Mammootty: The Malayalam maverick and maestro of modern masterpieces

If Amitabh Bachchan were Sanjeev Kumar, he would be Mammootty . Malayalam cinema’s treasured pride, fastened at the hip with Mohanlal, is a superstar who blends into every role he plays. Normally, it’s the other way with superstars. Mammootty doesn’t think of himself as a star, let alone a superstar. And he isn’t faking it.

Mammootty once said, “I consider myself a farmer. Like a farmer works hard on his land and waits eagerly for the harvest, I do my best and then hope for the best results.”

Mammootty is an actor of reformative abilities. He can change in front of our eyes, from a boorish, uncouth misogynistic cop in Kasaba, to a loving, though disturbingly distant father, in Peranbu. Mammootty, as the empathetic father to an specially abled daughter in Peranbu, is so sensitive to the girl’s anatomy and its changes, that she cannot comprehend, it’s almost like he’s exchanging places with his daughter to feel her pain. He gently feeds her, makes faces to humour her (all in one long-shot displaying the transformative superstar-actor’s bravura talent), cleans a dirty bathroom with his own hands so she could use it, and buys and  applies the sanitary napkin when she has her periods.

Kamal Haasan  in Sadma couldn’t have done more for Sridevi even if he tried. To his credit, Mammootty manages to manoeuvre his saintly character into the hemisphere of the human. Peranbu is like one tall order picked from a posh menu to placate the universal appetite for posh pacification. Mammootty shines in every frame, as only the most skilled actor can. His eyes convey aeons of pain and resignation. It ‘s the look of a man who has come to terms with his immovable destiny of doom.

There are no enduring glimmers of  hope in Mammootty’s character Amudhavan’s life in Peranbu. His wife has left him to let him look after their spastic daughter, who is quite a handful. She is whiny, demanding, and unreasonable. And when she attains puberty, she  begins to ogle at boys on television and from her window. It doesn’t take Paapa’s papa long to figure out what  Beti wants…So he goes looking for a suitable male sex worker…Wait, there is more of this. All progressively non-progressive, self-annihilative methods of punishing oneself for fathering a damaged child. The film suggests that atonement in such a circumstance can be had by subjecting the patriarch to almost three hours of humourless parenting, punctuated by bouts of preposterous self-flagellation.

I came away from Peranbu feeling ravaged and guilty. This joyless, humourless, sunless ode to fatherly self-punishment is like  a lengthy interrogation at a police station, where a man is questioned and tortured for a crime he never committed until he  finally accepts his guilt, just to escape the torture. It is a punishing, disengaging film that forgets cinema is supposed to serve one other vital function apart from rumination. This is Mammootty at his exploratory best.

My other favourite Mammootty performance from his recent films is the one in One. In  Santosh Vishwanath’s One, the Mammootty devotees were thrilled when they  got see their idol playing the Chief Minister of Kerala. Happily, Mammootty doesn’t pay to the galleries. The thundering thespian does not make his entry until half an hour into the plot. And what a  grand entry it is!

Self-control is in short supply in this bombastic drama. But with Mammootty around, the rest of the cast has no other option but to tone it down. Mammootty is quietly powerful, restrained and indignant, bridled and  yet impatient to break free from the restrictions that politics places on those who want to make a difference. A little bit more of that self-control we see in Mammoothy’s performance would have gone a long way in humanizing the film beyond its towering protagonist.

Unlike the sons of certain superstars in Mumbai, Mammooty’ son Dulquer Salmaan is an actor in his own right. Dulquer says his performances  had to be different from his father’s.

" I couldn’t possibly do what he had already done. He has a larger-than-life image. It made no sense to walk in his footsteps. There is a nothing like a ‘born actor’. It’s all about honing the skills. Duplication never works for anybody. Why would it have worked for me? I chose my own path because that was the only way to go. At the same time, I’ve to admit there was an advantage in being my fathers’ son. The debut film came much easier to me than it would have if I was an outsider."

For those fans of Mammootty, who are hoping to see him on screen with his son, there is  bad news. Dulquer says he is not inclined to oblige. “The thought has crossed the minds of many filmmakers. We’ve had quite a few offers to work together. But no, I don’t think that’s a good idea. The comparisons would be unacceptable to me. So unless it is something that offers a truly special challenge for us to come together, it is unlikely that we will work together.”

Maybe, sometime in future, Dulquer can play his legendary father on screen. Even the son would find it very tough to unravel the mystique of Mammootty that has regaled audiences for over fifty years in four hundred films.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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