Picking Indrans was easy, not so with Parvathy

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Picking Indrans as the best actor was the easiest choice made by the 48th State Film Award jury headed by noted filmmaker T V Chandran. Picking the best film and the best female actor was perhaps the toughest. "When we watched Indrans in 'Alorukkam', the performance looked so brilliant, that we instantly knew that no one will be able to better it," Mr Chandran told Deccan Chronicle. "But that was not the case with Parvathy. The jury was divided. The girl in 'Ottamurivelicham' (Vineetha Koshy) looked equally good. Finally, after lot of intense discussions, we unanimously settled on Parvathy because her role was a bit more nuanced," Mr Chandran said. (Vineetha Koshy is the heroine of the popular music video 'Mounam Sollum Varthaigal' made by the 'Ottamurivelicham' maker Rahul Riji Nair.) Manju Warrier, as is widely believed, was never really in contention.

Choosing the best film, too, created a deep creative divide in the 10-member jury. "Again 'Ottamurivelicham' and 'Ee Ma Yau' were equally good. Both had focus, and dealt with highly relevant subjects. If one was about marital rape, the other was about death. Eventually, we decided to go with the film that dealt with a girl's fight against marital abuse. But we thought the filmmaking of 'Ee Ma Yau' was nearly perfect that we went against our original thinking to grant the best director to the person who made the best film and offered Lijo the best director prize," Mr Chandran said. Last year, Dileesh Pothen lost out because the jury chairman A K Bir insisted that the maker of the 'best film' (Manhole) should be the best director.

Nonetheless, Mr Chandran was deeply disappointed with the quality of films in 2017. "More than half the films, I would say, were against the very concept of cinema. There was neither a narrative nor framing. It was as if these filmmakers believed that merely shooting some random footage was enough to make cinema," Mr Chandran said. There was one film that was conceived, shot, edited and censored in two days in the competition, he said.  "The producers of this film make this claim as though it was something extraordinary. But isn't it cinema they should be worried about than creating records," he asked. The other members of the jury were Dr Biju, Manoj Kana, Vivek Sachithanand, Santhosh Thundiyil, Jerry Amaldev, Cheriyan Kalpakavadi, Dr M Rajiv Kumar, and Jalaja.