There’s a wide, sweepingly composed crane shot in Sibi
Malayil’s Kireedam (1989) that in
many ways defines the imprint that the film and its protagonist have left on
the Malayali movie sensibilities. The shot is canned for the closing portions
of Kanneer poovinte kavilil thalodi, the
film’s hauntingly mournful solo track. Sethumadhavan (Mohanlal) is in the
middle of a personal crisis; he tells his friend that he can feel life
“slipping away”. He has let his father down; he has just lost the love of his
life and is staring at a dark, uncertain tomorrow. His world is coming crashing
down and he can’t do a thing to fight it. Sethu walks on a deserted, seemingly
endless road as a breeze mildly tosses his hair and clothes. He’s a lost,
lonely man on a long road to nowhere. Twenty-five years later, he’s arguably
the definitive Tragic Hero that many Malayalis love to mourn.
For those uninitiated to Malayalam cinema of the 1980s, the
core plot point of Kireedam could lead
to a taut actioner on the lines of many latter-day masala films in Tamil and Telugu: Man responds instinctively to a situation
without fully comprehending the strength of the antagonist or the forces involved.
It’s a premise that has powered Tamil films like Sandaikkozhi and Dharani’s action trilogy of Dhill, Dhool and Ghilli (the last one, a remake of Okkadu in Telugu). A K Lohithadas, the
late screenwriter who defined the best of Malayalam cinema’s writing traditions
in the late 1980s and 1990s, is learnt to have based Kireedam on an incident in his village. He was inspired by a man; a
regular, everyday struggler who took on a local thug because he didn’t know whom
he had run into. He was ignorant and hence, fearless.
Kireedam, however,
doesn’t root itself in the masala-film
possibilities that this situation offers. Sethu is a dutiful son who reacts
when his father Achuthan Nair (the masterly Thilakan in a fine performance), an
upright police constable who dreams of seeing his son as a sub-inspector, gets
roughed up by dreaded rowdy-sheeter Keerikkadan Jose (Mohanraj) in the village
market. His response is not an orchestrated assault; it’s a blind shot, a hurried
charge that just gets bloody even before he realises it. Sethu’s aspirations
(or his father’s that he quietly accepted as his own) of a career in the police
force are hit as he retreats to dodge the inevitable next confrontation with a
fired-up, vengeful Jose. Sethu knows he doesn’t stand a chance; “If he swings
one hard at me, I’m finished”, he says of his adversary. When Sethu presents
himself for the climactic fight with Jose, he’s an animal for sacrifice; poked,
bruised and waiting for its executioner. He has lost even before the fight. He
could be the last man standing but it doesn’t matter.
For a film that stays within the template of popular cinema,
at times embracing its most favoured stereotypes, Kireedam has had an astonishing re-run as a classic. Interestingly,
the characters turn up more evolved and riveting in the film’s criminally
underrated sequel Chenkol. It’s
probably not the best work from its director (Sibi would later break new ground
with films like Sadayam, a dark tale
of a man convicted of murder waiting for his death by hanging) or writer
(Lohithadas has done better with films like Dasaradham
and Bhootakkannadi) but this is one
film that has rivalled the best in terms of endurance. It’s a fond rewind to the
first-rate acting talent that marked Malayalam cinema of the 1980s (many from
the film’s terrific supporting cast have passed away). Then, there’s Mohanlal.
Intense, yet subtle and never striking that extra note for effect, he is a
treat. Here, he’s the actor we loved to love, in a performance that helps us
keep the faith at a time when he drifts between patented superstar fare and the
occasional blaze of brilliance.
At some levels, it’s also a film that connects with the
Malayali’s nostalgia and his affinity to tragic heroes. Sethumadhavan, a beaten
man, a failure, would perhaps never
make the cut elsewhere as protagonist material for a superhit mainstream film. The
largely underwhelming response that its three south Indian versions and the
Hindi remake – Priyadarshan’s Gardish
starring Jackie Shroff – had is, perhaps, a pointer. On the 25th
year of the release of Kireedam, the
film’s crew gathered around at the Kireedam
Bridge – a bridge in
Vellayani in Thiruvananthapuram where some of the film’s scenes were shot – in
an initiative to reconstruct the dilapidated structure. A television news
report drew a parallel between the battered bridge and the tragic life of Sethumadhavan.
The most ardent of the film’s fans would, perhaps, like the structure
untouched. They would also, at times, like a walk down that long, deserted road.
