In terms of quality Malayalam cinema led not only the Southern market but Indian cinema in totality.Here’s looking at the best from the Southside.
Karnan(Tamil) : This is not just a film. It is a movement. A wakeup call for all Indians who think all men are born equal(what about the women? That, some other time). Get real.The caste system still exists in various forms . Inequality is in our DNA. Anubhav Sinha tore through the caste system in his masterpiece Article 15 …or perhaps “tore” is not exactly what he did. The tone was far more gentle, the approach sweetly savage.In Karnan the director Mari Selvaraj’s anger is stamped(like a heavy boot on a cowering face) on every frame. It is safe to assume that Dhanush plays the director’s alter ego. A seething living exploding fireball of indignation . Dhanush , in one of his best performances , plays Karnan the only loud unstoppable voice of protest in a tiny village in Tamil Nadu which probably doesn’t exist on the map.It’s a village of lower caste people forever oppressed humiliated and ostracized from the mainstream. One of the villagers’ primary anguish has to do with no bus stopping at their village.The authorities just don’t think they are of any consequence.While the other villagers accept their fate as nobodies why does one young man feel so strongly about it? Why does Karnan seethe with anger every time a bus refuses to stop in his village ? Or a child dies on the road for the lack of medical attention(this is before the Covid when every human life evidently had the right to healthcare)? Or when, in that moment of supreme eruption,elders of the godforsaken village are bundled and taken to the thana and thrashed all night? Is this socially acceptable behaviour? Shockingly it is. For the downtrodden underdogs, living at ground level, humiliation subjugation and manipulation are everyday occurrence.All men are born unequal, some like the villagers in Kodiyankulam are more unequal. This jolting brutally violent film serves as a timely warning to all of us locked away in our individual citadels. India is simmering with discontent. We are sitting on a hotbed of exploitation which can erupt anytime.That small nondescript village in Karnan becomes a microcosm of the Great Indian Reality. Ignore at your own risk. I have seen innumerable seething simmering films about social injustice. None so tense and implosive. I’ve seen any number of angry heroes. None as angry as Karnan. As played by Dhanush he is the voice of a voiceless village. The hand that won’t hold itself back. The face of the social protester who is no posterboy. He will act. He will kill. He won’t be stopped. Dhanush is so volatile I have never felt more compromised, more a part of socio-economical system that allows a handful to have all the wealth and power. o be honest I have never seen film like Karnan. It rambles and roars, dances and writhes as it explores the dynamics of exploitation with a straightforwardness that eschews any kind of cinematic deceit. And yet strangely enough it is filled with allegorical allusions and metaphors including a masked girl child indicative of the faceless victim, and a donkey with its two front legs tied which Karnan frees before the climactic violence(get it?)At its heart , Karnan is a distinctly violent film. The carnage at the climax will make your stomach churn , as it is meant to. You cannot turn away from the savagery .Avoidance is not an option. Karnan puts you right in the vortex of the violent underbelly that the higher classes have willy-nilly nurtured. It will make your blood boil. This is a no-frills drama authentic almost-documentary like drama filmed on an epic canvas with mobs running towards us with sticks rods boulders and their wrath.It scoffs at melodrama and music(the songs are sharply critical folk tunes , or shall we call them fork tunes?).It is a drama of heightened realism where the hero rides into the carnage of his village on a horse. It is a frightening fascinating unforgettable film that you would give anything to forget. But it won’t go away. It tells us that the underprivileged won’t be ignored any more. And why. The performances are beyond brilliant, as is the camerawork(Theni Eswar), music(Santhosh Narayanan) ….and the razor-sharp editing(Selva RK) which creates an illusion of a lazy narrative only to bludgeon us with a scathing eruption of violence which we may or may not see coming. How does it matter?
The Great Indian Kitchen(Malayalam) : Many men and some women find cooking to be not only inspiring and artistic but also therapeutic. But for most housewives it is a thankless chore of endless drudgery. The cutting, chopping, steaming, frying, sizzling , washing, chomping….Jeo Baby’s fascinating study of the kitchen as a patriarchal prison is a marvel of sounds, all stripped of extraneous embellishment.This is the first Indian film I’ve seen which does away with the background score completely. For that alone, Jeo Baby’s film deserves a standing ovation. Has Indian cinema finally begun to trust the audiences’ judgment without hammering and spoonfeeding every frame with punctuation marks? I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Just as I’m not sure if this film will bring a radical change in status of housewives as culinary automatons.The Great Indian Kitchen is that breakthrough film on the fine art of cooking that Tarla Dalal could have never imagined .It takes us right into the heart of the kitchen so close to the gas cylinder we can smell the onions sizzling in the saucepan as Nimisha Sayajan(simply billed as the anonymous ‘Wife’) toils over the meals endlessly.The nervous preparation is almost like en elaborate college exam every day. Her monotony and fatigue mean nothing to the men in the house, her husband(Suraj Vejaramoodu) and her father-in-law who are required eat and litter the dining table with bones and morsels, with occasional burps of approval, mostly frowns. At one point the father-in-law tells the wife to not prepare the rice in the pressure cooker.“The flavor goes,” he mumbles and leaves.Nimisha registers every flinch of her character with the volume of immersion that’s at once unparalleld and unplumbed. Like The White Tiger , the other recent masterpiece on casual social discrimination that has acquired a traditional sanctity in our society, The Great Indian Kitchen pulls us so close to the Wife’s tormented tedium that we feel her inescapable claustrophobia, made doubly unbearable as nobody around, men or women, see her predicament as anything but comfortable.The remarkably scathing comment on gender discrimination will shock you. This is not an easy film to watch. In some ways it is the ultimate horror tale where only the protagonist feels the walls closing in on her while the men around her are busy enjoying the fruits of her hellish labour.
Then there is the Wife’s menstrual break. The four days when she is isolated and forbidden from entering the kitchen. This is where director Jeo Baby, after denuding the culinary arts of all romance and enchantment, politicizes the plot by bringing in the issue of women not being allowed into the Sabarimala temple.While the Wife grapples with the wages of kitchen politics, on television news, women fight with police and politician for the right to enter their place of worship. The pattern of patriarchal persecution emerges in this fine, almost great, film with an intensity that will hit you hard in your solar plexus. Standing at the centre of the culinary chaos is Nimisha Sajayan as the Wife who tries her best to be the docile cooking concubine , toiling in the kitchen all day and then making herself available to her husband for hurried unceremonious s*x in the night. When the Wife suggests some foreplay, the Man looks at her with naked contempt and replies with shriveling condescension.That’s when I knew. This is not a film that will let the Great Indian Patriarchy off the hook easily. It will make you squirm and wince. But what it says cannot be ignored.
Nayattu(Malayalam): I am fully certain now that the renaissance in Indian cinema is coming to us through Kerala. Every month there is one masterpiece in Malayalam, if not two. This one creeps up on us like a motionpicture meteor tearing through many of notions on the vicious cycle that controls the relationship between the common man and the government machinery.There have been brilliant films on police brutality in recent times, the Tamil Varnan being the most recent one. Before that there was Vetrimaaran’s Visaranai in Tamil.So graphic in its brutality it made you flinch. Nayattu provides the view from the other side.Three cops in a Kerala police station of different ages and ranks get embroiled in a case of police brutality that sends them on the run and ends in the only way a tragedy as topical and burning as this can end.Nayattu takes about 30 minutes to warm up. Once the three cops’ escape from sure-punishment for a crime they haven’t committed kicks in, the narrative pace is breakneck breathless and unstoppable.Very often when a director adopts the thriller format for a socio-politically relevant theme, the ‘message’ gets submerged in style, and the substance is lost in posturing.Not here. Not this time. Director Martin Prakkat(whose last film Charlie with Dulquer Salman was a cult hit) manages a near-impossible balance of headlinish immediacy and a far deeper thematic thrust and relevance which question a system of governance where the oppressor and the oppressed eventually become one.This is what happens with the three cops Maniyan(Joju George) , Praveen Michael(Kunchako Boban) and the lone woman among the two men Sunitha(Nimisha Sajayan , the richly lauded protagonist from yet another Malayalam masterpiece of 2021 The Great Indian Kitchen). It is to the three actors’ credit that their kinship in crisis doesn’t need to be constructed by the plot. From the moment they are thrown together in the crisis, they seem to share some kind of an anguished camaraderie which doesn’t depend on extraneous props and trappings.They are cops by choice and fugitives by fluke.
Organically and effortlessly the director follows his three heroes through their nightmarish road trip which never runs out of fuel, never loses momentum. There are times when I nearly stopped breathing.Till the last , I was holding my breath to see how this monstrous mess would end. I can’t say the ending is conclusive or even satisfying to me as an audience. But I am not surprised that director Martin Prakkat and his writer Shahi Kabir leave us with more questions than answers about a system and work ethic where corruption is a byword. The director’s eye for detail and his keen observation of human behavior during crisis make Nayattu a remarkable journey into the heart of darkness.The three main actors seem to have been born in khaki.My favourite moment in the film is when Sunitha has her periods in the forest in the hills and her colleague plods down to the nearest market to get her pads. But before that their impoverished host senses her discomfort takes off his only clean dhoti and gives it to her quietly.This show of empathy in a relentlessly speeding narrative is like a slap in the face. We have created our own hell, when we could have created the other alternative just as well.
Sunny(Malayalam): Wait. Was that really the best background score I’ve heard in an Indian film since….since gawd knows when? The magnificent Jayasurya who plays the Covid-isolated protagonist Sunny keeps hearing sounds and voices. Luckily for us, that beautiful haunting background score by Sanker Sharma is real. Thank God!And thank Covid Maharaj for this film. If it wasn’t for Hitler we wouldn’t have had Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. If it wasn’t for Covid we would have had no Sunny, a film so profound in meditative manoeuvres on mortality, so subtle and tender in bringing out emotion buried too deep for words, and so emotionally locked into the protagonist’s wounded heart, the lockdown here becomes both physical and emotional.When we first touch down in Sunny’s life he has just landed in Kochi from Dubai. It becomes disturbingly apparent in the first ten minutes that Sunny is on the verge of some kind of a serious breakdown. He drinks incessantly (After Vellam, again a boozard?Jayasurya is making a habit of it). He is restless . He is delusional.He speaks to his ex-wife,his ex-girlfriend, his lawyer, a counsellor. But none of them want to speak to him.There is a heartstopping moment in the drama where Sunny dials a number stored as ‘Appayan’ . A stranger answers. “Sorry , this used to be my father’s number. I didn’t know who else to dial,” Sunny explains to the kind stranger.Such moments capturing the core of human despair are rare in cinema. Embrace it.Sunny, as you must have guessed, is alone in a posh hotel suite waiting for his quarantine to end. In a miraculous show of supple tactile strength, director Ranjith Sankar constructs a powerful drama about a weak man who is rapidly losing touch with reality.This brings me to Jayasurya’s spectacular performance. He is so inured in the character’s dark desperate suicidal world(at one point, Sunny actually puts a piece of broken glass to his wrist, at another point he is about to jump off from the balcony of his fourth-floor hotel suite) that we become unconditionally invested in his desolation for a little more than 90 minutes.Not that Sunny is likeable or even remotely heroic. But his anguish is a throbbing entity , impossible to ignore.I’ve seen many actors do a one-man show: Sunil Dutt in Yaadein, Rajkummar Rao in Trapped Tom Hanks in Castaway. None of these actors has been able to capture the essence of isolation as effectively as Jayasurya. He takes us into Sunny’s wretched life—a broken marriage, a broken extra-marital affair, a lost job , debts owed to nasty people,dead child—not in a ritualistic relay race of imposed drama created to build a citadel of sympathy around the quarantined hero.Nothing is that simple in Sunny. And yet everything is as simple or complex as you choose to make it. Among the highpoints in this dreamlike drama of the damned, is the friendship that Sunny strikes with the girl Adithi in the suite above his. They only exchange cursory words in the balcony. But a bond is created. And when Adithi(Sritha Sivadas) is leaving Sunny runs into the elevator just to see her going down and out of his life.Glimpsed images of stolen joy are captured with essential empathy by Madhu Neelakandan. The editing(Shameer Muhammed) echoes the protagonist’s restless mind .But rest assured, the narration is in no hurry to go anywhere. Flawless and seamless the narration cuts through the pandemic to slice out a portion of life that’s not easy to forget.
As for Jayasurya, is he a better actor than his Malayali peer Fahaad Faasil? When Sunny finally breaks down at the end(out of relief not despair) I was sobbing with him. This is not a performance. This is an embodiment of life’s essential truth where the adage ‘This Too Shall Pass’ acquires an entirely novel relevance.
Jijo : In film after film, Fahadh Faasli proves himself a fearless peerless seamless actor who merges into his characters like water in a stream. And better still, flows down that stream where the human condition merges with the very bedrock of existence.And look at where Fahadh has arrived in Joji! Shakespeare’s Macbeth gets the treatment which I am sure would make Shakespeare himself envious. Joji is a dark brooding translocation of the Shakspearean tragedy with unexpected bursts of warmth and humour which Shakespeare could have never imagined.Magically the characters in Syam Pushkaran’s screenplay are relocated from their Shakespearean bleakness to a Malayali verdancy. The overpowering greenery of rural Kerala has always served as a compelling counterpoint to the dramatic tensions so organically generated in Malayalam films. The tension has never been more palpable as it is in Joji. You can cut it with a knife and all you will see are bloodless wounds in the family of Kuttappan P K Panachel(Sunny PN), a tyrannical patriarch who runs the family business with a tight fist and an immovable grip over his three sons. While one of them, a drunken divorced bully named Jomon(Baburaj) loves his mean-spirited father unconditionally, the quieter Jaison(played brilliantly by Joji Mundakayam) has Daddy issues that he has long suppressed within himself.It is the youngest son, a wastrel named Joji who is the focus of the radiantly inky plot. Joji is of course played by the great Fahad Faasil who brings to the character a kind of patriarchal bitterness that manifests itself in not-expected burst of devastating violence. This is director Dileesh Pothan’s third directorial with Fahadh(after Maheshinte Prathikaaram and Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum) and by far the most reflective, moody, sinister , subtle and sublime.Though Macbeth is an inherently violent tale of patricide and Oedipal guilt, Pothan’s film does away with the vileness of the protgonist’s deeds by introducing a kind a dithering juvenilia into Jijo’s character. His chosen weapon of violence is an airgun and his selected hideaway is a half-dug well. Fahadh’s Jijo is an unlikely villain and hence all the more devastating. He is also an unlikely Shakespearean hero who has in all probability never heard of Shakespeare.How unlike Vishal Bhardwaj’s Macbeth(Maqbool) where all the main characters behaved as if they had graduated in Shakespearean literature.Joji is a remarkably artless tragedy filled with a looming respect for the spaces that divide individuals within the same family. Cinematographer Shyju Khalid creates a sense of distance and isolation by capturing characters who often sit physically distanced from one another in the family mansion. In one striking shot we see Joji and his Bhabhi in two different adjacent rooms in the same frame. Clearly the frames are designed for the big screen. But what to do? If wishes were horses, Joji would be riding them, not selling them without his father’s knowledge.The relationship between Joji and his sister-in-law(Unnimaya Prasad) seems so ambiguous precisely because it doesn’t try to be complicated. Familial complications, says Dileesh Pothan are alibis we generate to justify and rationalize our greed and covetousness. Replete with a wondrous images of everyday poetry(see Joji examining his father’s medical pills of different colours) , Joji is a film that we all will go back to in the coming years wondering, How did we miss this and that?! For now don’t miss this great film with one of India’s greatest actors giving one of his greatest performances in a film that doesn’t aspire to greatness. It just gets there without straining to do so.
Minnal Murali(Malayalam): Minnal Murali is Malayalam cinema’s first super-hero film. To this, we can safely add that it is is India’s first successful attempt at a super-hero film which is funny, entertaining and thoroughly satisfying.
Considering what Indian cinema has to offer in the genre—the memory of Remo D Souza’s The Flying Jatt with Tiger Shroff as a super-hero, still makes me shudder—Minnal Murali is not only welcome, it is a film we need to celebrate for captivatingly capturing the spirit of the superhero genre while preserving a pungent indigenous flavor.
It is like dipping meatballs into sambhar and coming up with a taste that is familiar fresh and inviting.Wisely director Basil Joseph sets the action in a small sleepy gossipy town in Kerala. This immediately scales down the cultural expanse of the idea, delimiting at the same time dilating and accenting the plot and the characters instead of focusing on the special effects.
At times the jokes seem tailormade to accommodate the tailor-hero’s modest tell-tale transition into superheroism.When Jaison(Tovino) tries to fly to test his superhero skills, he falls flat on his face, thereby sparing the film’s budget from flying costs.
“Let’s not push it,” counsels Jaison’s wise nerdy nephew Josemon(Vashisht Unesh)’s , an advice well taken by the film’s makers who know where to draw the line between slinky and kinky.
The presentation though modest in vision, is never tacky. The climax where Good Superhero combats Bad Superhero is impressively staged, though not on the scale that Marvel films are shot at. Here the focus is on the way the superhero powers affect the characters rather than on the spectacle and special affects.
It all starts when two unrelated character Jaison(Tovino Thomas) and Shibu(Guru Somasundaram) are struck by a lightning at the same time, though not at the same place.They both wake up to sense of physical strength and emotional turmoil that renders their routine life more adventurous than they had bargained for.
Rightaway let’s salute the super-acting powers of the two humble super-heroes who helm this engaging fable of the caped scaled-down crusaders. Tovino Thomas is the rising star of Malayalam cinema. See him as the confused reluctant endearing super-hero, and you’ll know why. However it is Guru Somasundaram whose emotional responses to his character’s newly-acquired powers that anchor the plot, and irrigate its irrational hurl into an odd and uncharted orbit.
Somasundaram’s look of gratitude and vindication when the woman he has loved all his life accepts his love, is a textbook illustration of emotive empowerment.
More than a stylish Marvel of nature(pun intended) Minnal Murali is an intimate character-study of power and its utilization in a world progressively driven by greed. The film has some terrific action sequences, more fun than fearful, where the characters play out a kind of perky precocious pantomime of super-heroism.
In one feisty sequence Tovino’s superhero takes on a vindictive cop(well played by Baiju) with riffs from Queen’s ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ playing in the background.
It’s a joyride from the first to the last, powered by a sense of logistic fantasy—if that makes any sense—whereby the obvious absurdities of a flying crusader are melted down to a ground-level intrepidity born more of necessity than vanity.
