Reading Comprehension
Read the following article about Mohanlal, a celebrated film star in India and attempt the following task.
MOHANLAL
Academically, a film is taken as a director’s work. However, it is not uncommon in the popular film culture to celebrate it in the name of a star. At the same time, to understand the whole meanings attached to a film in terms of the personality of the actor who has been starred in a movie is a rare practice even in the mass culture of theatre business.
The story of Mohanlal presents such a rare instance! He is an actor who has been one of the most prominent stars in the South Indian film industry, especially in Malayalam, for more than forty years and is widely acknowledged as a principal player in the making and changing of cultural fabric and moral sensibility of a whole society. The outcry of both his fans and critics is that he makes the meaning of his film. Thus, the definition of film as director’s art gives way in favour of the star.
Having the reputation of an actor of subtleties, Mohanlal is at his best when presented with an opportunity to play characters with internal conflicts. However, what is unusual about this is a rather incredible mix of this self-cancelling duality with popular concept of heroism. This point can be elaborated with an investigation in the negative, to find what he has not done, rather than what he has done. In the long forty years of his acting career, the rarest or practically absent characters among his influential works is a professionally policing police man or a professionally ‘businessing’ businessman. His police men all distract off the professional to the personal, all his characters are ‘abnormal’ with rebelliousness, insanity, addictions or passions, yet they rule imperially. Without fail, all his characters are suffering from a kinds of ‘imbalance from within’. The uniqueness of this actor is in the fact that his characters are all still heroic. Yes! He represents the heroic in what is conventionally regarded as the ‘unheroic’. ‘A system of the unsystematic’ – that is the unique contribution of Mohan lal as an actor figure.
Thus, the actor has been integral to a shift in sensibility and has established himself as a cult hero, representing a paradox – a Dionysian Apollo, to borrow the terminology of Nietzsche. To say that it is uncommon is not to say that has no historical continuity. Indeed it has! But, we will have to search for its anticipating predecessors, not in the history of films, but in that of Indian literatures and other cultural artefacts.
State whether the following statements are true or false, according to the passage
a)According to the writer, the director’s function is unchangingly the first and determining role in any film.
b)The actor may also determine the meaning of a film
c)The article offers a comprehensive study of Malayalam movies.
d)His critics and worshippers both accept that he has a role in changing the sensibility of viewers.
e)Mohanlal does not usually do the role of a police officer
f)Mohanlal generally takes the role of characters that are systematic and professional.
g)The article says that Mohanlal is known for exaggerated acting style?
h)The concepts of Dionysian and Apollonian models were developed by Nietzsche.
i)The article says that in order to understand Mohanlal’s characters, one should study European theories in detail.
j)The given text is an exmple of opinion article
