The golden age of the 1980s, led by maestros like Adoor Gopalakrishnan ( Elippathayam - Rat-Trap) and G. Aravindan ( Thambu ), introduced the world to "middle-stream cinema." These weren't the escapist fantasies of typical Indian films. Instead, a hero in a Malayalam film of this era might be a school teacher disillusioned with politics ( Avanavan Kadamba ), a rickshaw-puller navigating caste hypocrisy ( Yavanika ), or a clerk slowly going mad from bureaucratic monotony ( Elippathayam ).
You cannot talk about Kerala without talking about food. And you cannot talk about Malayalam cinema without that scene: a family eating sadya (traditional feast) on a plantain leaf. The golden age of the 1980s, led by