A crash course in Malayalam New Wave cinema, Part 4 – the actors

In the concluding part of my four-part series on Malayalam New Wave cinema, I turn finally to the most obvious contributors, the faces on the screen.

These films are still male-centric and there are a handful of male actors who have appeared repeatedly in the most notable films. While there is no doubt as to the talent and charisma of these actors, it’s interesting that a number of them come with a ‘film family pedigree’:-

Fahadh Faasil who seems to be the face of the Malayalam New Wave, is the son of famed writer-director Fazil. I think of him as Kerala’s version of Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the go-to actor to play anti-heroes or off-beat characters. Fahadh is now also producing films under the banner of Fahadh Faasil & Friends, the latest being 2018’s Varathan (an unofficial remake of Straw Dogs) and 2019’s Kumbalangi Nights.

Dulquer Salman (Ustad Hotel, Bangalore Days, Neelakasham…) is the son of superstar Mammotty.

Prithviraj Sukumaran (City of God, Mumbai Police) and Indrajith (City of God) are the sons of Sukumaran, a lead actor from the 70s and 80s.

Vineeth Sreenivasan is the son of character actor and scriptwriter Sreenivasan.

But there is also a new breed of actors who have emerged on the strength of their screen presence and acting prowess alone. Pretty much all of them started their careers in 2012 at the leading edge of the New Wave movement (I just realized that three of the four listed below made their initial breakthrough in Annayum Rasoolum):-

Soubin Shahir had a notable supporting role in 2013’s Annayum Rasoolum, was hilarious as Crispin in Maheshinte Prathikaram, frightening as Sameera’s brother from Dubai in Mayaanadhi and finally graduated to the lead role of the well-meaning but conflicted football team manager in Sudani from Nigeria. Meanwhile, he has also had time to write and direct his first film, Parava.

Soubin Shahir (left) as the hilarious Crispin in Maheshinte Prathikaram

Shane Nigam was the nutcase brother in Annayum Rasoolum and has now graduated to headlining movies like Kismath, Eeda and Kumbalangi Nights.

Sunny Wayne had an empathetic supporting role as Fahadh Faasil’s friend in Annayum Rasoolum, then moved up to co-lead with Dulquer Salmaan the following year in Neelakasham Pachakadal Chuvanna Bhoomi. Since then, he has appeared in over 20 movies, usually in co-lead or supporting roles.

Tovino Thomas has garnered acclaim for his performances in the 2015 biopic Ennu Ninte Moideen, the 2016 drama Guppy and my favourite, the 2017 romance thriller Mayaanadhi (in which he plays an irritatingly childlike but endearing petty criminal).

Among the actresses, there haven’t been one or two dominant actresses as there have been among the male actors. That could be because many of the female characters appear to have been written as ‘foils’ for their male protagonists. There have been of course, some strong characters such as the ones played by:-

Rima Kallingal as the nurse Tessa Abraham in Aashiq Abu’s 22 Female Kottayam

Shweta Menon as dubbing artiste and foodie Maya Krishnan in Aashiq Abu’s Salt n’ Pepper

Manju Warrier as the housewife turned entrepreneur Nirupama in Rosshan Andrrews’ How Old Are You?

Nazriya Nazim as Divya in Anjali Menon’s Bangalore Days (now married to her co-star from the film, Fahadh Faasil)

Aishwarya Lekshmi as struggling actress Aparna in Aashiq Abu’s Mayaanadhi and as Priya Paul, the wife dealing with a home invasion in Amal Neerad’s Varathan.

Aishwarya Lekshmi, who has acted in Aashiq Abu’s Mayaanadhi (2017) and Amal Neerad’s Varathan (2018)

Others to make an impression have been Ramya Nambeeshan (Chaappa Kurish and Traffic), Aparna Balamurali (Maheshinte Prathikaram) and Padmapriya (who abruptly steals the show in the last act of Ayobinta Pusthakam).

So that’s been my highly enjoyable journey through the past 6-7 years of films from my home state of Kerala.

In the coming year, I am looking forward to Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Jallikattu, Amal Neerad’s crime thriller Bilal (a sequel to his debut film Big B) starring Mammootty and son Dulquer Salmaan, Salim Ahmed’s drama …And the Oscar Goes To starring Tovino Thomas and Aashiq Abu’s real-life dramatic thriller Virus (an ensemble cast including Fahadh Faasil, Tovino Thomas, Soubin Shahir, Dileesh Pothan, Indrajith Sukumaran, Rahman, etc.)

A crash course in Malayalam New Wave cinema, Part 3 – the movers and shakers

In my two previous posts on Malayalam New Wave cinema, I covered the movies I had watched at the beginning of the wave in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Pretty much all the movers and shakers of the Malayalam New Wave today had their first successes in those three years. So rather than continue a year-wise chronicle of 2014-18, I’d like to write about about how the filmmakers continued to evolve their stories and narrative styles after those early successes. And we’ll take a look at the people behind the scenes – producers, music composers, writers and cinematographers.

Evolution in themes and narrative styles

By and large, the New Wave films of 2011-13 were urban-centric (with the exception of Adaminte Makan Abu, Ustad Hotel and Manjadikuru). Initially, it was easy to categorize them as rom-coms/dramedies (Salt n’ Pepper, Bangalore Days, North 24 Kaadam), dramatic thrillers (Chaappa Kurish, Traffic, 22 Female Kottayam, Drishyam) or crime dramas (City of God, Mumbai Police). The characters in most of these films were worldly-wise millennials, comfortable with clubs and pubs, pre- and extra-marital sex. By 2014, the films had quickly evolved and were tougher to categorize. A number of films required very specifically created descriptions…

Cinematographer turned director Amal Neerad’s ‘biblically-inspired period drama’ Iyobinte Pusthakam (The Book of Job) from 2014.

Actor-turned-director Dileesh Pothan’s 2016 ‘revenge comedy’ Maheshinte Prathikaram.

Johnpaul George’s fable-like 2016 drama Guppy, with an award-winning standout performance by child artiste Chethan Jayalal.

Aashiq Abu’s ‘romance/drama/thriller/tragedy’ Mayaanadhi (strongly influenced by Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic Breathless), with an ending that rips your heart out.

Lijo Jose Pellissery’s award-winning 2018 ‘funeral drama’ Ee. Ma. Yau., with its intense but semi-comical rain-soaked denouement.

Newcomer Zakariya Mohammed’s feel-good ‘football-centric dramedy’ Sudani From Nigeria, also from 2018.

Even among ‘conventional’ crime thrillers, filmmakers have been pushing the envelope:

Nowhere is this better demonstrated than by director Lijo Jose Pellissery and cinematographer Gireesh Gangadharan towards the end of their hyper-kinetic 2017 crime drama Angamaly Diaries. The climactic scene is an extraordinary 10-minute-long continuous tracking shot featuring perhaps hundreds of extras; the camera follows a group of local gangsters celebrating a local church festival as the procession winds its way through their neighborhood. I rank this film as one of the best gangster films I’ve ever seen in any language, along with Gangs of Wasseypur.

Likewise Tinu Pappachan’s prison drama Swathandriam Ardharathriyil (Freedom at Midnight) features an extraordinary, almost balletic prison fight sequence, shot in the rain and rendered in glorious slow-mo.

Producers and directors-turned-producers

The connective tissue behind these films are of course, the producers. Traffic, Chaappa Kurish, Ustad Hotel and How Old Are You? were produced by Listin Joseph, who was only 25 years old when Traffic and Chaappa Kurish were released! He must therefore be considered the ‘father’ of Malayalam New Wave. In subsequent years, it’s the directors, screenwriters and actors themselves who have taken charge of their destinies, having formed an informal collective, helping each other out, either officially as producers/screenwriters/supporting acting roles, or in some informal capacity, as evidenced by the “Thanks to …” credits that pop up at the start of their movies. This is very similar to the three famous Mexican directors Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro González Iñárritu, who frequently produce each other’s films, or those by up-and-coming directors.

One can already see the first batch of New Wave directors creating directing opportunities for actors or second unit directors:

Sameer Thahir has frequently been acknowledged for his support in the opening credits of films directed by Aashiq Abu, Rosshan Andrrews and Amal Neerad. He has recently taken the role of producer for the delightful 2018 sports-comedy Sudani From Nigeria for first time director Zakariya Mohammed.

Anwar Rasheed, the director of Ustad Hotel co-produced Anjali Menon’s Bangalore Days and was the producer of actor Soubin Shahir’s debut as a director and scriptwriter, Parava (2017).

Dileesh Pothan started off as a supporting actor (and continues to act), then cut his teeth doing second unit directing for Aashiq Abu and finally got his big break as director in 2016 when Aashiq Abu produced his debut film, the critically acclaimed Maheshinte Prathikaram.

Dileesh Pothan himself is now ‘paying it forward’ by producing this month’s new release Kumbalangi Nights, the debut film for Madhu C. Narayanan (previously the second unit director for Aashiq Abu’s films and Pothan’s own Maheshinte Prathikaram.

Chemban Vinod Jose’s career as a character actor started with the New Wave films in 2011. In 2017, he got his big break as scriptwriter when his screenplay for Angamaly Diaries was brought to the big screen by powerhouse director Lijo Jose Pellissery.

These two titans of crime dramas – Lijo Jose Pellissery and Chemban Vinod Jose – have then co-produced the 2018 prison-break action film Swathandriam Ardharathriyil for their second unit director Tinu Pappachan, as his debut directorial venture.

The Crew

Cinematographers play a big role in shaping the look and feel of these films. They feature unusual camera angles, extraordinarily long tracking shots and a distinct cinema verite feel that is very different from the classical cinematography styles prevalent in Malayalam films previously. Shyju Khalid (Salt n’ Pepper, Traffic, 22 Female Kottayam, Maheshinte Prathikaram, Ee. Ma. Yau., Sudani From Nigeria and Kumbalangi Nights) and Gireesh Gangadharan (Neelakasham…, Guppy, Angamaly Diaries and Swathandriyam Ardharathriyil) are the two most prolific New Wave cinematographers. Sujith Vasudev’s work is notable in City of God and I loved the wide-angle lenses he used in Drishyam; it almost feels like he used a fisheye in some scenes to try and cram as much as possible of that gorgeous scenery in the frame.

The reason these films are good is because they are well written. Syam Pushkaran is perhaps the best known and most celebrated writer, having collaborated with Dileesh Nair on most of Aashiq Abu’s films from Salt n’ Pepper to Mayaanadhi. He has also written the screenplay for both the outstanding films directed by Dileesh Pothan. Chemban Vinod Jose made quite a splash with the screenplay for Angamaly Diaries. I am not sure if that’s a one-off effort based on his personal experiences growing up in Angamaly; I really hope that won’t be his last. Zakariya Mohammed wrote a wonderful script for his debut directorial effort Sudani from Nigeria, so I am looking forward to see what he comes up with next. Salim Ahmed of course, has written his own scripts for three of his four films released so far, as well as for his upcoming one And The Oscar Goes To….

Another common feature in many of these movies is the music, which is contemporary, usually rock-based. Rex Vijayan, the lead guitarist for Malayali rock band, Avial, has emerged as a leading composer for several Malayalam New Wave films. I love the music created for Ee. Ma. Yau. by Prashant Pillai, who has also composed for Lijo Jose Pellisserry’s other films City of God and Angamaly Diaries.

Ee. Ma. Yau. (2018) directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery, music by Prashant Pillai

In my next (and final) post, I’ll focus on the actors and actresses who have been the faces of this New Wave over the past seven years.

A crash course in Malayalam New Wave cinema, Part 2 – 2012 & 2013, the wave grows stronger

This is a continuation of my previous post where I talked about my discovery of Malayalam New Wave cinema in the past year and my chronological journey through key films which have signposted its emergence since 2011.

2012

One of the breakout directors from 2011 returned and a new talent emerged enjoying success both as a director and as a scriptwriter:-

Aashiq Abu returned a year after Salt N’ Pepper with the revenge-thriller 22 Female Kottayam, starring Rima Kallingal (whom he eventually married). Featuring Fahadh Faasil yet again, this was a rare Indian film where a woman takes matters into her own hands and wreaks deadly revenge on the men who betrayed and raped her. In addition to compelling performances from the actors, the movie featured a killer rock soundtrack, including the opening track Chillane.

Amazingly, Aashiq Abu was back with another film by year end, the offbeat romantic comedy, Da Thadiya (Hey Fatty), the story of an obese young man who decides to lose weight in order to win the affections of his childhood sweetheart. This film was a box office hit as well, his third in a row.

Manjadikuru (Lucky Red Seeds), directed by debutante director Anjali Menon, had been doing the rounds of festivals since 2008. It got its wide release in theatres in 2012 and struck a chord with its nostalgic coming-of-age story of an extended family assembling from around the world to mourn the demise of the family patriarch. Featuring a marvelous ensemble cast of character actors, the true stars of the film were the four child actors.

Dulquer Salmaan (left) and veteran actor Thilakan in Anwar Rasheed’s Ustad Hotel (screenplay by Anjali Menon)

Ustad Hotel brought Anjali Menon into the news again two months later, this time as a script writer for a coming-of-age drama of a different sort. The crowd-pleaser, directed by Anwar Rasheed told the story of a young Switzerland-trained chef (played by Mammootty’s son Dulquer Salmaan) who learns about love, humility and heartland cooking from his estranged grandfather. The movie was a huge box office hit and established Dulquer Salmaan as the next young heartthrob in only his second film. In 2014, Anwar Rasheed acted as producer for Anjali Menon’s second directorial effort, Bangalore Days which became one of the highest grossing Malayalam films of all time, starring Dulquer Salmaan and Fahadh Faasil.

2013

Two established filmmakers Rosshan Andrrews and Jeethu Joseph showed that they could get big stars to act in non-formulaic films too. Sameer Thahir proved that his debut hit in 2011 Chaappa Kurish was no fluke. And two new directors – Rajeev Ravi and Anil Radhakrishnan Menon – made impactful debuts. Let’s look at these films in chronological order of their releases in 2013:-

Rajeev Ravi, who had been Anurag Kashyap’s cinematographer for several years and had just finished his magnum opus Gangs of Wasseypur, came out with his debut directorial effort, the ‘Romeo & Juliet’ type story, Annayum Rasoolum. I liked the movie for its measured pacing (a facet of all his films) and overall storytelling, but I didn’t at all feel comfortable watching the lead character Rasool (Fahadh Faasil – him again!) stalking this young woman Anna (played by model/singer Andrea Jeremiah) every day from home to workplace and back, and pretty much coercing her into a doomed relationship. Nevertheless, it was a powerful film with great acting performances from an ensemble cast including Sunny Wayne and Soubin Shahir as Rasool’s friends and Shane Nigam as Anna’s sociopath brother. However, it didn’t do particularly well at the box office. Rajeev Ravi’s subsequent two films Njan Steve Lopez (2014) and Kammatti Paadam (2016) have also been critically well received. However, I still have ‘problems’ with his characters – the sheer stupidity and obstinacy of the Steve Lopez character and the Kammatti Paadam subplot in which the two protagonists decide which one of them is the best husband for the woman they both love.

Rosshan Andrrews had released his first film in 2005 and now was ready with his fifth effort Mumbai Police, starring established young actor Prithviraj Sukumaran. The film was a well-plotted and tightly paced thriller about a cop who loses his memory just after he has solved a murder and now has to solve it all over again. In the process, he discovers that he wasn’t a particularly nice guy when he was ‘normal’. The movie made headlines because it featured a big star playing a gay character for perhaps the first time in Malayalam cinema (or even Indian cinema for that matter) and was a big commercial hit. The following year Rosshan Andrrews was back with another interesting effort, the female empowerment dramedy How Old Are You?, which brought back actress Manju Warrier to the big screen after a 14-year hiatus.

Sunny Wayne (extreme left) and Dulquer Salmaan (extreme right) hit the road in Neelakasham Pachakadal Chuvanna Bhoomi (Blue Skies, Green Waters, Red Earth)

Sameer Thahir who had made such an impactful debut in 2011 with Chaappa Kurish returned in 2013 with the biker movie Neelakasham Pachakadal Chuvanna Bhoomi (Blue Skies, Green Waters, Red Earth), which has achieved cult status since its release. Supposedly influenced by Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries, the film starred the two young heartthrobs of Malayalam cinema – Dulquer Salmaan and Sunny Wayne (and their cool motorbikes). This is a wonderful film about two young men who ride from Kerala all the way to the North-East and meet several interesting people along the way. Bengali acting veteran Dhritiman Chatterjee appears in a small but significant role. The film marked the debut of cinematographer Gireesh Gangadharan who has since gone on to do some astonishing magic with the camera in the last couple of years with the gangster movies Angamaly Diaries and Swathanthryam Ardharathriyil.

Fahadh Faasil was once again on screen by September in director Anil Radhakrishnan Menon’s debut film North 24 Kaadam, one of eleven different films he acted in that year! This time he played Harikrishnan, a software programmer suffering from OCD, who inadvertently ends up on a harrowing road trip with an elderly man and a young woman. This movie is essentially an acting showcase for Fahadh Faasil, supported by the ever-watchable veteran Nedumudi Venu and talented young actress Swathi Reddy, as well as a hilarious performance by character actor Chemban Vinod Jose (more about him later). Realists may point out that Harikrishnan gets ‘cured’ of his OCD a bit too conveniently towards the end of the movie, but it’s easy to forgive such lapses in characterization when one is entertained by such engaging performances.

Drishyam, the Mohanlal blockbuster from director-screenwriter Jeethu Joseph closed off the year and brought in 2014 with a bang. This was Jeethu Joseph’s fifth movie and no one could have predicted what a monster hit it would be. Featuring incredible wide-angle cinematography shot in the picturesque Western Ghats by Sujith Vasudev, taut pacing and fantastic performances from the two child actresses, the movie was unstoppable at the box office. It was subsequently remade into four languages. I am not sure if this can be considered as part of the Malayalam New Wave, because it was very much a mainstream film featuring the biggest star in the industry and from an established director and production team. But coming as it did at the end of a year full of interesting films, it certainly strengthened the growing belief that Malayalam films had shifted into a higher gear.

In the third part of this series, I will write about the community of talented writers, directors, producers, cinematographers, musicians and actors who have created this wave in the past 7-8 years.

A crash course in Malayalam New Wave cinema, Part 1 – 2011, when it all began

In early 2018, I watched Thondimuthalum Driksashiyum (The Stolen Property and the Witness), the Malayalam film with the tongue-twister title that was on many critics’ year-end lists and won the Indian National Award for Best Malayalam Film of 2017. At that time, I wasn’t aware that I was watching the latest entry in what was being called the “New Wave of Malayalam cinema”. I read about this trend only a few months afterwards and since then, I’ve been on the lookout for a definitive list of such non-formulaic, non-glamorous, character-driven films. After off-and-on research over the past few months, I finally embarked on a ‘crash course’ in Malayalam New Wave and have now watched about 20 of these films. I’ve really enjoyed the experience of discovering the movies, watching them and then figuring out the patterns and connections between the movies and the filmmakers! Pretty much all the films I watched were well-paced and entertaining, with solid scripts, depth and consistency of characterization, and in a couple of cases, dazzling cinematic technique (and most importantly for me, no gratuitous song and dance sequences)!

2011 is the year that’s generally considered to be the jump-off point for the “New Wave”, a term which became part of the collective consciousness of film writers only by around 2015, when people realized that the early films were not a flash in the pan. What first appeared to be sporadic efforts by unknown young filmmakers exploring new themes and film-making techniques, has coalesced into a body of work that has been embraced by critics, award juries and most importantly, by the movie-going public.

The Malayalam film landscape was dominated by Mohanlal and Mammootty in the 1980s, both of whom acted in a number of outstanding films that were entertaining, realistic and in some cases, thought-provoking. From the mid-90s through to the 2000s, the two acting giants aged gracefully, appearing in high profile vehicles written for them and directed by equally high profile directors like Fazil and Sibi Malayil. Meanwhile, a new wave of young actors emerged – many from a background of stand-up comedy (referred to colloquially as ‘mimicry’ in Kerala) who mainly featured in low-budget, lightweight comedies. These films were no doubt entertaining, but film fans started to worry that the era of quality cinema characterized by the two M’s was coming to an end.

That year 2011, saw the coincidental release of a set of films by directors whose culture was rooted in the unique urban/millennial milieu of Kerala, but whose cinematic expression was influenced by the gritty realism and innovative techniques of directors from around the world – contemporary filmmakers like Quentin Tarentino, Jose Padilha and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and the masters like Kurosawa and Scorsese.

Many of these movies were either the debut or sophomore efforts – Rajesh Pillai’s road thriller Traffic, Lijo Jose Pellissery’s crime thriller City of God, Aashiq Abu’s rom-com Salt N’ Pepper, Salim Ahmed’s poignant drama Adaminte Makan Abu (Abu, Son of Adam) and Sameer Thahir’s thriller Chaappa Kurish (Head or Tails).

Traffic weaves together multiple strands, adopting the hyperlink approach of Tarentino’s and Iñárritu’s early films, while instilling the life or death urgency of Jan de Bont’s Speed. The unlikely and unglamorous protagonist of the film is veteran character actor Sreenivasan, playing a disgraced cop who grabs a chance at redemption by volunteering to drive a car carrying a heart for a transplant patient. The film was a sleeper hit and was remade in multiple languages with the Hindi version being directed by Pillai himself. Tragically, Pillai died of health complications soon after, at the age of 41.

City of God also used the hyperlink or non-linear narrative format to tell the intersecting stories of migrant Tamil workers, a Dubai-based businesswoman and the construction mafia in Kochi. Its ensemble cast featured young actors like Prithviraj Sukumaran, his brother Indrajith and actresses Rima Kallingal and Shweta Menon (who was 4^th behind Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai and Francesca Hart in Femina Miss India 1994). While it didn’t make waves at the box office, it was a sign of things to come from director Lijo Jose Pellissery.

Salt N’ Pepper sees director Aashiq Abu applying the New Wave approach to the most popular genre of Malayalam cinema, the rom-com. Instead of the usual “boy-meets-girl in college” story, this film featured two older, and rather eccentric characters (played by veteran character actor-director Lal and Shweta Menon) who come together through a common love for food and cooking. The opening credits could easily rank alongside that of Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman for its celebration of food. The film was an unexpected hit.

Adaminte Makan Abu is the outlier in this pack; neither urban-centric nor a thriller, it’s a poignant drama about the ‘human condition’, in this case the efforts of a poor, ageing attar (perfume) seller Abu and his wife to cobble together the funds to make their first ever Hajj trip. The couple are played by comedian Salim Kumar (cast against type) and veteran Hindi film star Zarina Wahab respectively. It won the National Award for Best Feature Film of 2011. Director Salim Ahmed has directed three more films since then, including Pathemari (2015) starring Mammootty, which chronicles the lives of Malayalees living in the Gulf. It won the National Award for Best Malayalam Film of 2015.

Fahadh Faasil and Vineeth Srinivasan play a cat and mouse game in Sameer Thahir’s Chappa Kurish

Chaappa Kurish is a thriller in which Arjun, a successful young building contractor loses his cellphone on which he had a video of him making love to his office colleague; the phone is accidentally picked up by a poor slum dweller Ansari, who works in a supermarket. The film deals with Arjun’s efforts to retrieve the phone from Ansari and highlights the differences in class and value systems between the two men. Arjun is played by Fahadh Faasil, who has become perhaps the most visible face of Malayalam New Wave. The other character, Ansari is played by Vineeth Sreenivasan, son of veteran character actor (and screenwriter) Sreenivasan, and he has now emerged as a reputed screenwriter and director in his own right, while continuing his career as an actor. This was cinematographer Sameer Thahir’s debut film as director and while the movie was entertaining, it was also criticized for being a rip-off of Korean film Handphone.

I’ll continue this journey through time into 2012 in my next post, where we see the emergence of more New Wave filmmakers.