The New Wave for which we are still waiting.

A topic which often comes up in discussions within my group of friends is whether Malayalam film industry has undergone a transformation. After the advent of internet connectivity and torrents, the previously unattainable movies, which were only available in film school archives, were unleashed upon a film starved population. Suddenly relevance and purpose  of film clubs and festivals changed. There was a horde of film critics in Malayalam and in India in general armed with Kieslowski and Innaritu. Kim Ki Duk became a demigod for the Kerala movie buffs. While this popularized world cinema here, I also see a negative side effect to this.

During the heydays of the film society movement, the after-movie discussion was a major part in film appreciation. People took time to stay back and talk about what they felt about the film. There was a healthy discussion that generated from these sessions. The audience were exposed to various technical and political aspects of movie making. I am not saying this doesn’t happen anymore, but the brunt of the focus has shifted to just watching the thousands of movies that is available now, ticking a check box in the watched movie list. Movies were left without being watched in fat hard drives that kept on getting full. This has diluted the discussions. The early generations where initially alienated by the internet but they have caught up within no time.

One might think the exposure to world cinema would have had a positive effect on Malayalam film industry. The post-2010 revival in Malayalam cinema saw just an attitudinal change from the film maker and the audience. There is hardly any change in the quality of the movie. By quality I do not mean the visual perfection but the quality of art in cinema. The digital availability of world cinema produced only a handful of uncredited  “inspired-by” movies. It seems people did not stop to think and learn what made a movie great. If not we would have seen a proper well defined Malayalam New Wave. Having political content was misunderstood as “art”in cinema. People stopped caring about the grammar of cinema. Music in Malayalam cinema is still relegated to a commercial/marketing role, now more than ever.

Once film makers are clear about why they make a movie (and please do not that you had the date of Jayasurya and a gulf based producer), when they are deliberate in each and every shot in the film and every note played in the background score, then we can say a movie is honest and worthy of watching. I am not trying to rip on the so called new generation movie makers. I am just pointing out the fact that huge inspirational and learning material the internet has opened to us while we are trying to stick together whatsapp jokes into scripts. I remember the ten year old me watching Rashomon with my dad in Ernakulam public library and the wonder that it inspired in me. We talked about it till I fell asleep later that night. Every movie you watch should touch your life in some way and inspire the creativity in you. Until such movies dominate the industry and are commercial successes, we are stuck in a limbo.