The Reasons Behind The New Record Breaker ‘Drishyam’

How much we talk about Drishyam, that much less it will be. That’s the impact, it has made. But here, we are just talking about its extraordinary performance which even the makers of the movie wouldn’t have dreamt off. Thus we are also getting lot of enquiries regarding this. Here are the factors which resulted in a new record breaker.

First of all it is the content which gave this much mileage for Drishyam. An ordinary families extraordinary story is definitely the biggest highlight of the movie. Secondly it is the none other than the ‘Mohanlal’ factor. We haven’t seen him in a pleasing role like this in near past and that became another winner for Drishyam.

But in spite of all these the question of the hour is Drishyam’s performance over its content. Even after one come out of the movie, no one expected the movie to became a record breaker or so, frankly speaking even the fans.

Here are the points which helped the movie to perform way above its content.

In a time where the guaranteed directors like Ranjith and Sathyan Anthikkad failed, the audience, especially families found a new reliable director in Jeethu Joseph post his consecutive success of ‘My Boss’ and ‘Memories’ in short span. Thus before the release itself audience expected a minimum quality in Drishyam which was exceeded post the release.

Mammootty and Mohanlal also known as The Big M’s didn’t have a great time in recent past. Mohanlal didn’t have a success after his ‘Run Baby Run’ for more than 1 year. On the other hand Mammootty made a decent comeback with 3 hits ‘Kammath and Kammath’, ‘Immanuel’ and ‘Daivathinte Swantham Cleetus’. But none of these films can be classified as a ‘great’ success in box office when youngsters like Nivin Pauly, Fahadh Faasil and Dulquer Salmaan are easily delivering Super hits in their range. Drishyam breaked this jinx and people got to see a brilliant stuff from one of the Superstar’s.

There were many big releases including another Mohanlal starrer ‘Jilla’ (with Vijay) coming in Drishyam’s way but failed out-rightly to attract the audience after the huge initials. Dileep who is a minimum guarantee in Box office also had a big fall with his ‘Ezhu Sundara Rathrikal’ which also helped Drishyam for its unbeatable run, especially during the vacations. Other big releases were Dulquer Salmaan’s ‘Salala Mobiles’, Mammootty’s ‘Balyakalasakhi’, Prithviraj’s ‘London Bridge’ etc, where all of them sank without a trace. The only movie which withstand the ‘Drishyam effect’ in a decent manner was Sathyan Anthikkad’s Fahadh starrer ‘Oru Indian Pranayakadha’ but wasn’t enough to give a minimum competition to ‘Drishyam’.

There was a talk not too long back that family audiences don’t prefer to watch Mohanlal films. However, the last 2 years have proved that if a Mohanlal starrer fetches good feedback, the families will throng in to take it to success. Spirit was a super-hit and Renjith’s biggest hit in a long time despie being a class film. Run Babby Run that followed was a blockbuster despite not being a totally family oriented flick. Despite a poor 11 months in 2013 without a single hit, the phenomenon called ‘Drishyam’ proved this theory right that if there is a content in a Mohanlal starrer, the families will lap it up. Let’s hope that actor does films that blend with the family audiences.

The movie got the maximum awareness before the release but Jeethu nackly kept the hype factor checked with an underplayed manner of promotion. Even the trailer looked quiet ordinary and nothing was revealed on the content. Finally, once the audience went to theatres they came out with all surprise, which even lead to repeated audience even among families and less can be said about fans who would be still counting.

Final and the most important factor. Off late ‘New generation’ flicks are the mostly touched genre in malayalam. Even if some brilliant movies came it also had some dirty or cheap minutes. The best example for this would be Fahadh starrer ‘Aamen’. Due to all these a huge chunk of audience stayed away from theatres, especially among family audience. The interim relief was few Dileep starrers but as most of them are formulaic and beated-to-death flicks even he couldn’t bring all the audience. On the other hand the darling of families Sathyan Anthikkad had lost his magical touch, bringing much to the disappointment of families. Thus a Drishyam came with all beauty and these starving audience made all their way to the theatres which was more like a rain in a desert for them.

All said and done Drishyam is already the biggest hit Malayalam Cinema has ever seen and it has made the directors to think about ‘content’ over anything. But the biggest message given by the humongous success of ‘Drishyam’ is that a huge number of takers are left from theatres just because of today’s mindset of directors to please the audience with double meaning dialogues and crass wordings in the name of entertainment.

When the content is the king who asks for entertainment…?