Prithviraj Sukumaran’s Aadujeevitham and the pressure on Malayalam cinema to create a pan-Indian success

Excerpts:

While Malayalam film industry has been hailed for good cinema, the industry is also known to not go overboard with budgets, for making good films on a small scale.

You are unfortunately talking to the director of Lucifer. Technically, Malayalam cinema has always been blessed with wonderful technicians, directors, cinematographers, editors and production designers, we’ve had just iconic talents in our industry. I look up to the legends in our industry as some of the finest filmmakers in the world because the constraints within which they operated and what they managed to create is just (fantastic).

I think Malayalam cinema, at least in a traditional sense, made a wonderful training ground for all these technicians because they had so many challenges within which they had to operate. But then, towards the latter half of 2010’s a sort of business stream opened up and we had the liberty of dreaming bigger.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by POFFACTIO (@poffactio)

When I directed Lucifer back in 2018, that was the most expensive film ever made in Malayalam. To be able to then make that film reach a point where it recovered more than 200% of its investment was unthinkable for Malayalam (film industry), but now we’re there so we can sort of start thinking even bigger, dream even bigger; But bigger budgets don’t mean better films, it just means more freedom for filmmakers to tell their stories. So, I hope, myself included, all the filmmakers now that have such big budgets at their disposal use it judicially and use the money to tell better stories.

A lot of times there are discussions on how Malayalam cinema has been consistently delivering better films.

I am not going to take this high pedestal here and say that we are better than everyone else. I don’t believe in that. We are going through a great phase, we are making great content. But I am also mature enough to understand that you guys (people outside the Malayalam film industry) get to know only of the great films. So, for every Bramayugam, for every Manjummel Boys, every Premalu, there are five other films made in Kerala that you never hear of. So, when you only hear about the good films you tend to think that all the films are great. Not necessarily, but our consistency of making great content, at the moment, is significantly higher than other industries.

Also read | Aadujeevitham release and review Live Updates: Prithviraj-Blessy’s film breaks record held by Manjummel Boys; netizens call it ‘masterpiece’

There have been phases where we have looked at Hindi cinema in awe and thought how are these guys doing it, how are these guys able to think of content like this. The same with Tamil cinema. The same with Telugu cinema. We are still in awe of Telugu cinema, how they have managed to take their cinema international, it started with Rajamouli sir… Then there is Kannada industry, (which) we thought was smaller than the Malayalam industry and then a Prasanth Neel comes and does this (directed Yash’s KGF movies and Prabhas’ Salaar). So yes, we are proud of the fact that we make wonderful content at a consistent regularity, but I don’t think anyone experienced in the Malayalam industry will take the higher pedestal and say that we are better than everyone else because we know enough about the business to understand that nothing is permanent.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Prithviraj Sukumaran (@therealprithvi)

Does the Malayalam film industry feel pressure to make pan-Indian films like other south Indian film industries?

This is a question we get asked quite a lot — when will Malayalam have that one pan-Indian phenomenon like a KGF, or a Pushpa or Baahubali. I don’t know, but I think a mistake we should refrain from making is to attempt a pan-Indian film. You can’t make a pan-Indian film. You can only make a film. Then a film might or might not become a pan-Indian phenomena. But what you can do is give the film every opportunity to grow into that phenomena. And what does that mean? Spend effort and time and money to give the film a proper release, proper distribution channels, an example for this would be The Goat Life — Aadujeevitham. It’s being distributed by leading distribution houses throughout the country, even outside the country, so we are trying our best to give this film the best chance for it to flourish. That’s all we can do. We cannot take a sheet of paper and write — let’s make a pan-Indian film. That doesn’t happen!