Over the last few months, many of us have been converted into Malayalam cinema fans. Just when people outside Kerala were getting accustomed to Girish AD’s Premalu and Rahul Sadasivan’s Bramayugam, Chidambaram’s Manjummel Boys released to a grand reception across the southern states and elsewhere — pushing the boundaries of the Malayalam cinema market further. So when Jithu Madhavan’s Aavesham and Vineeth Sreenivasan’s Varshangalkku Shesham were released earlier this month, in states like Tamil Nadu, they were received with as much expectation and fanfare as Tamil films.
This newfound love for Malayalam cinema outside its traditional Kerala market can be attributed primarily to three interlinked factors.
The first is the relatively small market size of the Malayalam film industry, compared to the huge market for Tamil or Telugu films. Because of the smaller market, Malayalam films have regularly experimented with stories and characters. This culture of experimentation has been possible because the financial stakes have been relatively low — whether the film succeeds or fails. In comparison, the larger size of the Tamil or Telugu markets has often forced filmmakers in these states to play it safe, resulting in stories and ideas that are formulaic and repetitive. The Malayalam market has traditionally thrived on newer and interesting story ideas. And to make this possible, it has produced a breed of screenwriters who can churn out exciting scripts.
Great, mid-budget cinema
Second, because of the limiting size of its market, the Malayalam film industry has been able to focus on primarily producing small or medium-sized films.
While small films are generally made on a budget of Rs 5 crore or less, the budget for a medium-sized film could range from Rs 8 to 15 crore. The small films, owing to their modest budget, cannot mount all kinds of stories. They work well with scripts that demand simpler settings and a minimal cast and crew. However, the world over, it is with the medium-sized films that great cinema is made.
They are generally auteur-driven and have sufficient resources to tell all kinds of stories. These films also tend to be technically and cinematically superior, as the budget allows the crew to hire the best possible technicians.
The third category is the big-budget films; these are either franchise or male star-driven ones that are in the Rs 50-100 crore range. In some cases, the budgets could extend to even larger figures. But this is not the space that the Malayalam industry primarily works from, though there have been a handful of big films in recent times. By and large, the Malayalam industry has a healthy mixture of small and medium-sized films.
Because medium-sized films make for great cinema, these are the ones that have been able to cross the borders of Kerala in recent times and find a newer audience. Every Malayalam film that has been making news in recent times is a medium-sized one.
Compare this with the Tamil industry which focuses only on making either very small or very big films. Here, every filmmaker’s first is a small film and if it succeeds commercially, they immediately jump into the big hero, big film bracket. The Tamil and Telugu industries don’t offer much space for medium-sized films. The bigger home market imprisons them creatively to make only star-studded action films. These films tend to be formulaic and bring nothing new to the table. Unless they are huge spectacles like RRR or Jailer, they aren’t able to interest audiences.
Cross-cultural appeal
The third factor in the recent success of Malayalam films is how they have begun to strategically position their stories. Malayalam films are increasingly borrowing actors, characters, songs and locations from neighbouring southern states. If Manjummel Boys invokes Ilaiyaraaja’s music, actor Kamal Hassan and the Gunaa caves of Tamil Nadu, the story in Premalu takes place in Hyderabad. And superstar Mammootty in Bramayugam is already a household name in Tamil Nadu. This allows for these films to be conveniently marketed in newer markets.
In the case of Manjummel Boys, the Tamil audience celebrated it not as a Malayalam movie, but as a Tamil film that had some characters from Kerala. The same happened in 2015 with Alphonse Puthren’s Premam, where a key Tamil character facilitated its huge success in the Tamil market.
While Malayalam cinema has turned around its limited market size and restrictive budgets and converted them into creative advantages – making films that find newer audiences — we have to wait and see if the other southern states can learn from this phenomenon.
The writer is a Chennai-based filmmaker
