Wednesday, October 10, 2007
2 Malayalam movies
There was a time when most Malayalam movies were tragedies. Or so I think. Sarada, 3 time winner of the Urvasi award given to the best actress at a National level, specialised in tragic roles. Women went to the theatres for a good cry. Made no sense since the life they got back to when they returned home would hardly have been a bed of roses.
Anyway, I recently watched one called Vishnu on Surya. It was as if the filmmakers had decided they wanted to make a flick where Mammootty is killed at the end. So they come up with a preposterous story line where he kills a really bad guy, in self defence, and despite his lawyer putting up a very good case, the judge decides to sentence him to death anyway because the story demanded that. The court scene was actually quite comical with an occasional interjection of "Objection your honour" to be immediately, and I mean immediately, followed by a very curt "Sustained" or "Overruled".
And not being content with that, they spend the last half hour showing his life in jail, which includes his getting married and also the death of his mother from the shock of the sentencing. It all culminates in an execution that has the mandatory dream sequence where he gets a last minute reprieve, only to be denied cruelly.
And then we watched "Oru Minnaminunginte Nurunguvettom". Funnily enough we watched the second half first and never realised that we had missed half the movie. Woman dies giving birth and the child is brought up by "foster" grand parents. Everyone knows all along that the father is going to come back and take the child away and when he does do it, we are treated to 20 minutes of wailing and crying. After the second half got over, the dvd started to play the first part of it and we are like "Oh darn, we missed half the movie"
Which actually is not too bad compared to "Thalolam" which used a similar premise but spent more than half the movie treating us to the crying and sentiments of the couple who were going to give up the child at the end of it all anyway.
Anyway, I recently watched one called Vishnu on Surya. It was as if the filmmakers had decided they wanted to make a flick where Mammootty is killed at the end. So they come up with a preposterous story line where he kills a really bad guy, in self defence, and despite his lawyer putting up a very good case, the judge decides to sentence him to death anyway because the story demanded that. The court scene was actually quite comical with an occasional interjection of "Objection your honour" to be immediately, and I mean immediately, followed by a very curt "Sustained" or "Overruled".
And not being content with that, they spend the last half hour showing his life in jail, which includes his getting married and also the death of his mother from the shock of the sentencing. It all culminates in an execution that has the mandatory dream sequence where he gets a last minute reprieve, only to be denied cruelly.
And then we watched "Oru Minnaminunginte Nurunguvettom". Funnily enough we watched the second half first and never realised that we had missed half the movie. Woman dies giving birth and the child is brought up by "foster" grand parents. Everyone knows all along that the father is going to come back and take the child away and when he does do it, we are treated to 20 minutes of wailing and crying. After the second half got over, the dvd started to play the first part of it and we are like "Oh darn, we missed half the movie"
Which actually is not too bad compared to "Thalolam" which used a similar premise but spent more than half the movie treating us to the crying and sentiments of the couple who were going to give up the child at the end of it all anyway.
