I never thought, I would write a post on Santosh Pandit. I thought,
I should not give him any more airtime than what is already being done. I could not resist posting this one, though.In an egroup, when a discussion on Santosh came up, one of the members posted this mail to the group. Whenever I see these youtube videos and the comments on 'walls' that shared them, I knew I was uncomfortable. Both with his cinema and with the negativity that the sharers showed, but I never could articulate it. When I read this email, it felt like such a brilliant analysis of what was actually going on.
So, what you see here, was not intended to be a note, nor a post. It was an email. Therefore there are some references to some earlier mails but this 'mail' is a brilliant post by itself. Vinod, Thanks for letting me share this.
The following post was written by Vinod Narayanan.
As A and B mentioned, the film looks like the pits.
But perhaps that is the point.
Perhaps what this film or its maker is really saying that a section of the Malayali audience will make even something like Krishnanum Radheyum successful. That he understands the young and exclusively male audience perhaps even better than they do.Remember Pandit's line about him making a film that his audience deserves.
Now comes the dicey part of artistic merit.
As I have not seen the film, I cannot comment on that aspect.
However, based on the audience reactions so far, perhaps some observations can be drawn sight unseen.
I was hoping that at some point there would also be some kind of a discussion about the "other" factor in the Santhosh Pandit phenomenon - the audience which made Krishnanum Radheyum a success.
This is an exclusively male audience, a young male audience at that. And really, this has been the films main audience. I haven't seen a single lady in all of those clips of boisterous youngsters celebrating the film. Perhaps such a predominantly male atmosphere and the aggressive language that accompanies it, is not an environment that female audiences feel comfortable in.
At around this time 14 years ago, I was part of this kind of an primarily young male audience which rushed into and packed theatres in Kerala to see a film that another artist wrote. Now this artist was also intelligent enough to figure out what exactly his primarily young male audience craved.
This artist wrote out a screenplay which formed the template of many later films that he and others repeatedly cranked out to varying degrees of success.
The artist was Ranjith and that film was Aaraam Thamburam.
As he recently revealed in his eulogy for Mohan Raghavan, he was short of money, and he was approached by his friend Shaji Kailas not so much as to write a film, but to make a "package" around Mohanlal which had echoes of the character that he had written for Devasuram.
Now comes the interesting part.
The film that Ranjith envisioned, one which he believed would run even more successfully in Kerala in 1997 than Devasuram did four years before it, was one about a Nambudiri re-establishing his feudal rights
over a land. Ranjith excised the strong female character that Revathi played in Devasuram, that films nagging doubts about Neelakandan's true lineage - whether his madambi rights were truly his birthright or not, his
relationships with strong women including his mother.
In the place of the strong women he put in a paavam Warasyar, and a "modern" woman who comes to him from the North pining for his love. Note also the difference between how the story views the almost same character Chitra plays in the two films to see how women are viewed in Devasuram (sympathetically) and Aaaraam Thamburan (object of contempt). In place of doubts regarding Nair feudalism (already very weak doubts in Devasuram, but doubts nonetheless), Aaaraam Thamburan opts for full throated support of the Chaturvarna system with the Namboodiri as it's natural head.
Ranjith understood that these excisions and enhancements would ensure the films success. He was, in that sense, removing and adding in factors to guarantee commercial success.
How much insight must Ranjith have had into the young male Malayali psyche to have figured out that a primarily young male audience would accept such a storyline and all it's implications about caste, gender, religion and not only would they accept it, they would make it successful?
How deep must his insight have been about his audience to have understood that gender relationships and strong women were not only unnecessary, but could also threaten the success of a film?
How much insight must he have had into the sheer self-loathing that the youth of my generation carried within themselves that even after learning about the horrible effects that caste had on Kerala's history, they would make such a film a grand success?
In that sense, Santhosh Pandit is yet another exploiter of this self loathing that the new generation of young males in Kerala seem to carry within themselves.
Someone who understands that if he makes films which look cheap and amateurish and makes the dialogues as ridiculous as those found in the average Malayalam "superstar blockbuster" that these young male audiences adore, said audience would jeer him to success.
Someone who understands that this audience would pay good money to curse at a screen for three hours.
Someone who understands that the audience knows going in that the film is crap, but goes in anyway for the "privilege" of cursing away to their hearts content in exchange for a sum of money.
If Aaraam Thampuran exploited one part of the young male Malayali psyche to become successful, one which hankered for an imagined glorious feudal past, for unrestrained machismo and bravado in art, Krishnanum Radheyum seems to exploit another part of this psyche.
There have been other films that good-naturedly poke fun at the Malayalam cinema and it's stars (anyone remember Aparanmaar Nagaratthill?) or were absurdist from the get go (anyone remember My Dear Karadi?). I have seen both these films in a theatre on the first day (what can I say, I was young), but saw none of the sound and fury that seemed to accompany Krishnanum Radheyum.
Which leads me to believe that it is Pandit's single minded cynicism regarding his audience which seems to permeate the film's marketing, that makes his film a success and that it was the good-naturedness of the humor of the other two movies that made them fail.
It is here that matters of artistic merit become difficult to determine.
Could it be that for all it's technical flaws, Krishnanum Radheyum holds up yet one more mirror at the young male audience that it exploits?
If that is so, is it not art of a sort?
The commercial success of Krishnanum Radheyum should at least tell you as much about it's audience as it does about Santhosh Pandit.
I would not have said this and would have accepted that the audiences thronging to this film are in effect delivering a populist slap to the Malayalam film industry as many have said, but for the fact that I see this same audience thronging at the gates on the first day of Pokkiri Raja or Christian Bros. or Karyasthan.
Maybe there is some of that critiquing going on in the audience support of this film, and maybe these audiences truly are tired of such pap. But I'll believe it when I see films like Pokkiri Raja and Christian Bros. stop becoming grand successes.
At the moment the only thing I see about Santhosh Pandit which may alarm successful Malayalam film makers of recent "blockbusters", is that someone more cynical than them has entered the arena.
So, what you see here, was not intended to be a note, nor a post. It was an email. Therefore there are some references to some earlier mails but this 'mail' is a brilliant post by itself. Vinod, Thanks for letting me share this.
The following post was written by Vinod Narayanan.
As A and B mentioned, the film looks like the pits.
But perhaps that is the point.
Perhaps what this film or its maker is really saying that a section of the Malayali audience will make even something like Krishnanum Radheyum successful. That he understands the young and exclusively male audience perhaps even better than they do.Remember Pandit's line about him making a film that his audience deserves.
Now comes the dicey part of artistic merit.
As I have not seen the film, I cannot comment on that aspect.
However, based on the audience reactions so far, perhaps some observations can be drawn sight unseen.
I was hoping that at some point there would also be some kind of a discussion about the "other" factor in the Santhosh Pandit phenomenon - the audience which made Krishnanum Radheyum a success.
This is an exclusively male audience, a young male audience at that. And really, this has been the films main audience. I haven't seen a single lady in all of those clips of boisterous youngsters celebrating the film. Perhaps such a predominantly male atmosphere and the aggressive language that accompanies it, is not an environment that female audiences feel comfortable in.
At around this time 14 years ago, I was part of this kind of an primarily young male audience which rushed into and packed theatres in Kerala to see a film that another artist wrote. Now this artist was also intelligent enough to figure out what exactly his primarily young male audience craved.
This artist wrote out a screenplay which formed the template of many later films that he and others repeatedly cranked out to varying degrees of success.
The artist was Ranjith and that film was Aaraam Thamburam.
As he recently revealed in his eulogy for Mohan Raghavan, he was short of money, and he was approached by his friend Shaji Kailas not so much as to write a film, but to make a "package" around Mohanlal which had echoes of the character that he had written for Devasuram.
Now comes the interesting part.
The film that Ranjith envisioned, one which he believed would run even more successfully in Kerala in 1997 than Devasuram did four years before it, was one about a Nambudiri re-establishing his feudal rights
over a land. Ranjith excised the strong female character that Revathi played in Devasuram, that films nagging doubts about Neelakandan's true lineage - whether his madambi rights were truly his birthright or not, his
relationships with strong women including his mother.
In the place of the strong women he put in a paavam Warasyar, and a "modern" woman who comes to him from the North pining for his love. Note also the difference between how the story views the almost same character Chitra plays in the two films to see how women are viewed in Devasuram (sympathetically) and Aaaraam Thamburan (object of contempt). In place of doubts regarding Nair feudalism (already very weak doubts in Devasuram, but doubts nonetheless), Aaaraam Thamburan opts for full throated support of the Chaturvarna system with the Namboodiri as it's natural head.
Ranjith understood that these excisions and enhancements would ensure the films success. He was, in that sense, removing and adding in factors to guarantee commercial success.
How much insight must Ranjith have had into the young male Malayali psyche to have figured out that a primarily young male audience would accept such a storyline and all it's implications about caste, gender, religion and not only would they accept it, they would make it successful?
How deep must his insight have been about his audience to have understood that gender relationships and strong women were not only unnecessary, but could also threaten the success of a film?
How much insight must he have had into the sheer self-loathing that the youth of my generation carried within themselves that even after learning about the horrible effects that caste had on Kerala's history, they would make such a film a grand success?
In that sense, Santhosh Pandit is yet another exploiter of this self loathing that the new generation of young males in Kerala seem to carry within themselves.
Someone who understands that if he makes films which look cheap and amateurish and makes the dialogues as ridiculous as those found in the average Malayalam "superstar blockbuster" that these young male audiences adore, said audience would jeer him to success.
Someone who understands that this audience would pay good money to curse at a screen for three hours.
Someone who understands that the audience knows going in that the film is crap, but goes in anyway for the "privilege" of cursing away to their hearts content in exchange for a sum of money.
If Aaraam Thampuran exploited one part of the young male Malayali psyche to become successful, one which hankered for an imagined glorious feudal past, for unrestrained machismo and bravado in art, Krishnanum Radheyum seems to exploit another part of this psyche.
There have been other films that good-naturedly poke fun at the Malayalam cinema and it's stars (anyone remember Aparanmaar Nagaratthill?) or were absurdist from the get go (anyone remember My Dear Karadi?). I have seen both these films in a theatre on the first day (what can I say, I was young), but saw none of the sound and fury that seemed to accompany Krishnanum Radheyum.
Which leads me to believe that it is Pandit's single minded cynicism regarding his audience which seems to permeate the film's marketing, that makes his film a success and that it was the good-naturedness of the humor of the other two movies that made them fail.
It is here that matters of artistic merit become difficult to determine.
Could it be that for all it's technical flaws, Krishnanum Radheyum holds up yet one more mirror at the young male audience that it exploits?
If that is so, is it not art of a sort?
The commercial success of Krishnanum Radheyum should at least tell you as much about it's audience as it does about Santhosh Pandit.
I would not have said this and would have accepted that the audiences thronging to this film are in effect delivering a populist slap to the Malayalam film industry as many have said, but for the fact that I see this same audience thronging at the gates on the first day of Pokkiri Raja or Christian Bros. or Karyasthan.
Maybe there is some of that critiquing going on in the audience support of this film, and maybe these audiences truly are tired of such pap. But I'll believe it when I see films like Pokkiri Raja and Christian Bros. stop becoming grand successes.
At the moment the only thing I see about Santhosh Pandit which may alarm successful Malayalam film makers of recent "blockbusters", is that someone more cynical than them has entered the arena.
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