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Lights, Camera, Analysis: Lijo Jose Pellissery (‘Malaikottai Vaaliban’)
Posted on January 30, 2024
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February 2nd, 2024 → 16:21[…] mkv on Lights, Camera, Analysis: Lijo… […]
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Baradwaj Rangan 
Jay Krishnan
January 30, 2024
Is it up yet ?
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Sri Prabhuram
January 30, 2024
@Jay Krishnan Not yet.
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Nimmi Rangaswamy
January 31, 2024
Its up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yezwj1hun44&ab_channel=GalattaPlus
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Jay Krishnan
January 31, 2024
Watched it . Thanks !
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Nimmi Rangaswamy
January 31, 2024
Lovely interview- Lijo- more muted more sad- reminds me of Vanga when Animal was trashed for toxicity – ‘the labour of love’ sentiment is the same no? especially ” criticism is OK but when you begin to say no one must see this film…’.
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SorenKierky
January 31, 2024
It feels like Lijo is heartbroken about the “failure” (the film has not picked up well enough) about the film. Just sad to hear the underlying sadness in the audience not being “in” on this ride, which he presumed they would be. Because otherwise he’s not new to failures (in terms of BO) at all, Double Barrell had faced a similar predicament, and in fact he’s only had a few “hits” in that sense, even.
Here, I feel the “compelled” part he’s talking about is the downright trashing of the film. Like this is by no stretch of imagination a “bad film” – and many people are mocking and branding it as such. Like “man, just don’t watch the film, it’s awful” kinda talk. Because if you see, the film saw a massive drop post the first day, and the weekend registered such awful numbers – typically a star film has good weekend numbers and then drops if people reject the film. People are hardly showing up at all. Perhaps owing to the intensely negative WOM etc. I guess people went in with the wrong expectation and honestly not sure if they could have done much about that.
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brangan
January 31, 2024
“the film has not picked up well enough“
From what I hear, this is an understatement.
I heard it has dropped massively from a decent first day and apparently the weekday numbers are bad. 😦
But he answers it early in the interview – about why THIS particular failure hurts. Because this film is so close to his heart and childhood.
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Jay Krishnan
January 31, 2024
Yes, what he said is right. I told many of my friends that this is a must watch . But they consider it a “risk” and instead go for fighter. The stupid first day crowd and rabid reviewers who want shit thumbnails ensured that they spread the word that this movie is very boring because of “lag”. Anyways, I have seen in real time how cult classics are formed. I was a bit young to understand the failure of Devadoothan and it became a cult classic years later .
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Jay Krishnan
January 31, 2024
I read that the awful Abraham Ozler did better numbers than this over 5 days.
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MANK
January 31, 2024
Oh! it was heartbreaking watching this. Though I am glad that this brought LJP out of his shell and got him to do interviews, I wish there was a more pleasant way of this happening. It is always tragic when a great director is knocked out by BO realities and virulent fans. This has happened to everyone- from Francis Ford Coppola to Mani Rathnam. I really wish the Malayalam film industry put an end to these early morning fan shows. The producers’ greed is killing Malayalam cinema. I’m not sure he was entirely honest regarding how well he could have prepared the audience for this film. He and others just kept on repeating in the pre-release interviews that this is a Mohanlal mass film that fans should watch FDFS. Maybe he himself being new to this sort of blockbuster filmmaking, he failed to assess the audience reaction properly. Maybe he was looking at it from his perspective: as he was making the film out of all his fanboy moments he expected the audiences to follow his line of thought. Alas! it did not happen. The length and breadth of his inspirations for this film is truly staggering – from the highbrow Khazakinte Itihasam to the lowbrow thangamalai Thirudan (which btw is Tamil dubbed version of Chiranjeevi’s Kondaveeti Donga) and from Changambuzha’s immortal Ramanan to Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay & Shaan.
Yes, the film has crashed completely on Monday. the collections are below 1 cr. this means holdover time for the film. The film has till date grossed about 24 cr. WW which is actually quite good for an LJP film but not good for a Mohanlal film that cost something like 50 cr. to make. Hope it gets an audience in its dubbed versions and on OTT. Maybe that would inspire the financiers to invest in the sequel. Otherwise , LJP will have to return to making low budget indie movies .
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MANK
January 31, 2024
Btw, Was I hallucinating or did day turn to night during the course of the interview?. Since it’s LJP one cant be sure 🙂
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MANK
January 31, 2024
This was the song from “Ramanan” that LJP mentions in the interview that served as the inspiration for the chinnappayan-Jamanthi romantic song in MV
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praneshp
January 31, 2024
Ugh I feel bad now. I chose to skip this one because I really disliked Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam, despite liking slice of life movies.
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Jay Krishnan
February 1, 2024
It’s still in theaters . Go go go till it is there
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praneshp
February 1, 2024
Haha I can go watch but then I’ll feel sad about myself. I really really disliked his previous movie, specifically because of the direction. Hopefully he takes a lesson from this and makes different movies (that both you and me like)
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Jay Krishnan
February 1, 2024
If there is one thing I can guarantee you, this movie is nothing like NPNM. In fact, I don’t think any of his movies are similar to each other . I don’t know what is it that people mean when they call it an LJP padam
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Jay Krishnan
February 1, 2024
I was looking for where the sphadikam reference was in the movie . It was the intro shot where goats are bleating when he is introduced ( I missed the first 15 mins of the movie )
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Jay Krishnan
February 1, 2024
True to his word , he isn’t great with words. I can understand why Mohanlal thinks he is a bad narrator . All through the interview , I felt they haven’t acknowledged that there were missteps in the promotion . Also, I keep thinking if a movie like this is commercially viable . They completely succeeded in their vision of bringing an Amar chithra katha book to life. But I have no idea if youngsters of today read Amar chithra katha and the oldies and family audience don’t want complicated style of movie making with world movie references to retell an Amar chithra Katha.
It is like Vaaliban has taken a life of his own after the movie and has been vanquished by his final level boss – the Box office . It is a shame this happened but this is a movie for the ages for me.
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Jay Krishnan
February 1, 2024
Indeed , it is horrible to witness . I mean people are refusing to watch the movie completely. The rabid opinion heads on YouTube have really done massive damage this time .
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Jay Krishnan
February 1, 2024
I think it is a rude wake up call for Lijo too. I do not think his previous movies had the pressure of the BO as much as this and it looked like they were overconfident about the intelligence of the mallu audience . I think they should have taken the Jeethu Joseph method of promotion for Neru and should have gone the extra mile to tell that the movie could possibly be slow in certain parts and won’t be your mindless mass masala . It felt like they were whispering it but weren’t bold enough to say it to avoid turning away that first day collection . This is a good case study on how a great product can fail miserably due to wrong promotion
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mkv
February 1, 2024
It isn’t like he doesn’t know how to make a fast paced entertaining & engaging film. Angamali diaries was good. I think he should try something similar next time.
NNM was too slow and abstract for me. I had to read the reviews to understand what was going on. To hear him say that padmarjan’s innale was his inspiration for that movie was kind of shocking. Innale engaged one in its narrative style. I think Lijo takes past movies as inspiration and makes a very theatrical, slow uncool version of it.
Madhu neelakandan the cinematographer never disappoints though. His work in churuli is my most favorite .It looked so good that I thought vfx was involved. Other than that, I didnt like churuli the movie either. Felt like it was purposely trying to confuse the audience by not filling in the blanks.
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MANK
February 2, 2024
Film promotions have become extremely tricky these days. You have to build up a strong buzz for big budget films like this, but the buzz should not be so big that the final product disappoints the audience. Striking a balance has become extremely difficult in this age of social media and youtube shorts. With MV , the buzz was not only too big it was also the wrong kind of buzz. Lijo’s masala Dosa-Beef analogy is wrong in this context. It’s not that he was serving dosa and audience demanded beef. The audience was promised beef and when they were served Masala Dosa instead , they rebelled and rather violently. Same case with Odiyan too , where audience were promised Biryani and they got Kanji instead (if one could quote an infamous dialogue from the film). Hope this turns out to be a wake up call for all concerned, though I suspect that so much is at stake, they might not learn any lessons from this. Next up is lalettan directed Barrozz, which had a very troubled shoot. It was originally going to be a children’s film , but buzz is that it was rewritten to resemble Lal’s blockbusters like Pulimurugan. There was even an FB post by the film’s original author Jijo criticising the changes. God knows whats going to happen to that
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Alex John
February 2, 2024
I think this film stood no chance at the box office from its inception.
They say it failed because the Lijo and crew promoted it as a “mass” film, but just think about what could have happened if it was advertised as a quintessential LJP movie. I think these big budgeted non-mass films are for the filmmakers who have enormous clout at international film circuits.
Just think about how many filmmakers you know has made a living out of making high budget offbeat films besides the great Kurosawa.
I believe spending huge on making an art house film is the easiest way to get yourself into a catch 22 situation.
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Jay Krishnan
February 2, 2024
What is an art house film and how does Vaalibhan fit that description ?
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Saran
February 5, 2024
Felt BR didn’t show enough respect while interviewing Lijo (even asking some somewhat uncomfortable personal queries😀). Maybe i thought Lijo deserved far more respect and admiration for his amazing works, thoughts and accomplishments (including the brilliant Vaaliban and other previous works). But it seemed like BR was talking from a position of authority while Lijo was like in an interrogation. Just an observation 😃
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MANK
February 5, 2024
First off Lijo is not a good conversationalist. That’s why he avoids interviews like the plague. Secondly, Lijo is shell shocked by the response to Vaaliban. He never expected a reaction like this. That’s why he is sounding rather meek and defensive in the interview. And Brangan does not ask the pedestrian questions , so he has to push himself hard to give something beyond the stock answers. That must have rattled him too.
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MANK
February 5, 2024
Vaaliban inspired me to go back and watch LJP’s previous attempt at a big budget blockbuster- “Double Barrel.” I haven’t seen it in 7 years or so. The first time I saw it I hated it. I just wanted to see if I would like it this time. Hmm.. I liked it a little bit more, but still there is a lot to hate. It was just too weird for weird sake and extremely self indulgent. So it wasn’t some overlooked masterpiece or anything. The film has pretty much the same elements as MV- th e’70s hindi film references like Don and Gabbar, the Western influences, the Chinese marital arts films etc. But it had too many diversions and not very interesting ones. Vaaliban shows LJP’s growth as a filmmaker. It’s narrative is very straightforward and its a much more fully realized, mature and compact version of a genre hybrid, without losing any of LJP’s wacky brilliance. The songs and the picturization of songs & action sequences are also much better here. So, I can understand LJP’s disappointment at this one not working commercially.
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Jay Krishnan
February 6, 2024
Yeah, Barroz looks like a mess. I did read Jijo’s blog on it and his sarcasm in that post is delicious
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Jay Krishnan
February 6, 2024
Yeah, I don’t know if Baddy should have brought up that Churuli didn’t work for him. I mean I don’t know how directors typically take to being told that . But overall, Lijo was very raw going into this and probably hadn’t found his bearings yet
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Jay Krishnan
February 6, 2024
Everyone has liked some things about the movie . It hasn’t worked out as a whole for the majority . I am in the group where all these pieces were required for me to enjoy it completely and that is admittedly a minority
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Jay Krishnan
February 7, 2024
I did think about the failure of the movie and I think all they needed to do was to say this was a world building movie and will have elements that won’t be massy all the time .
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