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You know, I haven’t yet ventured into Malayalam movies. By me, we never get them in the cinema, only Hindi all the time and an occasional Telugu or (more rarely) Tamil film.

I liked Mohanlal in “Company”.

Thanks for the recommendations. I’ve been meaning to see if Netflix carries anything beside Hindi and Tamil…

I would like to hear your take on Malayalam movies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam_cinema), particularly Mohanlal. Most of them are not subtitled, so I guess that would be a problem. You could look up some of the parallel ones, though, such as Piravi (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095872/) and some movies by Aravindan (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0033244/) and Padmarajan (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0655802/). I don’t like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, so wouldn’t recommend him.

I could not catch the movie during the film festival here though.

Kamla

BS, I think at this point the most eloquent thing I can say to you has already been said by a man who wrote in to the NY Times during their series on class last year:

“To the Editor:

In our society, we have different classes, cultures, religions, races, sexes and ethnicities. We can celebrate these differences or we can use them as barriers to keep us apart.

Some of us mix smoothly and some choose to segregate. At worst, we can respond to fear, or at best, we can grow and learn together. The choice is ours.

Jerry Frankel
Plano, Tex., May 19, 2005″

I like to take bold stands because boldness is conspiculously lacking from the portrayal of Indian-americans in the media. Not just on screen, but on blogs like Sepia Mutiny and this one, where all the commentators tend to be 30 plus model minority types, or else white people. The problem is that most of the articulate, intelligent Indian-American leaders have better things to do than inhabit the blogosphere, so our representation is left to the types at Sepia Mutiny and here. As a student at Cornell Kush, I’m sure you remember how many brilliant, intelligent and dynamic young desis you met there. Those are the kind of people that define our community. They spend their time as business leaders, legal sharks and physicians. They mainly focus on the technical fields. Because of that, any Indian that enters the world of arts or letters is assumed to be not of the same intellectual quality. This isn’t fair, but unfortunately often it is true. Notice the job status of the Mutineers. None of them does anything that impressive. The same is true of me, but at least I am only 23 and have a ways to go.

I am not a proponent of the model minority myth, but neither will I buy into all the cultural baggage that people tend to bring over from the motherland. Indians in American are a distinct cultural group, and a largely succesful one at that. Every mention of this group on this site has been somehow in a negative context. My point is not that outside critique is wrong, but what purpose does it serve? If I spent an entire blog examining African-American film and drew my truths based on that, what would I end up with? A thoroughly unbalanced, cliched and almost racist view of African-Americans. That is what I think we have here.

If you don’t want my comments, let me know and I will refrain. I am not trying to harass you. But my point of view is valid, if not popular with the white folk and their desi friends eager to please.