Topic started by sunil (@ 203.200.76.81) on Wed Aug 30 01:21:08 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

The charm of Mallu movies is basically its Malyalee touch. So it beats me as to why are they trying to imitate the Hindi & Tamil movies(especially the song & dance routines and the themes are also becoming more unreal) trying to come across as very modern? I love Mallu movies very much and am irritated & saddened with this approach. If its only a minor diversion then it can be forgiven. What do you all say?

Responses:

• From: Biju.N (@ 202.9.141.99) on: Fri Sep 1 05:23:47 EDT 2000
  
  Sunil,
  
  You are right. by trying to imitate, they are trying to come across as very modern, but in actual fact they are going back to the jungle age when their forefathers used to do these kinds of things.
  
  You are absolutely justified in being irritated and saddened with this approach. It is not just a minor diversion, but a concerted effort on the part of certain producers out to make a fast buck without having to fulfill their responsibility to society.
  
  If this goes on, Malayalam films have a very bleak future. In the era of globalisation and liberalisation only way out for Malayalam is to be aggresively be Malayalee to its core and retain its traditional viewers and show the wrongs and goods in te Malayalee society.
  
  Thanks for raising such a good topic.
  
  Biju.N
  
  
• From: anu (@ 164.164.86.66) on: Sat Sep 2 07:14:39 EDT 2000
  
  Sunil,
  The reason I believe is this. During the early period of malayalam cinema there was a wide-ranging relationship between mal films and mal literature. A lot of talented and famous writers used to write the film screen plays, hence their skill in portraying human relationships was admirably reflected in the movies too. As another way of interaction attempts were made to get a lot of popular classical novels(like the Chemmeen of Thakazhi) on the visual medium. Such experiments gave malayalam movies a unique, malayali nature, albeit of world class.
  
  But lateron, we see very few literary geniuses in malayalam, very few literary masterpieces of high class. Obviously this has led to an adverse effect in malayalam cinema too, as you have pointed out - movies losing their unique nature.Nowadays we have to rely on occasional scripts like that of MT/Hariharan , to see at least a semblance of the culture mal movies once had. I pointed out Hariharan because his movies are not the 'art' hardcore type, he has the knack of bringing in commercial aspects without losing an iota of the message he wants to reach out to the viewer.
  
  
• From: Ranjit (@ ) on: Thu Apr 18 04:41:23
  
  hi sunil,
  you are quite right, the present state of mallu movies is pathetic. one reason for this blatant imitation is because of the increasing popularity of our superstars in tamil and telugu, where the audience demand a lot more of this stuff, due to which their mallu movies get dubbed. another factor may be that there was a time when all those chiranjeevi vaala movies began running. so mabbe mallu filmmakers thought that they'd cash in on the same factors ie dances, unreal fights, violence etc. anyway you look at it, malayalam cinema is the loser.
  
  and other than hariharan, kamal too is doing some good movies nowadays. he's really improved as a director, his madhuranombarakkattu was a class apart. its sad that he's not making movies with good roles for our otherwise-stuck-in-their-images superstars.
  
  

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