The Prithviraj Phenomenon...

When Prithviraj burst upon the malayalam film scene I was finally ready to make the transition away from being a hard-core though disillusioned mohanlal fan and embrace an actor who I thought would signal the arrival of a new generation into our filmdom. Unfortunately very few fellow malayalis thought like me i think...seeing average movies of the superstars like Thaskaraveeran, Mambazhakalam,Sethuramayyar and Balettan run to packed houses and huge initials makes me think when the malayali resistance to change set in. The sad part is a promising actor is losing his way and a burnt-out, jaded generation of directors and scriptwriters with nothing new to offer in terms of content and story refuse to bow out and make way for the younger lot to force their way in...even more symbolic of the rot that has set in is the dirty politics our esteemed filmakers, actors and producers played to ease prithvi out of the industry when he took a courageous yet lonely principled stance against the AMMA...politics has seeped so deep into our psyche and retarded our government, society, culture and now even our movies.

I wonder if another period like the 80's when a new breed of directors and scriptwriters like fazil, priyadarshan, sibi malayil, venu nagavally, lohithadas and sreenivasan along with actors like lal and mammooty emerged taking malayalam cinema to a totally new high - a phase where the offbeat merged with the commercial leading to a stage where many good movies wud release on the same friday and some failed to make a mark at the box office but got noticed later on when their cassettes came out. The irony of the situation is my friends here have watched almost 15 of Prithvi's 20 old movie career while my pals back home wudnt even bother visiting a theater to watch his films and with every movie of his we see here, our appreciation for the 23 year old lad just increases...after mammooty, lal and suresh gopi we finally have an actor who has the intelligence, sophistication and looks to become a star.I havent seen his best two films to date, Akale and Deyvanamathil but his performances in kana kandein, sathyam, swapnakoode, nandanam and chakram were miles ahead of whatever repetitive acting our ageing superstars seem to keep dishing out and fooling audiences with.

His story has parallels with that of another star-son, Abhishek Bachchan who finally delivered after 14 flops in a row...the difference being bollywood today has a wealth of enormously talented young technicians while our industry is faced with a shrinking audience, intellectually bankrupt filmakers, producers who suicidally patronize the star-system and the onslaught of well-packaged movies from hollywood, bollywood and tollywood. Tamil movies which we once mocked at is having an unchallenged run at the kerala box office - with such well-crafted movies like autograph, kadal, saamy, anniyan, kadal kondein and so many more they are definitely worth a watch rather than the run-of-the-mill fare dished out to us. Its just not in heroes...where will the next actors to replace thilakan, nedumudi, sreenivasan and oduvil come from... i guess so long as challenging roles dont arise actors of their greatness wont be needed...cinema's overwhelming popularity and the onslaught of prime-time television has killed a once prospering arena which fed malayalam cinema with countless geniuses...theatre. Movies like nandanam, kazcha and udayananu thaaram have become a once in a year affair for a people who grew up watching padmarajan, bharathan, fazil, hariharan, sathyan anthikad, priyadarshan, joshi and i.v.sasi films battle it out in the marquees at the same time. Are these the sparks flying off the dying embers of a once globally acclaimed industry or the nadir before the next renaissance? I guess time will tell...

P.S - Yesterday night we went for Kochirajavu(if u can imagine dileep as rajnikant in baasha...that sums up most of the movie!!!)...surrounded the achayan who brings mal movies to the theater here(u cud say almost gheraoed) and pleaded with him to get the new Prithvi movie, The Police(we saw the trailers and technically the film looked as breath-taking as Company and Anniyan!) to show...his major worry wuz that most of the ppl here moved to the us from kerala when the two M's were in their prime and as such bringing a jayaram, dileep or prithvi movie burns his fingers...but he's agreed to take one more chance provided we can show him where the sympathies of LA's young mallu crowd lies!