Empuraan’s Prithviraj Sukumaran: Malayalam cinema is the only industry where…

In the week before the release of Empuraan in theatres, actor-filmmaker Prithviraj Sukumaran had gone on a whirlwind promotional tour, along with leading man Mohanlal. They were occasionally accompanied by other cast members like Indrajit Sukumaran, Tovino Thomas and Manju Warrier, but the bulk of the heavy-lifting of the publicity was done by Prithviraj and Mohanlal.

During one such promotional interview, he was asked what sets Hindi and Malayalam cinema apart. The argument was that with Hindi films, the expectation is for big spectacles, while with Malayalam movies, narratives rooted in realism were the preferred ones. For every big-ticket masala entertainer that has worked with audiences, the root cause would be that there was content that resonated with them, said Prithviraj.

Also read: L2 Empuraan movie review: Prithviraj Sukumaran elevates the stakes with an ambitious but less nuanced follow-up to Lucifer 

Elaborating, the actor-filmmaker cited the example of Shah Rukh Khan’s Jawan, that came across as a big film with grand visuals, but had a relevant piece of social messaging. “Just having scene-after-scene of good-looking cinematography and production design is not going to make a film work. In Malayalam, we have always thought that content is where everything should start. Having worked in so many industries, I think, Malayalam remains the only industry, where, even today, projects are actually kick-started by writers,” he told Bollywood Bubble.

He adds that the writer thinks of the story and then approaches a director or star and tells him/her about the idea. “Then, the writer and the director, or the writer and the actor decide the rest of the cast, crew and even who should produce the film. Writers being a power centre has retained the flavour of our films heavily relying on the written material,” he said.

Prithviraj pointed out how during the promotions of Empuraan, having writer Murali Gopy along at times, was astonishing for the media, who are not accustomed to seeing writers on publicity tours. He reckons that there is a lesson in that for the Hindi film industry and wonders why they don’t have power-house writers like Salim-Javed anymore.

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