Sreenivasan

“Pokkamillaymeyaanu Ente Pokkam”

I think this underlines the basic characteristic of Sreenivasan movies. He almost perfectly fits into the Australian national archetype of ‘laconic understatement’.

But somehow, one feels this understatement actually springs out of a few complexes deep within Sreenivasan rather than from any position of strength.

I think when one makes a self-denigrating statement once, it may deemed ‘cool’, as it probably comes from the person’s confidence in himself. When it is repeated time and again, it shows a serious lack of self respect somewhere deep down.

Of course I may be wrong.

A friend of mine observed that among the various probable complexes Sreenivasan possibly suffers from, the biggest is “mother complex”.

I would hazard a guess that Sreenivasan has had trouble with his own mother, either due to her absence or presence.

I realised, after talking to my friend, that in almost all his movies, the mother character (the protagonist’s that is) is actually either weak (both, as a weakly etched character or/and as a diffident one), negative or simply absent. And here, I am not just talking about Sreenivasan the director. I also include his scripts.

Sandesham is an exception and there are probably a few more that I can’t think of right now.