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Release date:
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April 21,
2017
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Director:
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Ranjan Pramod
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Cast:
Language:
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Biju Menon, Aju
Varghese, Hareesh Perumanna, Hannah Reji Koshy, Deepak Parambol, Indrans,
Alencier Ley Lopez, Anjali Aneesh
Malayalam
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Biju Menon could stand in front of a
camera staring aimlessly for an hour, and somehow make that work. His comic
talent, his knack for subtly suggesting that something else beats below the
seemingly frivolous surface and his chameleon-like ability to supplement comedy
with gravitas and poignance at the drop of a hat are the fulcrum of Ranjan Pramod’s
Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu (Signed: Patron Baiju).
The film is set in Kerala’s
languorous interiors, in a kinda sorta village called Kumbalam far removed from
the urban bustle although Kochi is within touching distance. Time seems to
stand still here. Those who leave zip ahead of those who stay back. As it
happens, many Kumbalam residents simply do not want to leave.
Menon plays Baiju, a work-shirking
government official who pours all his energy and passion into mentoring local
cricket-loving boys. Thirty-six years back as an eight-year-old, he began
playing the game on a vacant plot of land in the area. He never stopped.
Baiju is a founder member of the
club/team Kumbalam Brothers. The Brothers and their playing ground are a
microcosm of life in this village, which is reluctantly becoming a town and
might be a city someday soon.
Baiju is a kind man, the sort who is
exasperating to have as husband, father or son, but great to have as a
neighbour or friend. Most of his time is spent away from home and office, on
the field with his boys. He is a senior citizen in comparison with them, but
continues to be a team member. He is not a man of indifferent cricketing talent,
but his role in Kumbalam Brothers is way beyond that. He is their captain,
patron (rakshadhikari), mentor, father figure, elder brother and buddy,
often at the cost of short-changing his own family.
He is the one the boys turn to when a
rich parent will not pay for a desperately needed cricket kit. He is the one
they confide in through heartbreaks, career struggles and personal loss. Of
course there are those in the village who take him for granted, but never with
malice. The boys though are utterly and completely devoted to Baiju with every
cell of their beings.
In short, he is everything to
Kumbalam Brothers and they are everything to him.
There is much that is beautiful in Rakshadhikari
Baiju Oppu. The innocence of Kumbalam’s inhabitants, the simplicity and
lack of complication, Baiju’s own delicious lack of ambition for himself are
all designed to make a city dweller yearn for another way of life. Besides, the
pacing – slow and almost sleepy – perfectly complements the seeming aimlessness
of the protagonist who is content with his choices even while he celebrates the
successes of those who move on.
The humour too is under-stated, like
everything else in Kumbalam. Nobody tells jokes, they are just funny, real,
believable people.
Ranjan Pramod has had greater success
so far as a screenwriter (Manassinakkare, Achuvinte Amma, Ennum
Eppozhum) than as a director (he has helmed only two other films so far).
That he is a gifted writer is evident in the manner in which he creates about a
dozen memorable characters in Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu without making
the film seem crowded. There is Baiju’s sidekick (Aju Varghese) who is
searching for a white-skinned bride, there is the team member wooing the pretty
woman who lives right next to the playground, the irritable old man whose
property also adjoins the playground, Baiju’s slow friend and – though women
are marginal to this film’s proceedings – Baiju’s complaining yet loving wife
Ajitha (played by the stunning Hannah Reji Koshy) who is thankfully not turned
into a ‘nagging shrew’ stereotype.
The casting has been done with great
attention to detail, the exception being a construction team whose voices we
hear in the end – no doubt we are meant to assume that they are north Indian,
but their accents suggest that they are Malayali actors who speak Hindi
fluently. The rest though are a roll call of fine artistes, established and
unknown. Menon, of course, is fantastic.
Although it seems like nothing much
happens in this film, it is packed with stories, sub-plots, satellite
characters and meaning. Without sermonising, for instance, it quietly throws
light on the colour prejudice and gender segregation rampant in Kumbalam, which
is a mini Kerala unto itself. Women are unwelcome on the playground, but are
allowed to stay when they put their foot down. Dark-skinned people are accepted
in the fold when they stick to their guns.
What is jarring though is that in
comedifying that colour bias without qualifiers in a relationship involving a
Kumbalam Brothers member, the film unwittingly trivialises the pain it can and
does cause. In many ways, Pramod also betrays the narrowness of his male gaze
when he reduces each woman’s existence to being someone in relation to a man in
this story, not a person unto herself, and when scene after scene goes by with
not a female human in sight. It is as if he – like the men in his film often do
– forgets, or wants to forget that women exist.
So Ajitha, though not a caricature,
is still someone Baiju is happy to leave behind at home. One Kumbalam Brothers
player describes the cricket ground as oxygen away from a clingy wife (we have
no idea what she thinks). Later, when a woman breaks up with a man she has not
even fully hooked up with, the fellow’s friend promptly describes her as a user
and a tease. This is the only kind of conversation they ever have about women.
Yes, such situations and talk happen in real life – the point is the lack of a
countering voice from the filmmaker.
Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu also tends to romanticise the
countryside. Except for pointing out the need for medical facilities in
Kumbalam, there is no mention of how tough rural life can be, how
discrimination (caste, gender, communal and more) is much harder to flee or
shrug off in small, close-knit rustic communities than in the much-vilified ‘urban
jungle’.
In Shanavas K. Bavakutty’s exceptional
Kismath last year, a low-caste, poor Hindu girl targeted for falling in
love with a well-off Muslim man escapes to the big city where she is shown
savouring being a drop in an ocean. Our popular cinema rarely reflects this,
but the anonymity metropolises afford can indeed be a great escape. Kumbalam
though is projected as an unadulterated idyll. The negative characters are
asides, the “them” in the midst of the good-hearted “us”. There are two male
villains, but they operate on the fringes. Even the supposedly treacherous female lover seems to be in
Kumbalam only because her father is in a transferable
government job.
This is a rose-tinted view of what
can be a harsh reality. Village life is alluring from a distance, but it is
definitely not the smooth ride it is often made out to be.
A 360-degree take on Kumbalam might
have made this a more mature film. Baiju reminded me a lot of Kunchacko Boban’s
Kochavva in last year’s loveable Kochavva Paulo Ayyappa Coelho, but that
film by director Sidhartha Siva did not come across as being so selective
though it too took a romantic view of the countryside.
As it happens, what we are served in Rakshadhikari
Baiju Oppu is so entertaining and Biju Menon is so magnetic, that it would
be easy to not look beyond the sweetness and humour of the proceedings or
Ranjan Pramod’s smooth narrative. Not counting the needless ‘lesson’ stuffed in
our faces in the end, which under-estimates the audience, Rakshadhikari
Baiju Oppu is fun and, in its own way, insightful, even though it chooses
to tell only part of a story – the charming part, of course.
Rating (out of five stars): **3/4
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CBFC
Rating (India):
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U
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Running
time:
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162
minutes
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This review has also been published on
Firstpost:
Poster courtesy: IMDB
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