Noted writer T Padmanabhan has thrown his weight behind Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi’s criticism of conferring the national award for best movie on ace filmmaker S S Rajamouli’s magnum opus, ‘Baahubali’.
T Padmanabhan wrote to Mathrubhumi, praising the daily for carrying an editorial titled ‘misguiding milestones’ flaying the national award jury’s decision to declare Baahubali as the best movie.
“Baahubali is illogical and an awful movie. It is indeed unjust and misleading to give the award (best movie) to it. I will say this anywhere,” he wrote.
The writer recalled that he found watching Baahubali so insufferable that he had to walk out of the movie hall, adding that giving the award to the movie was an affront to the award itself.
T Padmanabhan also came down heavily on the makers of the movie for leaving behind plastic waste at Kannavam forest in Kannur district in Kerala, where parts of the movie were shot.
“The State government extended all help to Rajamouli to shoot the movie at Kannavam forest belonging to our Kurichiya tribes. It took days to remove all the plastic waste they left behind. I had drawn attention to this at a march in which CPI(M) polit bureau member Pinarayi Vijayan had taken part,” he wrote.
Just as its makers littered the forest with waste, Baahubali was a movie that dumped a lot of garbage in our minds, he added.
“The Bandipur reserve forest in Karnataka is closed for traffic at night as a reminder to the people that the forests in our country belonged to the wild animals as well,” Mr. Padmabhan wrote.
“However, we had no qualms about granting access to Kannavam forest through the day to Rajamouli. This showed that those with money and influence cab do whatever they want. The award given to the movie is but an extension of this,” he charged.
The members of the Kurichiya tribe would be picked up by the police if they so much as took away the fronds lying on the ground in Kannavam forest for lighting a fire, even as the ‘Rajamoulis’ and ‘Mallyas’ of this world were given a free hand, the writer lamented.
He concluded the article praising the ‘courageous’ editorial piece in Mathrubhumi, saying that the editorial showed justice to the memories of the legendary editors of yesteryear who spoke up against injustices.
Baahubali, a tamil-telugu bilingual written and directed by S S Rajamouli, was adjudged the best movie at the national awards ceremony held recently.
However, even as the decision of the jury came in for criticism from certain quarters, many backed the decisoin, saying that the movie, flaws and all, deserved the award.
The Hindu newspaper, for instance, noted in its editorial that Baahubali deserved the national award for having managed to ‘unite the nation’s movie-watching public as no other film in recent times, across regional State lines, even across the Vindhyas’.
