Mammootty and Kartik Aaryan share National Award for Best Actor: Why this tie feels unfair to a legend

Dubai: When Indian icon Mammootty walked up to collect his fourth National Film Award for Best Actor this week in India for his wicked turn in 'Bramayugam', the hall rose to its feet. It was a standing ovation for a man who has spent more than four decades making Indian cinema, mostly Malayalam films, braver.

And then the award was handed out again. Around the same time, for the same honour, Kartik Aaryan was also named Best Actor in a Leading Role for Chandu Champion.

Let me be clear before the Kartik fan army sharpens its pitchforks. This isn't about the self-made Bollywood actor Kartik. I've interviewed him several times, and I've watched him fight his way into an industry that rarely rolls out the red carpet for outsiders.

His win is well-earned, and his hunger is real. But putting him and Mammootty in the same breath, with the same trophy, for the same year? That feels less like a celebration and more like a jury splitting the bill.

Credit where it's due

Let's give Kartik his due first, because he deserves it. When I spoke to him ahead of Chandu Champion's release, he described the role of Paralympic gold medallist Murlikant Petkar as "that rare opportunity that you get in your life and in your career".

He meant it. He set aside 18 months for a single film, a lifetime for an actor who usually juggles three a year. He dropped from 90 kilos to 72, started at 39 per cent body fat and ended at around seven. He survived on one soup a night for more than a year.

"There was no cheat meal on my birthday, Diwali, or Eid," he told me.

That's commitment. It's also a man who came from nowhere and has never pretended otherwise.

"Certain kinds of opportunities are served on a plate to many and are denied to some," he said. "I feel all the more proud about making my own name on my own steam."

The boy from Gwalior who crashed Bollywood's inner circle without a surname to lean on has earned his moment. I'll happily raise a glass to that.

But this is Mammootty

Here's the thing. Mammootty won his first National Award for films released in 1989. That's before Kartik Aaryan was even born. With Bramayugam, he joins Amitabh Bachchan as the actor with the most Best Actor wins in the award's history. That isn't a statistic. It's a legacy.

And Bramayugam isn't just any performance. In Rahul Sadasivan's black-and-white folk horror, Mammootty plays Kodumon Potti, a sinister presence so hypnotic you forget you're watching a superstar at all. He grins, he toys, he terrifies. It even became the only Indian film selected for a folklore series at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, which is extraordinary for a monochrome Malayalam horror film.

Then look at what he has been doing around it.

Most superstars treat their seventies as a victory lap. Mammootty is treating his like a second debut.

In Puzhu, he played a controlling, casteist father, a man you'd cross the street to avoid. In Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam, he became a man who wakes from a nap convinced he's someone else entirely, slipping between two lives with barely a flicker. In Rorschach, he was a grief-soaked avenger who felt more ghost than hero. In Kaathal – The Core, he played a closeted man whose wife files for divorce just as he runs for local office, and he did it with such quiet, aching restraint that you felt his silence more than any speech. In Kalamkaval, he played a cop who is also a serial killer, murdering for nothing more noble than the thrill, and still somehow made you lean in.

Pick any one of those roles and it would be a career-defining gamble for most actors. Mammootty has made them back to back.

And he isn't just saying yes to these films. Through his own production house, Mammootty Kampany, he's often the one backing them, putting his money where his risks are.

This is an actor in his seventies reinventing the wheel, and then deliberately taking it off-road. He doesn't protect his image. He dismantles it, film after film, and trusts the audience to follow him.

At an age when most of his peers are still romancing women half their age, Mammootty has chosen to be twisted, broken and deeply uncomfortable to watch.

That's not a star coasting on legacy. That's an artist still hungry.

But fair play to Kartik, the Gwalior boy has had a great year. Mammootty has had a great career.

Both actors transformed for their roles. Kartik transformed his body. Mammootty transformed what an ageing Indian star is allowed to be.

The curse of the shared trophy

Shared awards aren't new. Ayushmann Khurrana and Vicky Kaushal split this one in 2019, and Kartik shared his Filmfare with Abhishek Bachchan last year.

But a tie is a jury saying "we couldn't decide", or worse, "we didn't want to". Everyone goes home happy, and the difference between a great year and a great career quietly disappears.

Between two newcomers, a tie is a compliment. Between a 35-year-old's career-best and a 75-year-old's masterclass, it's like handing the gold medal to both the marathon winner and the guy who ran a very good 10K.