Audience of Kerala How Responded to Movie ‘Arabikadha’

Malayalam movie industry was once famous for its realistic movies and

quality of movies. But with time, the rationality of audience and realistic pattern

of movies decreased in the Malluwood. We should compare this to the political

situation of Kerala too. Kerala was the first Indian state which elected a

communist government through elections. It had a good political history and it

was famous for its political awareness and its literacy rate. But now we can see a

clear degradation of political awareness in the Kerala society and more people are

becoming apolitical. The interesting thing about those people who is part of

politics is, they are not even aware about the political ideologies of their own

parties. Here I’m going to analyze the impact of movie ‘Arabikadha’ in the Kerala

audience.

After a long gap the Malayalam movie lovers got a good political satire,

’Arabikadha’, in 2007. It was by director Lal Jose who already established his

name in the film industry and in the heart of common audience by the movies

‘Classmates’, ‘Chandupottu’, ‘Mesamadhavan’ etc. Sreenivasan, Changshumin,

Samvritha Sunil, Jagthi Sreekumar and Salim Kumar did the major roles in the

movie. Iqbal Kuttipuram was the script writer and H. Hussain was the producer.

The story is about the life of a leftist Cuba Mukundan, by Sreenivasn, who

migrated to Gulf to find money from there.

Cuba Mukundan is an ardent fan of Fidel Castro and   loves his party than

anything.  He and his father 'Society' Raghavan, who brought the communist

party in the village, who run a tea shop, are the torch bearers of the party at

Chemmanur (which means the land of red soil) in Kannur district. Being the local

secretary of communist party, he criticizes and resists everything that is forbidden

by the party texts. And so he is against cola, bourgeoisie, bribery, computers and

even don't believe in gods. As Marx somewhere suggested that he rethought many

times about his decision to enter into marriage, Mukundan also don't like to enter

into matrimony. But all in the party were not like Mukundan. People like

Karunan, a party leader who wants to take over the party in the village from

Mukundan, for his own selfish reasons.

The film opens with the lathy charge on   ‘Cuba’ Mukundan and his party

men, who are making an agitation against the leather factory in the village, set up

by Kunjunni (Jagathy Sreekumar) a rich NRI. The party resists the factory due to

environmental reasons and the industrial pollution that it creates. But Karunan has

a secret deal with Kunjunni, to somehow avoid the agitation. But soon the court

rules to close down the leather factory. Kunjunni now agitated, plans with

Karunan to frame Mukundan’s father Society Ragahvan on a scandal related with

society’s expenditure. They succeed in that, when Raghavan is at hospital with a

fatal stroke. 'Cuba' Mukundan believes the cooked up scandal story and suspends

his father from the party for the involvement, but soon the old man passes away.

Now Mukundan decides to repay the 'misappropriate' amount involved and take

leave from the party. The district committee suggests Mukundan to go to gulf so

that he can make the big amount of 20 lakh to repay, within a short time.

Mukundan, who has no gulf dreams says,"I would rather go to Cuba or

China than Dubai, to learn the working class movement". Finally Mukundan

abides by the party line, and lands up in gulf. The scorch of the sun in his life

starts here, as he is put on the job to do menial work by Karunan's nephew

Siddharthan, who arranged his visa and helped him to find a job. Mukundan who

realizes that he cannot do any menial labor finds it hard to survive and very soon

realizes that he has been working in the company of Kunjauunni, who reminds

him that the leadership of a party of the working class, are not used to doing hard

labor, nor do they know how to operate a laptop and he is too useless with little

knowledge of anything other than communism. Finding the old dogmas of

communism dead, Dubai for Mukundan becomes the beginning of a new world,

He also meets every type of Malayalees who are working there for a number of

reasons  and a Chinese girl Shu Min (Zhang Shu Min) whom he starts admiring as

because she is from China, a great Communist country. Very soon, the Chinese

girl too takes advantage of the Mukundan's silly beliefs.  Arabikatha is a

ungenerous indictment of how the ruling communist parties in Kerala, has moved

away from the ordinary people and its ideals, to become a party controlled by a

corrupt leadership and business tycoons devoid of social commitment.

Response of Audiences

The movie was one of the super hits of 2007 and got good support from all

types of audience. The songs of the movie was the highlight of the movie

especially the song ‘Chora vena mannil ninnu oyarnnu vanna poomaram…….’

about the history of communist party and current status of party. The famous song

writer Anil Panachooran did a good job in this movie. Actually the song criticizes

the current stage of party and reminds the party leaders and workers about the

history of party and those gave their life to party. Song got immense publicity and

almost all party workers and local leaders used this song as their caller tones and

ringing tone in their mobile phones and also it was the song that was widely used

before the political meetings of communist party at that time. About this issue

once Anil Panachooran made a statement in a public meeting that “the party

leaders of communist party are brilliant to know the meaning of the song, that is

the reason why they are not ready to give the award to the song and the common

party workers are using song in the public meetings and their personal mobiles

etc. without knowing the meaning’’ and also he adds “the brilliant party leaders

should change their mind to change the bad tendencies of the party”.

Also the director showed his bravery to tell the bad decisions taken by the

communist party especially the agitations against computer and the shift in the

ideologies of Russia and Communist China etc. and also blames the party of

Kerala which is not ready to accept the social changes happened around the

world.

In a “Face to Face” programme organized by press club in

Thiruvanathapuram after the release of movie the hero of the movie Sreenivassan

said the film was not an attack on the CPI (M). “It was more an attempt to

highlight the negative trends in the party”.

We should study the audience responses according to the internal

problems of CPI (M). Once the communist party was the solution for the all the

problems of common people in Kerala but now the internal problems in the party

made the situation worst. Now a day, the group fights which were common in the

Congress party of Kerala became essential part of Communist party too.

We can consider the responses of the audience as three types. In the first

some people considered the movie as something that against the communist party

of Kerala. There are some scenes which try to blame party’s ideologies, (e.g.

against computer). Some people also pointed out that the names of the major roles

have a similarity with the names of the party leaders of CPI (M) like the hero’s

name Mukundan with V S Achudandan and the villain P Karunan with Pinarai

Vijayan. The pro-communist party magazines published articles about the movie

that saying the movie is against the party. They considered the movie as another

attempt of ‘media syndicate’ (a term by communist thinkers of Kerala to represent

those media which is writing against party) to destruct party.

Some people considered the movie as an attempt to change the bad actions

of communist party. It was clear that because of the internal fights the party was

going away from the common man. It has proved in the last elections too. But the

party leadership was not ready to accept the fact. The villain Karunan was

representing the current face of the party and the movie ends with return of

Mukundan and also reveals the real face of Karunan. In the last scene we can see

that the people of Chemmannor welcoming Mukundan with ‘Inquilab Sindabad’.

In the cinema websites and other magazines, we can see that many people,

especially Keralites who are working outside Kerala responded to this scenes as it

as the attempt to purify the party and also establish the common man’s faith in the

party. Also many people considered the director as the representative of those

people who is very sad about what happening in the party and who wanted to

change the current situation.

On the other hand there was a group of people considered the movie as the

pro-communist movie. Most of them only noticed the parts of the movie where it

praising the communist party’s ideas and propagandas. The most interesting fact

was that it was this people who gave mouth publicity to this film. Most of them

belong to the people from DYFI (Democratic Youth Frond of India), the youth

wing of party and SFI (Student’s Federation of India). They celebrated the movie

scenes, songs and dialogues.

For the producer of the movie, the response of the audience was a very

positive one but that response was different that the movie makers expected. The

movie makers expected the movie will awake party members who blindly

supporting the leaders without realizing the facts. They also thought that it will

ignite some serious discussions in the public and the media too. The irrationality

in Kerala society can be seen in the response of this movie.