The Story of Awards

We have seen many types of Film Awards, but this year’s Kerala State Film Awards managed to not just surprise but shock the movie lovers all around Kerala. I never really had much hope about it as the movies of 2014 didn’t have that big impact as 2013 which was full of wonderful flicks including Amen, North 24 Kaatham, Memories, Philips and the Monkey Pen, Drishyam and others. I have myself missed too many Malayalam movies in the same year because of the same reason, and so I wouldn’t say which movie should have won the most!

But it is easier to say which movies never really come close to winning, especially when the winners are from the list of movies which I have watched. I don’t want to talk about anybody’s personal choices, but as movies, none of these had that quality and neither did the performances – they were mostly good, but not enough to win anything. It is fair to rate movies and performances according to our personal choices, but there is something more about receiving a few big awards from the state.

There are three movies, Bangalore Days, 1983 and Om Santhi Oshana which came more powerful than the others in the list of winners, and none of them was a serious movie. I am not going to get into the other winners, but stick to these three. I will agree to the Popular Film Award for Om Santhi Oshana because I have heard even from a lot of non-Keralites about how much they liked this movie. I am also glad that Iyobinte Pusthakam won a number of accolades too, because I consider it as the best entertainer of the year which was supported by solid performances, visual beauty and fine messages.

I consider Amal Neerad winning the Best Cinematographer Award for Iyobinte Pusthakam as the most expected and perfect result. Coming back to the first movie in question here. Bangalore Days which had almost no script to talk about, has won the award for the same. It was a clear failure in connecting with the audience with the cluelessness which often came forward, and still worked because of the number of superstars in the movie. It was still not a bad movie, and there were entertaining moments, but there was not enough strength there, and it was never a movie to be taken seriously or supposed to have had anything in the script.

Still, we see the name of that movie associated with the Best Actor and Actress, as Nivin Pauly and Nazriya Nazim has that one in common. While the former’s performance was just too comic in nature, the latter does nothing special in the movie. I am sure that none of them did really have even a little guess about the awards when they acted in these roles. The movie was never really meant to be an award-winner, as it was just another movie for the masses, adding nothing that we hadn’t seen before. Still, Bangalore Days emerges as a winner, and one has to wonder why.

Then comes 1983. This strange and ridiculous glorification of cricket, which avoids all the game’s negatives and unnecessarily adds positives which never exist, never really had the scope for a serious performance because most of it is a fake. It pretends to be something that it is not, and there is no scope for any big performance. This makes the Best Character Role Award for Anoop Menon as another surprise because all that his character did on this movie was to bring hatred for people who doesn’t agree to his opinions, and inspired that abuse on Maria Sharapova – there is nothing in there. Nivin Pauly’s performance was good, but not huge.

Meanwhile, Om Shanti Oshana was a pure fun ride. It gave a twist to things by moving things through the viewpoint of the heroine rather than the hero. Even the cupid on the poster was female there. But there is nothing to be serious about this one either. It is a very happy feel-good movie full of nice jokes. But there is nothing to give Nazriya Nazim a chance at the Best Actress Award. I had actually thought that things were clearly moving towards Manju Warrier in How Old Are You? – but that was not to be. Then there is Mammootty who got the attention of critics. Well, Asianet Film Awards had got more things correctly. Apothecary also deserved better; so did Jayasurya.

***The images used in this blog post are from the Facebook Pages of these movies.

TeNy