The Bane Of Being Mohanlal In 2025

It is truly the worst time to be one of the best actors in Malayalam cinema. Everyone in the country is suddenly acknowledging what people watching Malayalam films knew for decades. But the acknowledgement and the praise seem disingenuous, at least to your audience, if not yourself.

On Tuesday, Mohanlal received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India’s highest film award, for the year 2023. Mohanlal is the first actor from the Malayalam film industry to have won this award. Legendary Malayalam film director and writer Adoor Gopalakrishnan was the last person from the southern state to win the award in 2004. 

The recipient of a Dadasaheb Phalke Award is granted one for their "outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian cinema". This may include actors, directors, producers, writers, music directors, playback singers, cinematographers, among others. This is why it is considered the highest film award of India and is often awarded to performers and film personalities toward the last leg of their careers.

It is rather funny that Mohanlal has received, what is essentially a lifetime achievement award, during arguably the most exciting phase of his 47 year-long film career spanning over 350 films.

For the first time, the budgets, the audience, the technology, the story and the direction, are all aligned to match the excellence Mohanlal brings to the screen.

In 2025, so far, Mohanlal has had three major film releases. Empuraan —where he played a mass entertainer protagonist, Thudarum, where he plays an endearing version of himself people have loved in the late 90s and a family drama Hridayapoorvam, where he is a recipient of a heart and gets close to his donor’s family. This is apart from guest appearances in other films as well.

If a person who has never heard of Mohanlal (tough to find, but maybe somewhere in New Delhi, there is someone) were to just watch these three films, they would clearly understand why this actor is receiving this award.

Despite all this, Mohanlal has won the National Film Award for Best Actor only twice before, with the last one being over 25 years ago. His seminal act as a budding Carnatic singer who overshadows his more famous brother in the 1991 Bharatham won him his first. Mohanlal's own production company, Pranavan Arts, backed the film then. His second National Award for Best Actor came for his performance of a gifted Kathakali dancer in the 1999 Vanaprastham, which he co-produced with French writer Pierre Assouline.

Both films are impeccable and totally deserved the recognition.

For the Malayalam-speaking audience though, the National Film Award jury has missed out on some of Lal's best. Like in 1995’s Spadikam when Mohanlal portrayed ruffian Aadu Thoma, the wayward son of a disciplinarian math teacher who becomes an anti-social element just to spite his father. Or his venture as the sensitive Dr Govardhan Menon, who is wrongfully imprisoned in British India and tortured in an Andaman Nicobar jail in the 1996 Kaalapani.

Let’s look at the 2005 Thanmathra where Lal plays a brilliant underachiever who aims to make his son an IAS officer, while himself fighting a losing battle with Alzheimer’s. Fast forward to 2013 when he played the innocent Georgekutty who must take on much smarter foes in a battle of wits, in the immensely successful (and oft remade) Drishyam. 

These are only some examples of the last 25 years. As mentioned before, there is a roster of over 350 films spread over nearly five decades. One is bound to find more amazing performances.

So, one asks the various juries of the Indian National Film Awards, why only now?

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