They are both superstars, they are both completing twenty-five years. But in an industry which writes off anyone over thirty, is there room for silver in their jubilee?

By CP Surendran

In Search of Challenging Roles: (top) Mohan Lal, (right) Mammootty

Mammootty, unlike his friend and foe Mohan Lal, is not celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary in films. One reason for this could be that this is not his twenty-fifth year, really. Although, on record Mammootty’s career in Malayalam cinema began with KG George’s Vilkanundu Swapnangal in 1980, the camera first faced him as the proverbial Man in the Crowd in Anubhavangal Palichagal (1971). It was, as faces in crowds went, an anonymous performance: his name never figured in the credits. The movie revolved round the rebel character of Sathyan, easily one of the best actors then in India. It was one of Sathyan’s last movies. Soon after, he died of blood cancer.

It’s a sort of poetry that Mammootty first featured as a face in a crowd in a Sathyan movie before he eventually replaced him as macho Sathyan’s even more macho successor.

Over 300 films and four National awards later, Mammootty is a face around which a crowd gathers. It’s a crowd fundamentally different in sensibility to the one that binds together fans of Mohan Lal. If Lal’s body language is a seen as a statement of his histrionic intentions, the one thing that comes through is the loosely held body’s preparedness to accept changes. It’s a body that moves, alters; a fluidity of movement looking for temporary equipoise in the mould of the character at hand. So much so that the exploring nature of Lal’s mind of late is visibly discovering restlessness and frustration when the role he is transmigrating to yields little. It’s a fact that contemporary Malayalam cinema is unable to come up with a role that really challenges Lal. For an actor whose features are forever braced to behave as someone else, it’s a fate worse than death to be trapped in his own body. It’s possible that Lal’s virtuosity may have come from a deep-seated uncertainty of his own ethereal self.

Mammootty on the other hand exudes a rock solid presence. It’s not as if he is not equipped to play tentative characters who are likely to lose the race. Indeed some of his best acting, for instance his role as a lackey in Ponthan Mada (1994) where he is pitted against the formidable Naseeruddin Shah, can be pleasurably seen in soft, evolving, even non-vindicating roles. But the over-all impression that Mammootty gives on the screen is that of a man who has found himself even before he began looking. The advantage of such a screen presence has translated itself into scores of box office hits, such as Yavanika (1982), Koodevide (1983) or the more recent Rakshasa Rajavu (2001).

In all these and a hundred similar ones, Mammootty essays the role of a police officer or a military man, moustache and all. In short, what Mammootty filled in was the need in Malayalam imagination for authority. The way he carried his body, the habitual, slightly wooden expression of arrogance, an extreme sense of his own infallible self all helped him fix to his face the archetypal mask of power.

Lal’s virtuosity comes from his uncertainty of his own ethereal self. Mammootty on the other hand, exudes a rock solid presence

If my memory serves me right, the first time Mammootty appeared on the screen in the uniform of a police officer was in Yavanika, where he appeared in a cameo role as Jacob Eeraly, a sub-inspector investigating a murder of a theatre artiste. It was a good movie to watch, with strong performances by a team led by Bharat Gopi. Mammootty did a convincing job as a relentless police officer, interrogating suspects with what I thought was the consummate confidence of an actor who must have rehearsed his scenes at home a hundred times before a flattering mirror. Ever since the uniform has become him.

It’s not just his appearance as a tall, handsome man that has helped him along. His rich base voice, and a way of delivering his lines, quite often, with eyes closed to the exclusion of the world to make a point, too, have added stuff to the Hero myth. Mammootty pitches his words so, they wear down resistance, the natural anatomical rigidity lending a fortifying effect to his seemingly authoritarian screen politics. If Malayalam cinema has indeed a patriarchal phase, Mammootty is its true father.

A fall out of this overbearing machismo persona has been a slew of unwatchable movies, weak on script, and strong on sound bites. Dozens of Malayalam films, which would not have otherwise seen the light of day, got made on the strength of Mammootty’s stardom. Much the same happened to Lal too. But Lal sought to balance it to an extent by producing award-winning movies like Vanaprastham. Of late though, Mammootty has been exercising caution in the selection of stories and scripts. But considerable damage has been done, I tend to think: experimentation is more or less dead in Malayalam cinema. There are quite a lot of movies in the last few years in Malayalam that are very close to the grid of the typical Tamil or Bollywood film, in which the idea of the superstar replaces the idea of the script.

My own favourite Mammootty movie is Vidheyan (1994), directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan, and based on a Malayalam short story by Paul Zacharia. The story is a powerful portrayal of the relationship between a merciless feudal lord Patelar, brought to life by Mammootty, and his vassal, played true and with heavy irony by Gopakumar. Mammootty is splendid as Patelar whose greed for power and lust slowly transmogrifies him into his own paranoid victim. Vidheyan (The Servile), is clear proof that
Mammootty has more to offer than the industry is habituated to taking from him.

Mammootty was born in Vaikom in central Kerala, according to one school of reporting, in 1953. Mammootty is reticent about his exact date of birth. To a tenacious film critic he once famously said, “ What would you do if you knew my date of birth? Are you planning to provide me pension funds?” The fact is that it hardly matters. On screen, age is notional. A star is as old as he looks. Though now a grandfather, Mammootty looks half his age, whatever that is. Which is another way of saying, soon he will be trying his best not to celebrate his twenty- fifth year in cinema. Clearly, some hits are best missed?