Ennum Nanmakal!

I adore Sathyan Anthikkad, the Film Director.

I adore Sreenivasan, the Script and Dialogue Writer.

But, I adore the combination of the duo more!

I thought I had seen almost all the movies from the duo! But Surya TV telecasted another one yesterday night; Ennum Nanmakal which I had not seen yet and is one of their best.

There must be lots of Mallus who like Sathyan-Sreeni movies, for a various reasons. I tried to find out why I do, and the reasons listed here should be similar with most of those Mallus out there.

I have always been ambitious in life, everybody is. At various stages of my life I had planned my future and all this plans to be affluent had one single aim; to live a in a small beautiful village in Kerala where people do not care much about internet or politics. This dream village had wonderful and innocent people to live with and endless stretches of paddy fields, a small river, lots of coconut and mango trees etc.

The milieu of Sathyan-Sreeni films have been a similar village. I have heard Sathyan speaking passionately about how he would like to spend his leisure time in Anthikkad, his native village and how the place has encouraged him to make films about village life. And more than capturing the natural beauty of the villages, he has been successful in portraying the innocent people of these villages and their lives with at most reality. I think I like these films because while watching them I get the pleasure of living my dream life, at least for three hours.

It is not mandatory that the Sathyan-Sreeni film should have a villain. Even if there are villains, these characters are never mafia dons or suicidal maniacs. They are all normal people, innocent people from villages, who do some bad things in certain situations of life. The story plays all these conventional character mannerisms of heroism and villainous, and the characters just blend into it; and this gives the proximity of the film to real life drama. I specifically liked the characters for I wish and believe that all people are basically good at heart. At the end of the film you love them all, be it villain or hero and wish if you could be there with them in the on-screen village. And there lies the beauty of duo’s films.

My mom's house is in a village near to the borders of Trichur district where it meets Ernakulam district. From there, Ernakulam town is one hour travel where as Trichur is almost three hours. My own house is in Ernakulam, and due to the proximity to the city of Cochin these places are more developed. But the Trichur area being far away from Trichur town has been neglected by the district officials and is less developed. The border line between the districts is a river which you will have to cross by boat. So whenever we crossed the river to travel to my Mom’s house, we used to tease Mom telling this. Because you need to wait by the river side for a minimum of one hour to get a bus, we used to get a lot of time for this teasing. (We would get buses in every five minutes at the Ernakulam side)

In spite of this, I have always liked my Mom’s village better than my own. I have stayed there for two years with my Grand Parents when I was less than five years old. The people there were very friendly and innocent. I specifically remember one old friend of my Grand Father, Kasukka whom I was very scared of and times when I went to festivals like Kodungallur Pooram and Vaakkadappuram with my Grand Father; these experiences have left permanent marks in my mind. The characters in Sathyan-Sreeni films always had the mannerisms of some of the innocent people whom I have seen in there, and the scenes make me nostalgic.

Apart from these, the humor sense of Sreenivasan has greatly contributed to the popularity of all the films. He has never bothered about acting as a dumb character in his own creations. As a script writer, he always handled the subject with maturity and the scenes always had the real life touch to them. From Ennum Nanmakal, I specifically liked the scene in which Sreenivasan proposes to Santhikrishna. That was very original and classy and involved no drama that is usually seen on films in similar situations.

I would just list some of the films here, because each one of them can inspire me to write so much as to create a new blog entry altogether. There best of these films are T.P. Baalagopalan M.A, Sanmanasullavarkku Samaadhaanam, Sreedharante Onaam Thirumurivu, Ponmuttayidunna Thaaraavu, Varavelppu, Mazhavilkkaavady, Thalayanamanthram, Ennum nanmakal, Sandhesham, Golaanthara Vaartha, Veendum chila veettu kaaryangal, Narendran Makan Jayakaanthan Vaka and Manassinakkare. Some of these films are not from the duo, but still they are the best.