PremiumRorschach, The Great Indian Kitchen to Neymar: How English titles aid Malayalam films’ pan-Indian journey
Since the pandemic, about 130 Malayalam movies have had English titles. Mollywood filmmakers explain the reasons behind this
Last Updated: 03.27 PM, Jul 25, 2023
Binary, God’s Own Players, Live, Missing Girl, Picasso and The Great Escape – these are the names of movies that were released on the same day this year. And none of these are Hollywood movies. All of them, along with 2018: Everyone’s A Hero, Neymar, Charles Enterprises and Jackson Bazaar Youth contributed to the 10 Malayalam movies with English titles that were released in May 2023 and about 130 since the pandemic in March 2020.
For starters, this isn’t a new trend in Malayalam. In fact, all of the renowned duo Siddique-Lal’s Malayalam movies since their debut in 1989 have had English titles; these include Godfather, Vietnam Colony, Hitler and King Liar. But since the pandemic, there’s a renewed sense of purpose for such titles for Malayalam films. This is evident from the rise in the number of such titles including Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen, Nissam Basheer’s Rorschach and Tanu Balak’s Cold Case that are clever and also reflect their “theme and feel”.
A Malayali trend
Actor-director-screenwriter Anoop Menon, whose post-pandemic films have had titles such as 21 Grams, King Fish and Oh... Cinderella, tells OTTplay that it all stems from how English is among the most commonly-used language among Malayalis. “In Kerala, we have the most number of English medium schools and learning English is a prerequisite. It’s the language we use for our daily transactions and so, the language a movie’s title is in hardly has any impact,” he explains.
As the State’s diaspora is also spread across the Middle East, Europe and North America, an English title is just as familiar as a Malayalam one, he adds. “We live and travel abroad for work and other purposes, and we have never had that mindset that we will only converse in Malayalam when in a foreign country. That carries over to our films too,” says Anoop.
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Meanwhile, director Jeo Baby, whose movie The Great Indian Kitchen was arguably the first Malayalam film to get a pan-Indian reach due to the OTTs post pandemic, says that his initial intention of choosing an English title for the movie was to make it accessible to the international audience.
“My first two movies, 2 Penkuttikal and Kunju Daivam, had to have the English titles, Two Girls and The Little God, during their film festival runs. This made it easier to communicate its content to others,” he said. It was the same thought process for The Great Indian Kitchen too, which showcased the struggles of a woman in a typical patriarchal household in India.
“I intended it to run in the festival circuit, but it didn’t happen due to the pandemic,” says Jeo. “I also realised that we weren’t making films just for the Malayalam audience anymore and it had to be understood by the audience globally. Also, the name mirrored the situation of kitchens across India. So, there was sarcasm in the title too.”
‘A catchy title always piques curiosity’
Probably, no other Malayalam film’s title in recent times would have piqued the curiosity of the audience as much as director Nissam Basheer’s Rorschach, starring Mammootty. For him, however, that was never a priority. “Rorschach as a title as well as a film was a risk. I never knew it would work, till it did,” he says. “The character in the film suffers from a psychological disorder and Rorschach worked for the content of the film.”
But given a choice, he says he would always go for such titles and informs us that his next film, starring Dileep and Dhyan Sreenivasan too will have an English title. “We choose to go with Kettyolaanu Ente Maalakha for my debut film as it resonated with the audience. But I didn’t like it too much. I’d rather choose something like Rorschach, because I can proudly say that at least half of the people came to know about the scientist, Hermann Rorschach, and the psychometric test after we had announced the title,” he explains.
Anoop Menon also echoes this thought, saying that a catchy title spikes the curiosity in people. He points out the instance of how his thriller 21 Grams, which is another title inspired by a scientific experiment and denotes the hypothetical weight of a soul, was initially titled Raathri. “It was plain and that’s why we came up with 21 Grams, which was clever and went with the content of the film,” he says.
That said, not all English titles of Malayalam films get the attention. There have been interesting names such as Shane Nigam’s Corona Papers, a crime-drama set during the pandemic, or Samyukhta Menon’s Erida, a femme fatale thriller that draws its name from the Greek Goddess of chaos and strife. “If Rorschach had a lesser-known star, nobody would have cared about it,” says Anoop Menon. “People began looking it up online because it had Mammootty in the lead.”
‘Inclined to choose English titles due to OTTs’
Malayalam films being widely viewed on OTTs during the pandemic has also played a part in filmmakers now increasingly opting for a title that is familiar with audiences across the country. In OTTs, the Malayalam movies titles, even when transliterated in English, become hard for the audience to spell as well as pronounce them, say directors.
Jeo, who has helmed movies such as Freedom Fight, Sree Dhanya Catering Service and Kaathal – The Core, says, “After the pandemic, it was clear that all kinds of Malayalam movies are getting a pan-Indian reach due to the OTTs. So, you naturally are inclined to choose English names.”
Furthermore, a key reason Malayalam films have been watched widely on OTTs are because of their English subtitles. Anoop Menon gives an example of Malayalam cinema’s reach today due to OTTs. The actor had been shooting at a house in Connecticut, USA, for his upcoming film Checkmate, when its Malayali resident had asked him if his neighbour could take a photo with him.
“I was expecting another Malayali, but the lady turned out to be a Brazilian settled in the US,” he says. “I wouldn’t have been as surprised if she had watched Amitabh Bachchan’s or Mohanlal’s films, but she happened to watch 21 Grams on an OTT platform there with subtitles and then proceeded to search for more of my films and watch them.”
Beyond the limitations of the language
Unlike other South industries such as Tamil and Kannada, the Kerala government doesn’t have tax relaxations for titles in Malayalam, says Suresh Kumar, from the Kerala Film Producers Association. The only recent regulation, which comes from the Central Board of Film Certification, is that the title must show the movie’s name in Malayalam. This means that even a title like Rorschach must be written in Malayalam when its title card is exhibited.
Nissam says that his tendency to choose English title stems from “limited words that connect with the common people” in Malayalam. “We have a rich literature, but if we use those words as titles, it will appear archaic or literary. It’s hard to find too many colloquial words in Malayalam that haven’t already been used as film titles,” he explains.
Jeo, however, is of the view that it entirely depends on the “creativity and brilliance” of the makers and writers. “In the past two years alone, we have had movies with titles like Jan.E.Man, Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey, Palthu Janwar and Romancham. Recently, a film titled Guruvayoor Ambala Nadayil was announced. I am curious about the film just because of its poetic title,” he explains.
This year alone has seen almost 25 Malayalam movies with English titles till July and this could eclipse 2022’s high of 42. Explaining the rise, Anoop Menon says, “The times are changing. Much as we would like to preserve our language, we have to understand that this is going to be a global economy and films will be made on a global scale sooner than later. So, we have to come up with names in a language that everyone can communicate in.”