How Mammootty continues to surprise the audience 51 years into his career

After reaching a certain level of stardom, there are few actors who can allow their personality to be subsumed by the character they’re playing. Mammootty is among the exceptions.

In an interview before the release of her Malayalam film Puzhu (2022), debut director Ratheena said that Mammooty was the easiest to approach among Mollywood stars to play the anti-hero in her film. “That’s perhaps why so many debut directors work with Mammukka. If we have a story to tell him, it’s possible to meet him – and this is something I’ve heard from several people,” she said.

In Puzhu, Mammootty plays a casteist man who is also a controlling and abusive parent. He cuts all ties with his sister (Parvathy) because she’s married to a Dalit, and he eventually murders the couple. His character barely has any redeeming qualities, and yet, the actor did not hesitate to play the unlikeable role. But then, this is hardly the first time that Mammootty has liberated himself from the limiting binaries of Good and Evil on screen.

Unlike the other southern industries where actors rarely explore a spectrum of character shades after reaching superstardom, Mammootty and his contemporary Mohanlal have continued to experiment with different kinds of roles. The problem, rather, has been a shortage of good scripts that adequately exploit their talent.

Though Mammootty has starred in several duds like Parole (2018), Pullikkaran Staraa (2017), Ganagandharvan (2019), Pathinettam Padi (2019) and Mamangam (2019) in recent times, his hold over the box-office and his fanbase was never in question.

In 2022, his Bheeshma Parvam with Amal Neerad became a massive hit. The film’s performance was especially impressive because it came at a time when theatres were struggling to entice people back to watching films on the big screen.

A contemporary tribute to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic The Godfather, Mammootty plays the role of Michaelappan, the patriarch of a large family that has various business interests. This was a film that harnessed Mammootty’s star power in a way that the audience hadn’t seen in a long time. Be it the stylized action sequences or his deft handling of family matters, Mammootty with his shaggy mane was an absolute delight to watch. His “Chambiko” (meaning, “shoot”) dialogue from the film spawned a whole trend of Malayalis posing for a photograph in a similar fashion – and this included senior politicians.

Bheeshma Parvam broke several records on its release, and is currently the third highest grossing Malayalam film ever in the worldwide and domestic markets.

Watching Mammootty’s swashbuckling act in Bheeshma Parvam, it is easy to forget that he was the same actor who played the nervous Sub-Inspector Mani Sir in Khalid Rahman’s Unda three years ago. If he goes all guns blazing in Bheeshma Parvam, he plays an ordinary cop in the latter movie – someone who is on tenterhooks at the possibility of violence breaking out in the Naxal-heavy region where they’ve been posted.

Despite his long career spanning five decades, it is clear that Mammootty still sees himself as an actor first and a star later. In an interview, Tamil director Ram said that Mammootty had acted in over 350 films by the time he made Peranbu (2018) with him, but his hunger to look the part and satisfy the expectations of the director was evident in the shoot. Mammootty plays the single parent of a teenager with cerebral palsy in the film. From changing her sanitary pads to dealing with her emerging sexuality, the role was an emotionally complex one that demanded a sensitive actor of his calibre. Moreover, he did the film without any remuneration because he believed in it so strongly.

After reaching a certain level of stardom, there are few actors who can allow their personality to be subsumed by the character that they’re playing. Mammootty is among the exceptions. In Venu’s Munnariyippu (2014), he plays C.K. Raghavan, an intelligent man who is in jail for multiple murders and insists that he was wrongly convicted. A curious journalist (Aparna Gopinath) decides to unearth the truth – the film is deceptively simple in its premise until the last scene when C.K. Raghavan’s expression tells a different story. With a small smile, Mammootty smashes the viewer’s expectations to smithereens.

It is for this ability to transform into any role that the younger generation of actors in the Malayalam film industry still looks up to Mammootty. Talking about how actors approach their craft, Kerala State Award winning actor Kani Kusruti said that many established stars stop transforming into the character on screen once they become popular. They don’t bother developing a different body language or facial expressions according to the role they’re playing but remain themselves. However, Kani added, Mammootty is still an actor who is willing to do his homework. “Mammootty has struck me as being a far more dedicated actor than others. He is willing to put in the hard work,” she pointed out.

Case in point, his CBI 5: The Brain (2022). The film may have been an underwhelming instalment in K. Madhu’s CBI franchise, but Mammootty’s portrayal of the famous Sethurama Iyer was flawless. From the distinct walk to how he speaks, it was as if Sethurama Iyer had never disappeared once Mammootty took off the make-up but had aged with him. The actor first played the role in 1988 in Oru CBI Diary Kurippu, and it is quite remarkable that 34 years later, he can still slip back into character when he wants. And there are fans who want to watch him do it.

A three-time National Award winner, Mammootty has given several critically acclaimed performances over the years – Vidheyan, Thaniyavarthanam, Mathilukal, Mrugaya, Kazcha...it is a long list that’s impossible to compress into one article. He has also had a successful stint in Tamil cinema with acclaimed directors such as K. Balachander’s Azhagan (1991), Mani Ratnam’s Thalapathy (1991) and Rajiv Menon’s Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000).

Rorschach, his latest film with Nisam Basheer, is a psychological thriller that opened to huge expectations this week. Is Mammootty playing the hunter or the hunted? Predator or prey? You cannot tell just by watching the trailer or reading the names in the cast – and that is Mammootty’s victory as an actor and superstar.