Best of father-son films from the Malayalam film industry worth a watch by global audience
Further to my review of Sanju last week given its strong father-son relationship story, here’s an interesting mix of famous father-son films in Malayalam language - https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/fathers-and-sons-look-malayalam-cinemas-complex-relationships-84337?amp
And of course while each one of them is close to my heart including Sphadikam and Paithrukam and while I resonate with Deshadanam at a totally different level given my equation with my son; my all time favourite is also the first one mentioned in this list - Kireedam (Crown).
This movie released in 1989 and was later on remade in Hindi by Priyadarshan as Gardish in 1993 starring Amrish Puri and Jackie Shroff in the father son roles.
(Incidentally, 1989 was a great year in Malayalam movie history when two more outstanding pictures came out - Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha (A Northern Legend) and Mrigaya starring Mammotty).
Kireedam is my favourite in this list for a number of reasons - including the fact that it’s exactly how my relationship has been with my own father.
He was my first hero for his fearlessness, uprightness and uncompromising stand on a number of issues even as he has other inter-personal difficulties that continue to be challenging.
He was my first hero for his fearlessness, uprightness and uncompromising stand on a number of issues even as he has other inter-personal difficulties that continue to be challenging.
And yet when it came to my turn to walk that path of truthfulness and courage, he would always dissuade me.
There were a number of instances when I thought he would be proud of what I was doing and yet his reaction was the exact opposite.
And that left me bewildered, angry and confused only to realise later on that he was more concerned for my safety.
I joined the NCC in 1993 when I joined college at age 17.
It was partly to strengthen my weak physical constitution and partly to learn discipline.
But for me it was a deeper calling coming from the fact that my own father had joined the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) at the age of 18 and had seen action in 1971.
I wanted to be part of that legacy and also wanted to do something that will make me and him proud of me.
And yet a year later when it was time for me to go for my first ever NCC summer camp in Himachal Pradesh, he would have none of it and just didn't allow me to go for it.
He never told me the reason but I guessed it years later.
Frustrated with the repeated fights and my recurring asthma, I quit the NCC in my second year of college even though I had fared well and won the appreciation of my drill instructors for my march pasts, turnout in the uniform as well as for the way I maintained my uniform.
Then there was a time in April 1996 when he didn't opt out of a government initiative to enroll central government employees to conduct elections in Kashmir since the local employees had refused to conduct them due to the grip of militancy.
I remember the day when I had accompanied him to Krishi Bhawan in Delhi early in the morning from where 100s of central government employees were going to be airlifted to Kashmir and then be deployed across locations.
That was a time when we didn't have even a landline phone at home and he just went about his work quietly never betraying any emotion about his own safety or what would happen to my mother and the two of us brothers in case he couldn't come back.
He went about it quietly, as if he was going to his office.
As it was time to say goodbye that morning, never once did he turn back or give me any last minute hug or fatherly advice just in case he was not to come back.
Never once did I feel any fear in my heart as I saw him off and said bye to him in my heart. Nor was there any sense of elation in my heart that he is doing something heroic.
There was just this quiet knowing and acceptance that he was doing his duty and that I was quietly proud of it in my heart and somehow while I never asked my mother or brother about how they felt about the whole thing, I was quietly proud of it all.
We didn't hear from him for a full month except for the one letter he wrote from Handwada - a border town where he and his colleagues were posted. That letter also didn't mention anything about the difficulties they were going through or the dangers they faced. He just mentioned that the BSF troops that were deployed to guard them were doing a good job of it.
We got to know of it all only once he returned and how difficult life was there for him and his friends given his diabetes and other health issues.
It's only after he came back that he showed us a shrapnel of a rocket that was fired from across the border at the school where he and his friends were lodged in Handwada.
They could all see the rocket streaming in and they thought they'd all be dead and yet got saved as it hit the electric wires a couple of hundred meters before the school building and exploded.
In the dusk, people from across the border believed that it was the school building that had exploded. Next morning my father and his friends went out to collect the shrapnels as memorabilia of their time in Handwada.
There are many such stories.
And yet when it was my turn to step up to the pedestal and answer the call of duty, I found him pulling me back with all his might that he could muster.
For example, during my first year in LLM, there was this final year LLB girl who was being stalked and harassed by a mentally deranged classmate of hers who had threatened to eliminate her family members in case they tried to stop him or have him arrested.
This was going on for a couple of months and nothing seemed to stop him.
I traced out a counselling centre in Delhi - Sanjeevani and reached out to the girl so that she could at least share her emotional trauma and get the appropriate counselling to find her strength and courage to go through the legal and emotional battles that were being fought.
I thought that this was the least I could do for her.
Simultaneously I tried reaching out to some of that guy's classmates who still had a wee bit of influence over him to persuade him to undergo institutional treatment given that his family had given up on him; didn't want to take responsibility for his well being or behaviour in college and yet had threatened the girl's family that woe betide them in case they got him arrested or something like that.
As soon as I came home and shared with my father what I had done, he just blasted through the roof asking why I was getting into it all when the girl had her own family to take care of it all!!!!
None of my entreaties would persuade him and I had to quieten down somewhere in my arguments with him just so that his BP doesn't explode. I decided not to share anything with him about that matter.
Coming back to the film Kireedam and why I resonate so much with it is because both the father-son characters in the movie are exactly like how it has been between my father and me.
And in fact I always used to tell my father about his uncanny resemblance with the late Shri Thilakan's get up in the movie in shirt and dhoti; their facial similarities; the way they combed their hair backward; their pot bellies and the way he stood in the hospital with his hands locked at his back when Mohanlal comes to meet his injured mother and touches his father's feet before going out to meet the villain in the one last all out fight to settle the matter once and for all.
For me, the similarity is also etched in one more scene from the film as well as an incident that happened in my life.
My father too broke down crying as he was leaving the National Judicial Academy in Bhopal many years ago after having come to settle me in and on realising that I would be sleeping on a wooden cot in a baking oven of a room with no cooler and things like that while he would be going to Delhi to sleep in the comfort of his cushioned bed and a cooler at night.
My father had an uncanny resemblance to Thilakan when he cried and I had to muster whatever energy I could to reassure him, counsel him and drop him back at the Habibganj station.
Coming back to Kireedam and Gardish, they both have haunting songs - "Kanneer poovinte kavilil thalodum..." and "Hum Na Samjhe thae baat itni si" and I believe Priyadarshan did a fabulous job with that song selection written by Shri Javed Akthar, composed by late RD Burman and sung beautifully by Shri SP Balasubramanyam.
In my blog here, I would also be sharing about movies that should be watched by audience across the language and cultural diversity; simply because they speak to the common human soul and need to be remade in other languages as well for a wider human populace to benefit.
These 5 are part of that from the Malayalam film industry.
More to come...
Sohum
Comments
Post a Comment