Reinventing the comic genre as serious cinema

The Malayalam movie actor-director, Sreenivasan, who passed away at the age of 69, had become a legend in his own time.

- Damodar Prasad

His filmography includes two directorial ventures, screenplays for 60 films, and acting roles, including as the lead, in more than 200 movies. These stats, however, are not what make Sreenivasan a unique and distinguishing figure in Malayalam movies.

He once remarked that his contribution to Malayalam cinema is not what he has scripted or acted in but the 500 films he didn’t do. This casual remark had an immediate effect, and it was then rehashed in different contexts, helping to create an impression of a witty sensibility. Several of the dialogues he wrote for the movies are used in different situations to give context to the banalities of everyday life and politics. These dialogues have come to occupy a significant part of the Malayali urban folklore and lingo.

Take, for instance, his popular dialogue in the 1991 cult movie, Sandesham (Message), released in the backdrop of the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe: “Don't utter a word about Poland.” The Communist Party cadre essayed by Sreenivasan in this movie aggressively delivers this while vehemently arguing politics with his sibling, who is affiliated with the Congress Party. Usually, over repetition leads it to become cliché; nevertheless, this cliché has now assumed a cult status of a quasi-religious utterance that carries within it layers of meaning suitable to the context in which it is expressed.