The Great Mollywood Kitchen: How OTTs Empower Regional Cinemas To Compete With Bollywood

The influx of internet TV and the expansion of indigenous OTT platforms catering to regional cinema content, have propelled a range of generic and creative experimentation in Malayalam cinema. The spike in subscription during the Covid-19 lockdown (up to 55-60 per cent acco­r­ding to the BCG-CII Media and Entertain­ment Report) res­h­a­ped traditional market patterns, making direct­-to-­streaming release a lucrative choice for pro­d­u­c­ers.­ The mix of players like Sony­LIV, ZEE5, alongside bigger names like Dis­ney+Hotstar, Net­flix and Amazon Prime Vid­eo, offer a competitive market for purchase as well as new kinds of prod­u­ctions in Indian regional languages, including Malayalam. Even newer streaming platforms such as Prime Ree­ls and Neestream, have also emerged during this period, focusing solely on Malayalam film content.

The move to internet television for releasing films that were on the verge of completion star­ted during the pandemic, with C U Soon (Mahesh Narayanan, 2020), which was publicised as a “com­puter-screen movie”. The trend continued with films such as Minnal Murali (Basil Joseph, 2021) that saw the provincialisation of the superhero genre through localised idioms. Unlike pre-­pandemic theatrical and satellite releases, str­e­aming platforms also allowed such regional content to reach a transnational viewership. Eff­e­ctively, it bust the myth that regional cinema is limited by language affiliations, an effect perhaps also of the platforms’ algorithm-based AI feed of suggested content. The moot point here is that this provides filmmakers with some latitude in exploring and experimenting with topics that deviate from expectations that have traditionally accompanied theatrical releases.

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A case in point is the 2022 Malayalam film Puz­hu, released on SonyLIV. Written by Harshad, Sha­rfu and Suhas of Unda fame, and directed by debutante Ratheena P.T., Puzhu was simultan­e­o­u­sly released in Malayalam, Telugu, Kan­nada, Tam­il and Hindi. The film explores the pernicious effects of caste purity and endogamy that fuel honour killing. The negative shades seen in the character played by Mamm­o­o­tty would possibly not have surfaced if the film was meant only for theatrical release. In recent times, the systemic inequalities of caste oppress­ion and honour killing have found filmic repre­s­e­n­­tation in regional Indian cinema through films like Sairat (Nagraj Man­jule, Marathi, 2016), Pazhiye­rum Perumal (Mari Selvaraj, Tamil, 2018) and Jan­ani’s Juliet (Pankaj Rishi Kumar, English/Tam­il, 2019). OTT platfo­rms have allowed even more enunciations to eme­rge in this direction, for instance T.J. Gnanavel’s Jai Bhim (Tamil, 2021) was released on Amazon Pri­me Video, and Puzhu can be seen as falling wit­hin this category as well.

Framed as a psychological portrait, Puzhu looks at the tensions emerging from entrenched codes of caste purity—the hostility caused by the sister’s (Parvathy) inter-caste marriage to Kuttappan (Ap­p­unni Sasi), and the schism in her relationship with her brother that explodes violently by the end of the film. The film is prefaced by a mytholo­gical play enacted by a single actor, Kuttappan. Mammootty’s character becomes a stand-in for the play’s accursed king, who isolates to safeguard himself from dangers, only to be destroyed by a puz­hu (worm). The film doesn’t pin down one specific meaning for puzhu as symbolic of the downt­r­odden, but rather uses the symbolism to point out our own culpability and inaction in the perpe­tuation of caste atrocities. The crude joke by the sub-registrar, who compares the couple to a “coc­onut kernel grabbed by a crow”, and the ensuing slap from Kuttappan, acts as a caustic remin­der to the audience who may have entertained similar thoughts about the couple.

For those familiar with Mammootty’s superstar persona, the shift afforded by an OTT release also becomes apparent in the aesthetic choices made in the film. Brevity seems to be a structuring principle, as viewers are given only enough pieces of information to learn about the characters on the go, rather than flowering into a full-blown family melodrama. Thus, despite being a Mammootty vehicle in terms screen-time, his back-story is kept to a minimal and we learn very few things about him—the nickname Kuttan (his real name is never revealed), his obsessive need for regimentation and routine (mirrored in his desire to pres­erve the status quo), and his cold indifference tow­­ards those who are different. We learn that despite his calm demeanor, Kuttan is at war with the world—whether it is his psychological torture of the former factory engineer who once tried to kill him, or in his orders to his son to retrieve a lost chess piece. Indeed, his only preoccupation seems to be to pass on caste codes and lineage to his son, whom he disciplines thr­o­ugh emotional abuse, reg­imentation and a strict control over who he interacts with. Thus, while the promos of the film never spell out caste, it is the major determinant of the plot, as seen in the affective gesture of hate and disgust media­ted via caste purity. The tipping point is when Kuttan, learning about his sister’s pregna­ncy, is propelled to lash out at her and her husb­and in an uncharacteristic burst of emotion.

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This emphasis on purity is also seen in the arra­n­gement of space in the film. The apartment buil­ding that Kuttan inhabits is a modified, urban and modern extension of the tharavadu—an ancestral household. The building posits a clear caste-based insider/outsider dichotomy based on spatial separation, being rented out to “only our people” (up­p­­er caste/Brahmins), and forecloses any social int­ermixing of spaces, despite the fact that service labour is provided by oppressed castes. The inter­ior of Kuttan’s apartment is a controlled environment where caste purity and superiority are mai­­ntained—values he considers are integral to the upbringing he wants his son to get. In a gest­ure reminiscent of a benevolent patriarch, Kuttan dictates to his son why he should not take food from others, but can give them his food. The space is strictly controlled and nothing is out of place, whether footwear, laundry or utensils. The perce­i­ved harmony of the apartment is almost uncanny and non-human, something captured in the othe­r­wise unmotivated slow shots of the dining table late at night, reminiscent of a horror film.

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And it is perhaps in these two ways that one can conceptualise the relationship between OTT platforms and a film like Puzhu—the reconfiguration of the film’s star-text and the associated formal sty­le of the film. Despite being a Mammootty starrer, Puzhu is not archetypal “Mammootty”. In fact, Mammootty is not the star he usually is on screen, it is the caste-marked Kuttappan and not Kuttan who is the real star of the film’s die­getic world. The caste-body can be the narrative fulc­rum of a film with Mammoo­tty is precisely since it is not a “Mammootty film”. Puzhu’s ado­ption of subtle narrative and formal techniques over background melodrama and ico­nic moments is also made possible because of the same reason.

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OTT platforms play a central role in this, as they serve as incubators for experimentation in form and content. While certainly not an ideal and ben­evolent space for the efflorescence of art, at least for the moment, they offer latitude in script and subtitling, as well as formal aspects like cinema­to­graphy, editing and lighting, even if purely out of market-driven considerations. In the heterogeneous cultural and linguistic landscape of India, whe­re regional language content has always had to compete with Hindi cinema and Bolly­wood’s mammoth infrastructure, OTT platforms offer alternative avenues whereby hyperlocal content can be featured and appreciated without cra­mm­ing them into niche spaces. What OTTs have allo­wed India’s regional cinemas to do, is to embr­ace their regional flavours and market these to a cosmopolitan, content-hungry audience.

(This appeared in the print edition as "The Great Mollywood Kitchen")

(Views expressed are personal)

Darshana Sreedhar Mini is Assistant Professor of Communication Arts at University of Wisconsin-Madison