What is real in Salman Khan's case is reel in Mammootty's Kasaba
Eid is a good time for movie releases.
Salman Khan's Sultan is reported to have grossed Rs 100 crore in collections in the first three days.
Down South, Kasaba starring Malayalam superstar Mammootty was the big Eid release on July 7.
In terms of first day box office collections, dad Mammootty has beaten the record held by actor son Dulquer Salmaan's Kali which grossed 2.33 crore on day one. Kasaba collected Rs 2.5 crore on Thursday releasing in 101 screens in Kerala and debutant director Nithin Renji Panicker's ploy to make Mammootty don a police uniform after a gap of five years has clicked.
But that is not the only link that ties the two films, the two superstars together.
Just days before the release of Sultan, during its pre-release interviews, Salman said he "felt like a raped woman" after the strenuous shoot as a wrestler.
If the recording of that interview is anything to go by, Salman regretted his choice of words soon after and proceeded to change the wording. But the TRP-chasing media, quick to milk anything with a Salman connection, went to town with the original comment.
The National Commission for Women sent him a notice to appear before it. The Dabangg star refused to say sorry and ignored the notice with the contempt and the arrogance, that is so Salman.
What is real in Salman's case is reel in Mammootty's Kasaba.
In the Malayalam film, Mammootty plays a circle inspector Rajan Zachariah, a rogue cop with several shades of grey. He gets posted to Kalipuram on the Kerala-Karnataka border to probe the case of the mysterious death of a couple. Kasaba is a cocktail of power politics and extra-judicial policing set in an environment of a brothel and Maoist links.
Mammootty's huge female fan following is shocked by the star mouthing misogyny to the power of X, while playing the character in khaki. To lend verbal punch to his cockiness, Zacharaiah walks over to a female police officer, pulls at her belt and tells her that he can make her miss her menstrual cycle, suggesting that she "won't be able to walk for a week".
This threat to rape is not the only one low point, the film is laced with several such lines, double-meaning dialogues and scenes that denigrate women.
 |
| Sultan is reported to have grossed Rs 100 crore in collections in the first three days. |
Agreed, it is a role where the character is meant to convey lust, but then we are not talking of just any actor.
After all, Mammootty along with Mohanlal, rules Malayalam cinema. Surely, social responsibility demands that he draw the line on what kind of dialogues he will say on camera.
Malayalam cinema is not so short on creativity that filmmakers cannot find alternate ways to convey depravity. If Salman is pilloried, how can Mammootty get away, using the defence that he was only doing his job as a director's actor.
It is not that Mammootty has not played a character who uttered profanities before. But in Kasaba, Mammootty's character equates machismo with crude innuendos. And they come at the expense of the women in the film, with lewdness defining the narrative. The intention of the film may have been to entertain the filmgoers but gender equality is the casualty.
But this is not just about Kasaba, it is about Mammootty.
No one is arguing that the 64-year-old actor should not get into the skin of his character or that he should only play the likes of BR Ambedkar.
While Salman can defend his pathetic remark, arguing it was a slip of the tongue, with a metaphor used in poor taste, Mammootty has no such defence. After all, he would have read and re-read the lines many times over, rehearsed them on location, perhaps given more than one take, yet he chose to go with it.
Wouldn't he with the kind of experience he has, know that a person of his stature, with his kind of fan following, with his kind of influence, ought not to mouth such stuff. All said and done, Mammootty is a three-time National award for best actor winner.
What Mammootty's character does with the female cop also constitutes sexual harassment at the workplace.
Wonder what the censor board thought of this representation of the men and women in uniform. If Pahlaj Nihalani thought Udta Punjab denigrated Punjab's good name, by the same logic, this one spoils the name of the Kerala police.
Many would argue that by this yardstick, a rape scene can never be shown in Indian cinema or a villain can never be made to convey lust. The problem comes when the fans of such superstars imbibe the same mindset.
But the real world, the men and women, who make a film a hit do not seem to care. The success of Sultan is proof that Salman's thoughts on rape do no harm to his prowess at the ticket counter. The fact that more exhibitors want to screen Kasaba also shows that the Salmanification of Mammootty makes no difference, so long as the moolah is coming in.
Guess, the world is only Being Human.