Instead, the Indrajith starrer is a brilliant example of iconization working within the framework of one of the oldest pop conventions- the revenge drama. I don’t think that the director aimed for any sort of transcendence either. Lijo Jose Pallissery’s first film ‘Nayakan’ (2010) doesn’t transcend pop attributes. The violence, instead of becoming gratuitous turns into an existential fact the lead character grapples with, thereby lending it a universality lacking in most grindhouse films. The 2017 American thriller ‘Brawl in cell block 99’ is an example- what could have been a typical crime drama becomes an impressionistic character study because the director, C.Craig Zahler vehemently communicates the sincerity of the over-the-top violence on display. While most expeditions along the same stretch of land yields similar results- ‘time pass’ movies you begin to forget almost immediately after runtime- sometimes a filmmaker leans so much into the tropes of pop cinema that he almost breaks out of the patterns that frame the system, creating something new in the process. Also, it’s an space where suspension of disbelief is not the exception but the rule. Pop cinema exists in a very wide band of entertainment- one in which caricatures or icons are the staple and not characters. I’ve no idea what the guy in pic is doing, jumping like that. Lennart Wittstock on / Representative image.
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