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‘Content’ is an ugly word used to tie together a myriad of stories out there but the market seems to respond to it.
Audiences seem to prefer experiential, novel stories over stale, formulaic films.
Arjun Menon looks at the Top 10 South films that made an impact in 2024.
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Director: Nag Ashwin
Cast: Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, Kamal Haasan and Deepika Padukone
Director Nag Ashwin cracked the formulae of the spectacle, rooted in its mythological origins in the biggest motion picture of 2024.
The passion project brought together big names like Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, Kamal Haasan and Deepika Padukone, among others, to tell the story of a hero’s journey that traces its roots back to our mythology.
The film’s well thought-out use of ‘Blade Runner‘ in the world of the Mahabharata cracked the confluence of a certain fantasy aesthetic with the right amount of conviction and grandeur.
The sweeping scope, ambition and heart at the center of this spectacle make one hopeful for the much-anticipated sequel.
Maharaja (2024)
Director: Nithilan Saaminathan
Cast: Vijay Sethupathi. Anurag Kashyap, Mamta Mohandas and Sachana Namidass
The tradition of ‘Revengomatic’ film is not new to our cinema and has been a constant staple of mainstream potboilers. The effectiveness of a revenge narrative is banking on the emotional cogency of the hero’s plight and his relentless tussle with his moral boundaries.
Maharaja is one of the most fascinating, structured mainstream films in recent times, where our empathy for the central figure sidesteps our expectations of a routine revenge flick.
Vijay Sethupathi’s turn as a socially awkward father trying to trace his missing teenage daughter is the fulcrum around which Director Nithilan Saminathan stacks up a seemingly mundane narrative about two men, mirrored to form a complicated, unrelenting portrait of psychopathy as well as violence and its effects.
The closing shot of the film is one of the most symbolically elegant, yet disturbing images in recent memory.
Aadujeevitham
Director: Blessy
Stars: Prithviraj Sukumaran, Amala Paul, K R Gokul and Jimmy Jean-Louis
Any adaptation of a popular text may not meet fan expectations.
Aadujeevitham, adapted from Benyamin’s bestselling novel of the same name, is one of those rare instances, where the heightened sensibility and poetic insistence makes up for the description-heavy source text. It is aided by a challenging performance by the leading man, whose physical preparation for the character will go down as a piece of Malayalam cinema’s triumphant behind the scenes stories.
Prithviraj Sukumaran is an immigrant from a village in Kerala, who is tricked into a life of servitude and extreme hardship on a goat farm in the Middle East.
The film noted mostly for its excruciatingly long production history marred by the pandemic, production halts and numerous issues plaguing the team, created history in Malayalam cinema with its glorious box office run and widespread critical acclaim.
A R Rahman’s melancholic score and director Blessy’s maximalist take on a life-affirming subject matter made it a standout production in recent Malayalam cinema history of great cultural and cinematic curiosity.
Manjummel Boys
Director: Chidambaram
Cast: Soubin Shahir, Sreenath Bhasi, Deepak Parambol and Khalid Rahman.
At this point, there is nothing much left unsaid about the earth-shattering box office success of Chidambaram’s survival thriller Majummel Boys, which is the highest-grossing Malayalam language film.
This ensemble featuring a roster of talent from the new generation of Malayalam cinema told the story of a group of men and their attempt to save a friend after an unexpected accident during their visit to a tourist location upends their carefree trip.
The film is an exercise in tension that thrives on its back-and-forth narrative splicing strategy. The resilience of the human spirit and relentless friendship are celebrated in this chamber piece about a group of buddies, who come to terms with their existence on a fateful day.
The Kanmani Anbodu Kaathalan song at the end of the film is arguably the greatest, most inventive needle drop moment in any Indian film this past year, which both provided new context and meaning to the chartbuster Illaiyaraja classic from Guna.
Saripodhaa Sanivaaram
Director: Vivek Athreya
Cast: Nani, S J Suryah, Priyanka Mohan and Sai Kumar
Saripodhaa Sanivaaram stands out among this year’s theatrical releases for its sly irreverence to the in-demand formulas of our pulpy action entertainer brand of cinema.
Screenwriter-Director Vivek Athreya upended the done-to-death tropes of mainstream action by spinning a unique conceit into the story of a reluctant hero, whose anger lands him in opposition to the corrupt police chief wreaking havoc on the local people.
The coming-of-age of the hero, who is forced to be the saviour of the downtrodden, is expertly subverted with a keen eye for clever scenarios where the intrusive goodness of the hero is balanced by the quirky, nonchalance of the antagonist.
No action film has managed to steer clear of cliches with such a commitment to novelty as this Nani and S J Suryah-starring experiment.
Meiyazhagan
Director: C Premkumar
Cast: Karthi, Aravind Swamy, Sri Divya
The director of the much-acclaimed romance 96 made his comeback with Meiyazhagan, which explores the stories of two individuals uprooted from their surroundings at a young age and finding their worlds inverted at a later stage by a special person from their past.
The gradual sight of the city-dwelling Arulmozhi’s superficial, bubbled existence being upended by a dear one from his past is a sweetheart ache in cinematic form.
Meiyazhagan is not your routine run-of-the-mill comfort watch but a film that slowly rubs against the vestiges of goodness within each of us, with its own leisurely, laid-back rhythms.
No movie has come close to touching a nerve of emotional truth-seeking as this wondrous conversational piece, brimming with a rare sort of humanism.
Aavesham
Director: Jithu Madhavan
Cast: Fahadh Faasil, Sajin Gopu, Hipster.
Fahadh Faasil has risen quickly to be a nationally recognised actor, whose reputation for quirky, larger-than-life parts precedes him.
In Aavesham, Fahadh plays a feared gangster, whose penchant for violence is met only by his desire for maternal love.
The film ended up becoming the actor’s biggest box office success to date and accentuated his already meteoring ‘Pan Indian’ fame.
His character Ranga might well be one of the central pop cultural figures to have emerged from recent Malayalam cinema, inspiring countless ‘memes and reels’ dedicated to his peculiar accent and wardrobe.
The story has the gangster forge a bind with a naive set of college students, as a means to fill the gaping void in his existence, and it is one of the funniest take down’s of the ‘amma paasam‘ and ‘dead mother’ trope used in mainstream cinema, where the emotional connect of the plot is used to elevate the hero’s likeability.
Thangaalan
Director: Pa Ranjith
Cast: Vikram, Parvathy Thiruvothu, Malavika Mohanan
Vikram is known for his chameleon-like credentials, when it comes to his physical transformations for roles, and he proves that with his latest film, Thangaalan.
Director Pa Ranjith’s gutsy take on magic realism, within the skin of a tale of political uprising is an ode to the forgotten heroes from history.
Usually in films dealing with pre-independent India, the focus lies on the freedom struggle from a generic point of view, eschewing nuances of class and caste representation.
But Pa Ranjith places an epic period adventure tale within a caste based narrative that tells an important story. It got good numbers at the box office.
Laughing Buddha
Director: M Bharath Raj
Cast: Pramod Shetty, Teju Belawadi, Sundar Raj, Diganth
Few Indian films have captured the authentic life of the police force with such delicate flourishes like this Pramod Shetty starrer.
This story of a good natured cop, whose delicious cooking prompts criminals to confess to crimes, is exactly the kind of breezy, light-hearted fun that the title promises.
Rishabh Shetty’s production Laughing Buddha is as uneventful as a film can be, yet it captures the texture and feel of gruelling mundane police work.
The film, despite its modest budget and star cast, managed to capture audience attention from the host of Kannada releases this year.
There might be differences of opinion about the scattered focus of the screenplay that tries to be too many things at once but the charm of Laughing Buddha makes it worthwhile.
Kishkindha Kaandam
Director: Dinjith Ayyathan
Cast: Asif Ali, Vijaya Raghavan, Aparna Balamurali
Kishkindha Kaandam was a surprise hit of 2024. The Asif Ali starrer elevated a pulpy, noir staple into a memorable exercise in suspense.
The film dealing with the seemingly strained relationship between an ex-soldier and his recently remarried son upended all expectations of a routine thriller with its attention to detail and layered screenplay.
I can’t recall a more satisfying theatre watch this year, where I saw the audience hold their breaths and marvel at the inspired writing.
Vijayaraghavan and Asif Ali take seemingly cipher archetypes and turn in some of the best acting of their careers.
Bahul Ramesh’s screenplay managed to capture a certain appetite for novel storytelling that will be discussed for years to come.
