The word is that filmmakers of the older generation from Sibi Malayil, Sathyan Anthikad, and Kamal to Lal Jose, are all struggling to make an impact, with their cinematic graphs showing a decline in the last 10 years. Among them is Shaji Kailas, one of the most successful mainstream filmmakers in Malayalam cinema, who had been in self-imposed exile for a long time since 2013 after his Malayalam film, Ginger (2013), a comedy headlining Jayaram, sank without a trace. Now 9 years later, when Malayalam cinema is chasing newer narratives, milieus, and subverting cliches and stereotypes, Shaji Kailas re-emerged with Kaduva, a story set in the ’90s, headlining an alpha male hero who follows the dictum of eye-for-an-eye to exact his vengeance.
It had all the ingredients of a previously fool-proof Shaji Kailas success formula but perhaps packaged a tad differently. Kaduva, written by Jinu V Abraham, and produced by Prithviraj Productions and Magic Frames, was a sleeper hit. Soon after came Kaapa, another Prithviraj starrer, adapted from Indu Gopan’s story about a local don. While no one knows the numbers, it’s been claimed that the film did well at the box office.
His next film Alone, a narrative set in the pandemic featuring Mohanlal, has also hit the screens. That brings us to the question – where does Shaji Kailas fit in today’s Malayalam cinema? At a time when flawed, sensitive male characters are finding space on screen, where do his alpha male heroes feature?
Though Shaji Kailas’s debut film The News (1989) is considered Suresh Gopy’s (who plays a private detective) first solo hit in his career, maybe it is the dismal show of his second film, Sunday 7 pm that prompted him to shift gears. Sunday 7 pm was a mess of a plotline involving a serial killer and rapist in the backdrop of a family drama.
Even to this day, a Dr Pasupathy (1990) in his oeuvre continues to remain an anomaly. A phony vet (Innocent) is at the centre of this social satire set in the backdrop of a village. Written by Renji Panicker (who later scripted some of the biggest political thrillers of Shaji Kailas), the narrative was punctuated with idiosyncratic original characters, and spontaneous humour. A casual moviegoer can be forgiven for passing it off as a Sathyan Anthikad film.
His next two successive films a year later — Souhrudam and Kilukkampetti, flounder big time on the political correctness scale today. Souhrudam tackled marital disharmony and ended up upholding patriarchy while Kilukkampetti normalised stalking under the pretext of love.
Thalasthanam (1992) was the first of the many political thrillers to emerge out of the Renji Panicker-Shaji Kailas collaboration. A nuanced take on campus politics and its nexus with anti-social elements, the film also earmarked Suresh Gopy in the league of angry young men protagonists.
Except for a Sthalathe Pradhana Payyans, which had Jagadish playing a newspaper boy who becomes a home minister (a turning point in the actor’s career graph), the rest of the political narratives had towering alpha male heroes taking centre stage.
From out-and-out political thrillers like Ekalvyan, Commissioner, Mafia, and The King to shifting the backdrop to accommodate inscrutable, unbeatable, larger-than-life alpha male heroes (Aaram Thampuran, Valliyettan, Narasimham, Thandavam), the Shaji Kailas trajectory sailed till it reached a saturation point when his formulaic films (Red Chillies, Drona 2010, King and the Commissioner, Baba Kalyani, Simhasanam) fizzled out at the box office.
The Shaji Kailas era in Malayalam cinema gave leverage to the emergence of the bombast-spouting alpha male heroes on screen. So in theory, Ekalavyan’s aggressively righteous Madhavan IPS, Commissioner’s arrogant Bharath Chandran IPS, and The King’s cocky Collector Joseph Alex are all stitched from the same cloth. If Bharath Chandran (Suresh Gopy) is an entitled boyfriend who can barely keep his anger in check with his fiancée, Joseph Alex (Mammootty) has no qualms in dismissing his junior for being “just a woman” after a condescending rant. They are all just essentially angry men—angry with the system, angry with women who don’t cater to a stereotype, angry with corruption, angry with weak men and women. Renji Panicker, who has been vocal about being influenced by the political screenplays of T Damodaran (Shaji Kailas worked with him in the middling crime thriller Mahatma), rides on intellectual posturing, careful to pen only lengthy monologues riddled with pomposity.
Panicker’s alpha male heroes who slipped into the garb of law enforcers and government officers remained an aberration. It furnished a prototype that was a departure from reality, and Shaji Kailas framed them with undiluted admiration, leaving women either swooning over them or tamed/ domesticated.
If there is one thing that has remained consistent in Shaji Kailas’s films, counting the latest Kaduva and Kappa, it is the masculine lens. Men invariably take precedence in every frame, while women anchor the lives of these men, rather too eagerly. So a triple postgraduate Anuradha in Narasimham almost jumps with joy when Induchoodan makes an obnoxious marriage proposal, and the otherwise feisty Unnimaya nearly prostrates in front of Jagannathan when he belts out a complicated classical melody. It is understandable that Jagannathan would rather settle for the orphaned Unnimaya who needs his protection than the modern, globe-trotting Nayanthara. Even in Lalitham Hiranmayam, a segment of the anthology Kerala Cafe, which discussed adultery, the wife graciously decides to extend an olive branch to her husband’s lover after his death and happily mothers her child.
His partnership with Renji Panicker ended with The King (1995) and resurfaced very briefly 17 years later in the appallingly outdated King and the Commissioner, which witnessed the clash of two of his most feted alpha male projections, Joseph Alex and Bharath Chandran.
Interestingly, a new facet of Shaji Kailas unraveled when he shook hands with writer Ranjith. The alpha male, larger-than-life, pomposity-spewing brash heroes continued their reign under this association as well, but in narratives behest with family honour, traditions, vengeance, casteism, and dysfunctional relationships. His heroes suddenly took on the mantle of upper-caste Hindu saviours (note the Hindu God-attested names: Jagannathan, Induchoodan, Arackkal Madhavanunni) who swore to save the villagers and the heroines.
If Jagannathan in Aaram Thampuran (Mohanlal) was an ostracised Namboothiri boy-turned-adult goon awaiting salvation in his village, Induchoodan (Mohanlal) in Narasimham is an IAS aspirant turned prodigal son cum protector, and Valliyettan’s Madhavanunni (Mammootty) was the big brother who vowed to shield his brothers and his woman.
The hero glorification reached mammoth proportions and BGM turned even more deafening. Even the choreographed action set pieces unabashedly paid obeisance to their masculinity. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Shaji Kailas was turning into a hitmaker, primarily using the stardom of Mohanlal, Mammootty, and Suresh Gopy to infiltrate his wares. Malayalam cinema was also dependent on them. It took a few more years for Malayalam cinema to witness a major thematic shift.
Interestingly, Shaji Kailas/Ranjith can be credited for the now larger-than-life imagery of Mohanlal. His shift from the ordinary boy next door to the testosterone-high, mustache-twirling alpha male hero successfully reached its fruition in their films.
His collaboration with Ranjith always had heroes who flaunted their pedigree and considering Ranjith’s characters even outside their association yielded a lineup of upper-caste Hindu heroes, this was unsurprising. In Aaram Thampuran, Jagannathan’s Muslim buddy and man Friday, Baputti, while dropping at Kulappulli Appan Thampuran’s kovilakam (family home) excuses himself from entering the premise with this remark– “I am allowed to reach till here. I don’t want to pollute the surroundings” – and he and Shaji Kailas could get away with a lot of such disturbing, casteist slurs back then.
Writer/director/actor Ranjith once said in an interview how Shaji Kailas suggested that he do a repeat of Narasimham in his next script to which Ranjith claims to have said that he has “given it his all and has now reached a stagnation period.” That ushered in S Suresh Babu to script Thandavam, inarguably the most insipid film to arise from the Mohanlal-Shaji Kailas combination. It ticked all the boxes (alpha male, fights, family honour, vengeance) but this time the screenplay had some additional below-the-belt sexual innuendos that further aggravated the already regressive plotline.
There were of course the money spinners (Natturajavu, Tiger, Chintamani Kola case) but Shaji Kailas, like his peers, had reached a dead end. With films like Red Chillies, Drona 2010, August 15, The King and the Commissioner or Simhasanam, it was clear that the filmmaker wasn’t able to revise himself with the shifting grammar of Malayalam cinema.
For a generation of cine goers, Shaji Kailas films were pure guilty pleasures. In the 90s and early 2000s, he offered solace to an audience who yearned to witness their favourite heroes going all out larger-than-life. One has to remember that he spawned these hyper-masculine narratives within the parameters of a cinematic culture and milieu that has been traditionally fine-drawn and realistic. Even in the larger-than-life-ness, they were natively flavoured heroes.
But it is also true that his films came with an expiry date. Even the recent Kaduva, set in a small town in the 90s Kerala (perhaps indirectly accepting his inability to authentically stage a film in the current milieu), was an unrepentant alpha male fan service. It has Prithviraj playing a hyper-masculinised local planter who gets into a tiff with a cop and ends up winning the battle of egos.
Note how the women are all relegated to being homemakers and nurturers (the wife bakes and fusses over her 3 children) while men are busy trying to set the world back in order. Kaapa, again headlining Prithviraj, is about the life and times of a local gangster in Thiruvananthapuram. Though watchable, the film doesn’t stretch beyond its alpha male protagonist. It’s also easier to see that for a filmmaker like Shaji Kailas, giving a fluid pride of place for a woman in a narrative can be a struggle as is evident in Kaapa. The two key women (Aparna Balamurali and Anna Ben) in the story are shown to emerge stronger out of their catastrophes, but the staging is so contrived that they end up as tokens. Women can only be an afterthought in this universe.
Can Shaji Kailas stay relevant in the present times when films are trying to celebrate and normalise flawed men and women stuck in ordinary situations? Can he remove himself from his regressive, casteist, and sexist mindset and be self-reflective? Maybe Shaji Kailas got a taste of it when social media kicked a fuss and forced him to mute an ableist dialogue from Kaduva. Collaborating with young writers, reinventing, and attuning to changing narratives of Malayalam cinema and cinemagoers can perhaps help him. Or rather, it can be a start.
Neelima Menon has worked in the newspaper industry for more than a decade. She has covered Hindi and Malayalam cinema for The New Indian Express and has worked briefly with Silverscreen.in. She now writes exclusively about Malayalam cinema, contributing to Fullpicture.in and thenewsminute.com. She is known for her detailed and insightful features on misogyny and the lack of representation of women in Malayalam cinema.