JOIN USPrathap Pothen, an outlier who bridged sensibilities
Prathap Pothen rarely gave interviews but when he did, he was almost always asked about being the outsider. Pothen who died on July 15, aged 69, was an unlikely hero as he cut his teeth on Malayalam cinema of the late 1970s and the 1980s. It was an industry in transition, drifting from campy star vehicles to first winds of the parallel cinema movement when Pothen made his debut in Bharathan’s ‘Aaravam’ (1978).
He would say in interviews that he had nothing to talk about with his co-actors from that time. The young man with a Lawrence-School education was a striking departure from male-lead convention but his collaborations with two influential filmmakers of the time — Bharathan and P Padmarajan — also became representative of this exciting transition of sensibilities.
‘Thakara’ (1979), in which Pothen played a mentally unstable man in love, had him in what is arguably his most physical performance. The commercial success of ‘Chamaram’ (1980), a bitter-sweet college romance, made him a star-actor who carried a new manner and spoke a new language on screen.
By the mid-1980s, the actor had hit the lows; he was forced into a series of bad choices, by his own admission, and there was the familiarity of a templated eccentricity that many of his characters appeared to retain. Interestingly, Pothen worked this quirk effectively in Tamil, in Balu Mahendra’s ‘Moodupani’ (1980) which featured him as a psychopathic serial killer.
The actor’s limitations, partly related to his diction but mostly driven by a perception that he could not fit into a rooted, local milieu, made this an early burn-out.
As Malayalam mainstream cinema was developing a strong identity in the late 1980s under a new generation of writers and filmmakers, Pothen had already switched to filmmaking, delivering his biggest commercial success as a director, in Tamil —The Bourne Identity-inspired ‘Vettri Vizha’ (1989) starring Kamal Haasan and Prabhu.
It is interesting to imagine how the actor would have shaped at a time filmmakers and writers including A K Lohithadas led a new wave in Malayalam cinema in the 1990s. The return had him in fine form, with two solid outings – as antagonist in ‘22 Female Kottayam’ and mentor-moral anchor to Prithviraj’s troubled protagonist in ‘Ayaalum Njaanum Thammil’, both 2012 releases. When Pothen was asked about the gap of about two decades as an actor in Malayalam cinema, the response was — “No one called me.” After making his National Award-winning directorial debut, in Tamil, ‘Meendum Oru Kaathal Kathai’ (1985), Pothen directed three films in Malayalam – ‘Rithubhedam’ (1986), based on a screenplay by M T Vasudevan Nair, ‘Daisy’ (1987) and his last film as director, ‘Oru Yatramozhi’ (1997) starring Sivaji Ganesan and Mohanlal.
Pothen’s filmography as director reveals intent to infuse freshness, even into staple masala settings. This, again, was a stop-start career but the man was unlikely to have minded.