Mohanlal and Me
Growing up as a Mallu kid outside of Kerala, part of my affinity to my home state is built on the fact that I watched a lot of Malayalam movies as a kid. While in Delhi we used to rent video-tapes from a guy who would come around every weekend on a scooter, and every time we went to Kerala in the summer, we would go watch at least a couple of movies in the theatre (usually the Pattom Kalpana theatre in Trivandrum). While most movies were fun to watch, Mohanlal’s movies were a special treat. He’d end up playing these fallible, slightly-flawed, very human (as opposed to superhuman) characters stuck in difficult situations where their innate goodness/impish charm/comic timing would (mostly) win through, allowing them to get the girl, sing a couple of songs, cultivate a comic sidekick and, quite often, strike a blow for the proletariat.
A few days ago I found a whole host of clips from Mallu movies on YouTube, which brought back memories. I first thought of doing just one or two posts on my usual blog, but then I figured it could be a whole side project, at least for a while. Hence this tumblelog. I plan to link to a fun scene in the movies I’ve seen and provide a plot outline for them out here, probably posting at least a couple of movies a week. This isn’t a work of scholarly research, just me posting about movies I enjoyed growing up.
In case you’ve got a movie that I haven’t covered, leave a comment, and I will try to cover it at some point if I know anything about it. Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the URL, that’s the name of one of my favourite Mohanlal movies.
