on bended knees and have worked up enough courage to watch a 'really serious' Hindi movie. Both movies, I believe, hit the right spot with their target audience.

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