Dads in Malayalam cinema are getting a complete makeover thanks to astute scriptwriters and superb actors like Renji Panicker. The stiff screen patriarch has been replaced by friendly and funky fathers who don’t mind shaking a leg with their children. And Renji Panicker’s sterling act in Ohm Shanthi Oshaana had much to do with the redefinition of the father as an affable, easy going person who did not quiver with indignant anger or sorrow if his children did not always toe his line.
Today, Renji again appears as the screen dad in Vineeth Sreenivasan’s vacation family movie, Jacobinte Swargarajyam . Renji plays the lead role of Jacob, a non-resident businessman from Central Travancore who lives in Dubai with his family. “What is interesting about Jacob is his positive attitude and optimism. He has high hopes for his four children and believes in Dubai as a place where dreams come true. He is a happy family man who has everything going for him till a crisis threatens to stop him in his tracks. How he tackles that is the twist in the story,” says Renji.
However, the versatile writer asserts that his roles’ sharply defined behavioural contours should be credited to writers and directors who have absolute clarity about their characters and story. “I can take credit only for screen portrayals of those characters created by the writers and the directors. It might have helped that I am essentially a liberal father who shares a good rapport with my sons. That trait must have helped me in breathing life into those non-conformist fathers,” he reasons.
He adds that he himself shared a close relationship with his father, who was quite a strict and conservative principal. “But he made it a point not to interfere in his son’s life or choices and so we enjoyed a great camaraderie,” says Renji. It is also because an entire new generation of writers and directors have made a mark in Malayalam cinema and they have also brought in a new sensibility that is more in tune with the times we live in.
Some of the directors and scenarists that Renji works with happen to be in his sons’ age group. He mentions that although there is a distance when he begins working in their films, that is soon bridged once they get to know him better.
Jacobinte Swargarajyam happens to be Renji’s 25th film as an actor. There were several raised eyebrows when a top writer-director like Renji decided to don the greasepaint to appear before the camera two years ago. The firebrand scriptwriter of political thrillers like Lelam, The King, Commissioner and Bharatchandran IPS , did a neat job as an actor and was soon flooded with a wide range of roles. Suffice to say that he handled each with aplomb and populated Malayalam cinema with a plethora of interesting characters.
The writer seems to be in the background after the actor in Renji came to the fore. “Actually, I am in the process of writing a script. The writer is very much present and functioning. But there are certain things to be tightened before I make an official announcement.”
In the meantime his son Nithin Renji Panicker’s Mammootty-starrer is getting ready. Scripted and directed by Nithin himself, the story, says Renji, has politics and police but is not a clone of his kind of films. “There is a rusticity that has never been part of my movies. It is his own movie and he himself narrated it to Mammootty. In fact, when I suggested that I would step in if the thespian felt that the script needed reworking, he retorted: ‘I have worked in many of your films. Now, let me work in Nithin’s’” relates Renji with a laugh.
A confident and proud father indeed!
