(From top)Vijayan, Mammootty in the movie, Achuthanandan

Thiruvananthapuram, Feb. 12: The turf war within the Kerala CPM is being played out on cinema screens.

Chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan has been lampooned in Renji Panicker’s Roudram, now running to packed houses. It features an evil chief minister who opposes the hero, police officer Narasimhan played by Mammootty.

The actor heads Malayalam Communications Ltd, which owns three TV channels backed by the CPM - that is, the dominant faction led by state party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan.

The film’s screening coincides with a CPM conference at Kottayam where 500-odd delegates are reviewing the party’s performance during the last three years. Achuthanandan is in the dock both in the movie and at the meeting.

Roudram, more than three hours long, is full of ballistic deliveries punctuated by one-liners in English, a style typical of Panicker. It portrays Achuthanandan and his family as a selfish unit, bereft of commitment to the public good, and suggests the chief minister may not mind dumping his son to protect his chair.

A line that says “your days in office will only last a few months” gels with a growing perception that Achuthanandan, trounced in party organisational polls, will have to step down sooner than later.

The Vijayan-Achuthanandan feud has often played out in public, embarrassing the party central leadership, which suspended both from the politburo last May before reinstating them in October.

The report presented by Vijayan at the Kottayam meeting packs enough ammo for the delegates to target Achuthanandan. The report deplores Achuthanandan’s silence during the “orchestrated” street demonstrations to wangle an Assembly poll ticket for him in 2006.

Achuthanandan has described Roudram as the handiwork of the land mafia. “What they have shown in the film is their pent-up anger against my campaign to recover land, annexed by big encroachers and the underworld,” he said.

Panicker said: “In most of my films, I’ve discussed chief ministers. But none of them had ever owned up and said, ‘It’s me’. If he (Achuthanandan) thinks I am referring to his character, well I am helpless.”

Two years ago, when stage artistes mimicked Achuthanandan’s idiosyncrasies, the party cadre intimidated them. But Roudram has evoked not a whimper in protest.

But it isn’t all one-sided. A recent film, Of the People by Jayaraj, has shown Achuthanandan in a positive light, lending his supporters a propaganda tool against the dominant faction’s “Right-wing deviations”.

That film drew on Achuthanandan’s superstar image, boosted by the bulldozing of dubious structures at Munnar hill station, the fight against corruption and his firm stand on sex scandals.

Roudram contrasts with another recent movie, Arabi Katha, in which actor Sreenivasan plays the lead role. Arabi Katha provides a critique of the ideological crisis in the CPM while Panicker’s flick avoids any plunge into serious issues.