The first role for which Mohanlal was recognised at the National Awards was, arguably, also one which would mark him as a future recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. The 1989 film Kireedam, in which Mohanlal played, with heart-rending realism, a young man whose future is destroyed by a single act of unintended violence, was a career-defining project for the actor. Often cited as one of the best performances in Indian cinema, it was an extraordinary instance of an actor completely disappearing into a character — all the more remarkable because it would be counted as just one more role in which Mohanlal displayed an uncanny ability to shape-shift.
An actor’s trajectory is often defined by the tension between two attributes — popularity and artistry — often seen as being inversely proportional to each other: If an actor is popular, she/he must not be very talented. To see this as the shibboleth that it is, all one needs to do is go through Mohanlal’s five-decade-long filmography. Starting in the 1980s, just as filmmakers like Sathyan Anthikad, Padamarajan and Priyadarshan and writers like Lohithadas and Sreenivasan were reshaping and modernising Malayalam cinema, the actor was able to build a body of work that is marked as much by popular appeal as critical acclaim. Method acting was never his style. An instinctive, naturally gifted actor, small shifts in posture and microexpressions are all he has ever needed to essay the vast range of human experience, from the drug-addicted doctor of Amrutham Gamaya (1987), to the heartbroken Kathakali artist of Vanaprastham (1999), from the disenchanted actor-turned-politician of Iruvar (1997) to the layabout looking for a shortcut to wealth in Nadodikkattu (1987).
There are, certainly, more than a few duds — inevitable for an actor with over 300 films to his credit. Yet, even as Mohanlal’s popularity soared all through the 1980s and 1990s, and well into the 2000s, cementing his icon status in Malayalam cinema, the sublime performances he consistently delivered show that Indian cinema’s highest honour is well-deserved.
