Thadakam (The Lake, 1982)

Before Pavanai, there was Jabbar Khan. Captain Raju makes his appreance as Jabbar Khan in an almost comical but imposing getup of a Pathan in Thadakam (The Lake), an I.V.Sasi film set in Kashmir. I.V.Sasi is true to the locations and the culture, unlike the Punjabi Houses produced twenty years hence. Thadakam is extensively shot in Kashmir, some local characters are portrayed by local actors speaking Hindi (not Kashmiri though) and there are even Hindi songs sung by Kashmirir characters in this Malayalam movie. 

Thadakam (1982) must have been I.V.Sasi's second outing set in Kashmir, after Thusharam (1981) having caught the Kashmir bug. Script and screen play are never the strong suite of I.V. Sasi movies, there are also unnecessarily sleazy situations as was required for early eighties Indian movies. Seema, Mammootty, Sumalatha, Ratheesh, Captain Raju and Balan K.Nair play some of the main characters in a movie that deals with a reincarnation episode in the life of its leading lady. There must have been a spate of reincarnation movies after the blockbuster success of Karz (1980), this must have been one of Malayalam's contributions during that cinematic season of rebirths. 

It is a low effort movie from the director after Thusharam, with a lot of B-grade sound and camera effects. It almost makes me wonder whether they did back to back shoots of both the movies at around the same time with the effort and the money put more towards the earlier movie.

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Mattoral -a K.G. George film

K.G. George movies explore the darker side of human nature. If you go to the movies for the popcorn, you should never go watch a K.G. George movie in the theater. Not that they are playing in movie-halls anymore unless there is a retrospective of old 80s movies. These movies are heavy, the kind where it is better to nurse a whiskey on the rocks and chew the cud on the vagaries of human mind the film showcases. 

 

I have been on a K.G. George rediscovery spree during the past one year. I think I am old enough to understand them now. Except for his Yavanika, Adaminte Variyellu, Panchavadi Palam and Ulkkadal - the four I had watched a million times during my childhood, I have re-watched most of K.G. George's filmography in the last 12 months. He directed a total of 18 films during the period from mid-seventies to 1990 and one in 1998.  

K.G.G's films are not intended for 8 year olds or 12 year olds for that matter. No wonder I was scared of them as a kid, not in the Frankenstein kind of way,  but more like being made aware of the human monsters in our midst. The unfathomably dark depths of human mind was not an area I wanted to be made aware of that early. The seemingly ordinary themes and characters of his movies made me uncomfortable with their layers of psychological intrigue.

 

Seema and Karamana Janardhanan Nair in Mattoral

Mattoral (The Other Guy along the lines of the other woman) is a study of a husband-wife relationship in the 1980s Kerala. Karamana Janardhanan Nair and Seema essay the lead pair. There are other husband-wife pairs in the film, as if to show the contrast and variety of the same relationship between different sets of people.  Karamana is a government officer while Seema is a typical Malayali housewife toiling away in the kitchen, without much exposure to the outside world. Their relationship have reached a plateau after having done the necessary procreation to propagate the species. 

Mammootty and Urvashi play a younger couple who are the family friends of Karamana-Seema duo. Theirs is a more modern and liberal relationship with Veni (Urvashi) working at an ad company and Balan (Mammootty) is an intellectual and Karamana's best friend. Also making appearance is Jagathy and another lady whose name I do not know, as his wife, whose raison d'être is to interfere in other people's lives. 

The director has taken the actors from their comfort zones and placed them in roles we do not usually see them doing. Seema as the naive house-wife and not playing Mammotty's love interest is unusual, so is Mammootty playing second fiddle to Karamana's more central character. This is a film that would make no sense to teens or younger audience. There are so many nuances and subtleties in the frames, dialog and the story. No wonder I went to sleep when I had watched it for the first time thirty plus years ago.

 

There is more to the story, but I will leave it here. The revelation I had as I tick off my list of K.G.George movies is that he was/is a director or a man who could truly think like a woman and bring out the woman's perspective through his female characters. There have only been a few men authors or directors that I have come across who understand and can present believable women characters in their work, K.G. George is one of those rare species, especially in Malayalam movie world.

 

 

 

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Guruji Oru Vaakk

Jobless youth were some of the frequent protagonists in 80s Malayalam cinema. Probably because the directors and writers of most of these movies rose from that cadre, before they found their life's calling/work. Guruji Oru Vakku, written by Venu Nagavalli trains the lens on three jobless young men (played by Ratheesh, Nedumudi Venu, Mohanlal) doing some petty thefts and getting by. Before long Nedumudi Venu will be playing Mohanlal's Dad or Thampuraan (small time king/chieftain?) But as of this movie, Nedumudi's generational promotion is still a few years in the future.

The three youngmen are progressing merrily on their aimless adventures when they run into a mentor - Madhu in a guest role. He gives all of them some money to reinvent themselves and fixes a time exactly a year later for a status update.

After that it is all melodrama, lesser said the better. Venu Nagavalli being the writer we can expect at least one death in the family before the movie ends. The writer does not disappoint.

Seema, Manochitra and Sukumari form the female supporting cast in the movie. The famous Fort Kochi locale which we have seen in so many new-gen Malayalam movies first make the appearance as Seema and Sukumari's residence in this movie.

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Thusharam

This was a movie I so wanted to watch as a kid. Because it had snow. It was shot in Kashmir. In India people used to associate Kashmir with beautiful winter scenery and snow, inaccessible and exotic to majority of India’s plains dwelling population. Kashmir was a popular shooting location for Bollywood movies in the sixties and the seventies.  In the 1980s and 90s the number of Indian films shot in Kashmir drastically came down as it became less safer and more expensive to shoot in Kashmir as a result of the Valley’s disputed territory status and frequent militants/army skirmishes.

Thusharam was the first ever Malayalam movie shot in Kashmir. Thusharam means snow or dew drop. Unlike Eskimos with 50+ different words for snow, we equatorial people only have a couple of words for snow. These words also stand in for anything that remotely resembles snow – fog, dew, slush, sleet, you say snow we say ‘manjchu’ (or ‘thusharam’ if you want to be fancy.)

Till date there are only a handful of Malayalam movies shot in Kashmir valley. I.V.Sasi was a quite an adventurous director, with his stories and themes set in exotic locations. Ezhaam Kadalinakkare (Beyond the seven seas) was another 1980s I.V.Sasi movie set in a foreign location – United States of America and the first Malayalam movie to be shot in the US of A. I did get lucky to watch that movie on big screen as a little kid, where I saw Niagara Falls for the first time.

Back to Thusharam, the story takes place at an Army base in Kashmir. Jayan, a famous Malayalam actor was originally cast as the hero of the movie. Jayan died while shooting a stunt sequence for another I.V. Sasi film, Kolilakkam. This paved way for the introduction a new hero to Malayalam movie industry – Ratheesh Rajagopal. Along with Ratheesh there is Seema (I. V. Sasi’s real life wife and a major Malayalam movie actor of the 80s), Balan K.N air, Jose, Johnny, Rani Padmini, Kunchan, Nellikkode Bhaskaran and others.

The story is a revenge drama that involves army personnel. The revenge is extracted by kidnapping the heroine. I am not heavily invested or critical of Malayalam movie stories of the late seventies or early eighties. They reflect what audience appreciated at the time and to me they offer a window to the life that existed in the background.

It was fascinating to see ordinary Kashmir neighborhoods and city streets from forty years ago. Bollywood movies shot in Kashmir in those days only showed the best profile of the region with rolling snow-covered hillsides and shikaras floating on Dal lake.  Kashmiris in Thusharam look authentic. In the more recent Mallu Singh movies, Kashmiris would have been played by Malayalis in pherans talking in perfect Malayalam and heavily accented Hindi.

The story line is taut, although with more fight sequences and loud BGM than is necessary. But that is 1980s Malayalam movies for you. Entertaining, nevertheless.

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Vellathooval

Looks an early eighties movies with half-baked actors of the noughties. Not to pass the blame to two young actors in the main roles - Nitya Menon and Ranjith Menon, they were passable.

For two and half we were trapped in an eighties masala movie. We almost thought it was an I.V.Sasi movie of that time, then we look at the credits and realize it is indeed made by I.V.Sasi, but about thirty years past his prime. Not much of a story except it relies on brat of a girl(Nitya Menon) to carry it forward. Seema is good as the tortured mother of the brat. Lalu Alex in his current incarnation as a lovable rascal Dad figure which he has a copyright on these days, Vijayaraghavan is a no-good drunkard who can be trusted on to provide occasional bad-guy effects when the movie meanders to meaninglessness. The rest of the cast is forgettable.

Yeah almost forgot about it, there is a white feather(hence the title) which floats into the scenes at inopportune moments, probably meant to save the name of the movie, but it looks like photoshop gone bad.

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Malayalam: Avalude Ravukal

Avalude Ravukal is Seema's first movie, directed by I.V.Sasi, who'd go on to marry the actress later in real life. This movie had achieved a lot of notoriety with cinema hall owners inserting sleazy porn bits and selling it as a soft porn movie. This film has totally changed my perceptions about I.V.Sasi as a director. Shot in his favorite city, Kozhikode, it is indeed a brave venture with Seema playing the title character who is a prostitute. Her nights(this is the English translation of the movie title) and the men she comes across are the major characters in the movie. Sukumaran, Soman and Ravi Kumar have important roles.
(Pic: Seema and Ravi Kumar in Avalude Ravukal)

Seema looks and acts really well. The legend has it that she was spotted as an extra and it was I.V.Sasi who made her a major actress. Avalude Ravukal also has Meena, Kuthiravattam Pappu, Kaviyoor Ponnamma, Bahadur and Mallika(Sukumaran's real life wife and mother of present day actors PrithviRaj and Indrajit) as the supporting cast. A narrative social commentary from the perspective of a teenage prostitute in the late seventies in Kerala, Avalude Ravukal is a classic trend setter.

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