N.S. Madhavan writes on Malayalam cinema: There is little silver on the screen

N.S. Madhavan writes on Malayalam cinema: There is little silver on the screen: On March 15, 1991, the iconic Malayalam film director, Govindan Aravindan, passed away at the age of 56, leaving behind a corpus of films that was celebrated both in India and abroad. These films wer



Excerpts:

"The year of Aravindan’s death was when the Soviet Union collapsed and it is a fitting time to begin looking at what happened to Malayalam cinema since. The leftist ideology was a dominating force in the Malayalis’ mind; hence the sudden emptiness of the Cold War rhetoric left many stranded. Aravindan’s last movie, Vasthuhara, was shot in Kolkata (then Calcutta), with the camera lingering long on the familiar graffiti of hammer and sickle, reassuring the Kerala leftists that there is another thriving red bastion in the east. But that was months before the collapse of the Soviet Union. For Adoor, the event posed a creative challenge because much of his oeuvre revolved around critiquing the Communist Party, like the movie Mukhamukham, and he took time to recover when he found that the menace from the red corner had suddenly crumbled into a heap."

A QUARTER OF A CENTURY HAS NOT CHANGED THE CHALLENGES BEFORE THE COMMON MAN!


M G Warrier

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