Dial M for Murder

“PERFECT TIMING,” says Ranjith Sankar, director of Passenger (2009), one of the first thrillers from new-age Malayalam directors, adding, “I’ve just finished writing a thriller.” What sells is what the film industry makes, he says. And since the success of Jeethu Joseph’s Drishyam (2013), there has been a succession of thrillers in Malayalam cinema. The industry’s inherently democratic nature—low entry barriers, the rise of streaming platforms, the growing awareness about its patriarchal nature and the emergence of a youthful demographic that wants fast-paced storytelling, having been exposed to the best in the world—has ensured that Malayalam cinema is revelling in new genres and fresh narratives, with thrillers dominating right now.

Drishyam with its plot twists and emotional quotient won over audiences in Malayalam as well as Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi (in which it was remade successfully). It wasn’t just the intriguing premise, a perfect cover-up for a perfect crime, that attracted audiences but also the human element of a father doing everything he could to protect his family. Drishyam , starring superstar Mohanlal, expanded the market for Malayalam cinema to new territories.

Director Jeethu Joseph says there was a time when audiences only followed stars, regardless of the story. The age of the auteur, at its height in the ’70s and ’80s, with men such as G Aravindan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, KG George and Padmarajan, gave way to the era where stars ruled and overruled the filmmaker. But things are changing now. Says Jeethu: “Now content is given more priority than stardom, that’s a positive sign for the industry. But that doesn’t mean stardom will cease to exist. We need stars too, to tell great stories.”

And audiences have certain expectations from the stars. If it’s Mohanlal, it’s a family drama; if it’s Mammootty, it is an action movie. Fahadh Faasil means out-of-the-box movies, and Prithviraj will invariably be playing a police officer. Each has its own ecosystem, working with directors or writers they become comfortable with. Like Mahesh Narayanan and Fahadh, or Dileesh Pothan and Fahadh, or Jeethu and Mohanlal. Slowly, quality Malayalam cinema is making a comeback. The ’70s and the ’80s are seen as the golden period of Malayalam cinema. The industry is making great films again, says Jeethu.

It is no accident. Says director Midhun Manuel Thomas, whose thriller Anjaam Pathiraa (2020) wowed audiences with its tense, psychologically-driven plot:

“Our industry has always been open to storytellers and the stars here are far more accessible. If an actor likes your story, a few phone calls will yield a producer and the film will get made. We have the best of technicians as well, great cinematographers and sync sound.” And the economics of making movies in Malayalam is not crippling, with budgets far more realistic as are the actors’ fees. Added to that is a state that has always had a discerning audience thanks to the culture of film societies. Says Midhun: “I come from a remote village in Wayanad. Someone like me would rarely get a chance to make a movie. But technology has made it easier to make cinema.”

In this state of 3.5 crore people with the country’s highest literacy rate, the per capital film release is high. The industry makes 125 films a year, with over 1,000 single screens (the second highest in the country after Tamil Nadu), plus multiplexes, which means there are at least two Malayalam releases to choose from in an average week. The closure of cinema halls due to Covid-19 was both good and bad, allowing a rush of online movie releases on streaming platforms, even if it did stall theatrical shows. The streaming platforms are very specific about what they want. Supporting thrillers or investigative films makes commercial sense.

There is another possible socio-political reason for this. In Drishyam, when Mohanlal’s character says we can either defend with all our might or surrender, while coaching his wife and daughters on how to handle the police, there is also the underlying anxiety with the woman’s place in a rapidly modernising society. His antagonist in Drishyam and Drishyam 2 (2021) is a powerful woman—a police officer, a working mother who has been a little too lax with her son’s upbringing and who is as full of rage and bitterness as her husband is calm and sage-like.

Many have written about the ‘housewifisation’ of women in Malayalam cinema and the cult of domesticity that forced a talented actress like Manju Warrier to stay away from movies for 17 years because of her husband’s wish. Her former husband, actor Dileep, was charged with criminal conspiracy in the sexual molestation of an actress in 2017, an event that polarised the film industry.

The New Wave cinema of the ’70s and ’80s had underplayed the masculinity myth, according to academic Meena T Pillai, and revealed it as fragile and vulnerable. But the consumerist ’90s changed that, with the men asserting their masculinity in the face of the anxieties unleashed by unbridled consumerism. This was reflected in Malayalam cinema with the rise of the male superstar. But as women slowly reassert themselves in society and cinema, the crass comedy and careless misogyny of old is giving way to more gender-neutral, if not gender-sensitive, cinema. Much of it has to do with the fact of women in the industry, including the one who was molested, speaking up. Another factor is the formation of the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC). It enabled actresses such as Parvathy Thiruvothu to speak up against sexist dialogues in Mammootty’s film Kasaba (2016), and though she was viciously trolled for it, she stuck to her stand.

The return of Manju Warrier to the big screen and the offers that Parvathy still gets despite attempts by sexist elements to boycott her are positive signs. Director and editor Beena Paul, instrumental in the formation of the WCC, believes that women are getting a better deal than before. “The WCC had requested that at least two films a year be for women. You now see more women technicians, cinematographers, and that will also change the way stories are seen and told,” she says.

The emergence of the story as the star is yet another aspect of this change. Mahesh Narayanan, an editor who also directs and has made a series of terrific thrillers such as Take Off (2017), C U Soon (2020) and Malik (2021), says between mid-’90s and 2010s, there were a lot of comedies and dialogue-based films where the essence of storytelling got lost. But in the digital age, parallel cinema got amalgamated with independent cinema, allowing Malayalam to crack new audiences. “We started growing into our roots, and actors with no agenda, who don’t believe in heroism, came of age,” he says. No surprise then that he is a fan of Greek-French maestro Costa-Gavras.

Like his idol, Mahesh likes to keep events real. In Take Off, the movie captures the trauma of Malayali nurses caught between the Iraqi government forces and the Islamic State in the war-torn Tikrit of Iraq in 2014, but Fahadh plays a sober ambassador, not a swagerring action hero like Salman Khan in Tiger Zinda Hai (with a similar plot). In C U Soon, it was a video shared by a batchmate at Al Jazeera about a Malayali woman who was trapped in the UAE that became the germ of an idea he could shoot during the pandemic while waiting for Malik, which was ready to be released. Eventually, Malik, also inspired by real-life conflict situations between Christians and Muslims in Kerala but equally applicable to recent events in Lakshadweep, was also released on a streaming platform. For Mahesh, politics is inextricably linked to who he is and using a thriller to give voice to his beliefs is a way to keep audiences hooked. Just like Drishyam, Take Off and C U Soon too have women’s bodies as their focus, clearly tapping deep psychological unease about women in the public domain. Does the sleepless father of Drishyam represent the new man’s response to the woman reclaiming her voice and visibility socially and cinematically? As Malayalam cinema starts to tell more stories about women, by women such as Anjali Menon and Geetu Mohandas, the picture will get clearer. Their themes and concerns, whether migration or sexuality, bring a unique perspective to this emerging Malayalam cinema.

The star’s ability to play a character, rather than a hero, has also spurred a new generation of actors such as Neeraj Madhav who can switch between an evil mastermind in The Family Man and the romantic hero in the anthology Feels Like Ishq, and the young but observant assistant in Drishyam and a cameo in Allu Ramendran (2019). They are aiming at a pan-Indian audience, and don’t carry the baggage of a typical male star and existing barriers if any. For instance, when I refer to Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981) as the typical north-south relationship, Madhav is genuinely clueless about Kamal Haasan and his failure to woo Hindi audiences. “Now is the best time to do anything you please,” he says. He feels the small size of the industry helps. “Things in this industry are still quite organic,” he says, laughing that he had not even seen a call sheet till he came to Mumbai to shoot. There are no managers, no intermediaries, he says, adding that it gives actors a certain kind of fearlessness. “That is the power of the mid-size industry,” he adds. What is stardom in such an industry? Pure talent.

You cannot buy stardom here, says Midhun Manuel Thomas. If Dulquer Salmaan is a success, so are former software engineers Nivin Pauly and Tovino Thomas who have no previous connection with the film industry. And no longer is it necessary to play the hero to be liked and loved. Like Fahadh in Joji (2021), he can be a disappointment to himself and his family, and yet be the centre of attention.

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