REVIEW 795: BRAMAYUGAM

Release date:	February 15, 2024
Director:	Rahul Sadasivan
Cast:	Mammootty, Sidharth Bharathan, Arjun Ashokan, Amalda Liz, Manikandan R. Achari
Language:	Malayalam

 

Rahul Sadasivan’s Bramayugam comes to theatres two years after Bhoothakaalam in which he deftly wove themes of mental health, care giving, substance abuse and other pressing concerns into a supernatural/psychological horror drama. Bhoothakaalam starring Revathy and Shane Nigam was terrifying and thoughtful in equal measure, but the burden of expectations is not the reason why Bramayugam does not match up to it. The reasons are simpler.

 

Behind the gloss and beyond an in-form Mammootty, Bramayugam is not scary despite its promising atmospherics. It is also flimsy for a considerable stretch of time until it begins to lay out its caste politics. The film’s allegorical take on caste proves to be muddled and insensitive.

 

Bramayugam (The Age of Madness) is set in 17^th century Malabar where Thevan (Arjun Ashokan), a starving folk singer, chances upon a decrepit mansion belonging to a Brahmin family. The grouchy caretaker (Sidharth Bharathan) is unwelcoming. Both are placed low on the ladder of the caste system, and the elderly master of the house Kodumon Potti (Mammootty) belittles the latter for being disdainful towards the visitor, welcoming the young man warmly instead. 

 

Kodumon Potti rarely has guests. This could be because his home is in what appears to be a land far far away. Or perhaps not. Thevan soon realises that all is not as it seems in this decaying homestead where mysterious sounds are heard from areas declared off limits for him. It is not long before we learn that he is a pawn in a game in which the dice is controlled by an unexplained force. 

 

Sadasivan gets Bramayugam off to a good start by creating a sense of mystery in the forest where we meet Thevan. This tone is sustained till the end with the aid of Shehnad Jalal’s camerawork, Jothish Shankar’s art direction and Jayadevan Chakkadath’s low-key sound design. 

 

Bramayugam is defined by its magnificence, ranging from scenes of desolate natural beauty to the eerie innards of Kodumon Potti’s home. Even shots of a man cooking in a darkened kitchen look ominous here, as are close-ups of the handful of characters in this saga. The decision to make this a black-and-white film further enriches the imagery and adds to its folklorish feel. 

 

Giant landscapes are framed in Bramayugam in such a manner as to dwarf the people in the story and intimidate the viewer, in a style I’ve come to love in recent years in chilling Scandinavian thrillers. The resemblance is confined to the look. Bramayugam threatens to turn frightening, but never actually does. After a while, the spectacle is window dressing for a thin story that picks elements from Indian mythology– a yakshi here, a chaathan there – without saying anything novel until it reveals its flawed hand in the matter of caste. 

 

Initially, Sadasivan makes an insightful point when he shows Kodumon Potti luring Thevan with a pretence of egalitarianism before entrapping him. However, with this episode of truth telling, the film is being as deceptive as Kodumon Potti himself, because Sadasivan’s larger point turns out to be that dominant communities are no more power hungry than those they’ve historically oppressed, and the sole difference between them is that one lot hold the reins in a social system while the others are its victims for now. This is an uninformed blanket statement. On the one hand, it’s true we’re currently witnessing the outcome of a once-oppressed people transforming into oppressors – read: the genocide in Gaza being committed by Israel, the country formed in the 1940s as a homeland for white European Jews after the Holocaust. It is just as true though that this has not been the journey of all persecuted communities. Notice how countries formerly colonised by Europeans have not run around the world colonising other countries since they themselves got Independence. Notice that post-apartheid South Africa is vocally advocating for Palestinians. Notice the scores of white Jewish people, including Holocaust survivors, protesting against the genocide. Know too that Israel’s conduct is a result of numerous factors including but not confined to white racism that prompted post World War II Europe to consider the brown people of Palestine dispensable, and Europe and North America’s oil interests in the Middle East. 

 

Bramayugam’s script does not explore the theme of oppression with depth. Instead it chooses to whitewash oppressors. The writing also betrays a troubling upper-caste view of caste on two fronts. 

 

(Spoiler alert) The earliest clue that a certain character is not the Brahmin individual he claims to be comes from his food habits. It’s not that this person eats meat, but the savagery with which he eats it that is supposed to be a hint. Portraying meat-eaters as crude, equating meat-eating with animalism and associating unsophisticated meat consumption with Muslims and ‘the other’ has become a hallmark of the right-wing ecosystem and right-wing Hindi cinema in the Modi era (Padmaavat, Panipat, Tanhaji, Adipurush, Animal). Bramayugam employs the same symbolism in the context of caste in the Malayalam language. 

 

Bramayugam’s thesis seems to be that Europeans were able to colonise India due to power struggles among Indians. While disunity in the subcontinent did help Europeans, the problem with Bramayugam is that it implies an equivalence between Brahmins and Dalits in this regard, and trains its accusatory finger primarily – metaphorically – at the downtrodden. For a metaphor to work, it must work all the way, but in Bramayugam what we are shown, literally, is white intruders taking advantage of  a ‘half caste’ and a lower caste person being at loggerheads after escaping a demonic tyranny, while the first victim of the battle among Indians in the narrative was a Brahmin. More to the point, a Brahmin we don’t meet at all, as a result of which we don’t get to determine whether he was good, bad or evil, while we get to see the evil in the rest of the social order. 

 

It’s also strange that in the almost-all-male world that Sadasivan builds in Bramayugam, the only female presence is a beautiful, blood-sucking seductress.

 

Amalda Liz as the yakshi is just an eye-catching body and face on display. Manikandan R. Achari gets similar dismissive treatment in the opening scenes. This is the second film in three weeks to reduce this gifted actor to a prop. The other was Malaikottai Vaaliban. Women are objectified in cinema worldwide, Malayalam cinema is objectifying this man probably because most writers are unable or unwilling to envision a black-skinned actor as anything but exotica. 

 

Only three roles count in Bramayugam. Mammootty and Sidharth Bharathan deserve as much credit for the film’s menacing air as its visual landscape does. In the Indian arena, it takes courage for a star as big as Mammootty to take on a role that is meant to be as repugnant as this character is, but he does it with evident relish. Both actors also benefit immensely from the embrace of Shehnad Jalal’s camera. Arjun Ashokan’s performance is not quite as immersive as theirs here, but he does a fair job. 

 

Bramayugam is a great-looking film based on a script that quickly runs out of steam, until it revs itself up to take a terribly skewed stand on caste and colonialism.

 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 1.5   

 

Running time:

139 minutes

 

Poster courtesy: IMDB 

REVIEW 704: UNDA

Release date:	June 14, 2019
Director:	Khalidh Rahman
Cast: Language:	Mammootty, Shine Tom Chacko, Arjun Ashokan, Lukman, Omkar Das Manikpuri, Ranjith Balakrishnan, Bhagwan Tiwari, Jacob Gregory, Dileesh Pothan, Chien Ho Liao, Easwari Rao, Cameos by Asif Ali and Vinay Forrt Malayalam with Hindi and a sprinkling of other tongues

If you grew up admiring Mammootty and have had your heart broken repeatedly over the decades as he embraced a spiced-up, clichéd type of cinema in which his natural acting talent was drowned out by loud background scores, stereotypically lionised heroics and extreme misogyny, 2019 is a chance to heal. In recent years in particular, a dismal assembly line of gimmicky performances in machoistic films have overshadowed the very occasional relief offered by the Malayalam megastar’s moving work in gems like Munnariyippu (2014) and Pathemari (2015).

Writer-director Khalidh Rahman’s Unda comes at a time when the actor seems to be decisively changing course, offering dazzling reminders of his versatility by straddling multiple industries and delivering back-to-back brilliance in Yatra (Telugu), Peranbu (Tamil) and even Madhuraraja (Malayalam), the latter undeniably masala fare and certainly not bereft of problems, yet far removed from the decibels and triteness that had become characteristic of Mammootty’s performances in comedies. Unda seals the deal: in a survey of India’s biggest commercial male stars across languages, 2019 should be declared the year of Mammootty.

Unda (Bullet) is a Malayalam-cum-Hindi film set in Chhattisgarh where a contingent of the Kerala Police is sent to help the Indo-Tibetan Border Police during a tension-ridden election. Maoists have declared that they will not allow voting to take place. It is the job of security forces to ensure that it does.

Into this politically, culturally and geographically unfamiliar territory, Sub-Inspector Manikandan C.P. (Mammootty) and his team find themselves thrown in at the deep end. Before they left on a 40-day tour that will cover Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand, they were told they must do Kerala proud. When they reach their first destination they realise that they have been orphaned, their own state government having sent them into a battle zone with limited equipment and zero training, leaving them at the mercy of angry, time-constrained, unkind, stressed-out colleagues in north India who lambast them for their cluelessness.

Unda was shot on location in Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Kerala. DoP Sajith Purushan’s work is designed to keep viewers on edge without being obviously manipulative. If you are used to the rich greens of Malayalam cinema, then the comparatively sparse, dust-encrusted forests of Bastar become a metaphor for the stark contrast between Mani’s home situation and his present circumstances. He and his associates from Kerala are brave, well-intentioned, disciplined men, but they are dragged down by dated firearms, strained supplies and their vastly different background. Most of them have never fired a gun in their lives, having not needed to so far in their relatively peaceful state. This puts them at high risk here in Bastar, where violence is the order of the day as security forces and local extremists are in constant war mode. Understandably then, they feel humiliated, helpless, betrayed, furious and afraid.

Unda is a slice-of-life saga that reads like pages out of the diary of one of these men. Khalidh Rahman steers clear of the formulae that such films usually resort to. He does not, for instance, assign a romance per cop, nor give any of them elaborate schmaltzy back stories, yet we get to know most of them well through the work dynamic between them, snatches of their repartee with each other and the occasional telephone call back home.

So there is Jojo (Shine Tom Chacko) whose marriage is on the rocks and who vents his aggression on his colleagues. Girish (Arjun Ashokan) is a happy-go-lucky youngster who has been pulled away from preparations for his impending wedding. And Biju (Lukman) is growing tired of being targeted by his fellow policemen with casteist banter and slurs. This motley crew has to be held together by Mani Sir whose popularity is sorely tested when his juniors realise he is pretty much at sea in Bastar.

One of the many engaging aspects of Unda is the way it has a bit of a laugh at our expense after setting us up to expect the sort of standard treatment that has come to be identified with Mammootty and Mohanlal films. So the screenplay delays Mammootty's introductory scene, as his big commercial films often do these days, but it then deflates anyone anticipating a grand entry for Mammukka complete with heralding music and his trademark swagger – instead we get to first meet Mani in a quietly amusing crowd scene. During one confrontation, the volume of Prashant Pillai’s otherwise beautifully understated, localised background score does suddenly rise, but it does not giganticise Mammukka in the way most other films do, instead in a tragi-comic fashion it serves to underline his endearing vulnerability here. Mani is far removed from the invincible, glamourised, trigger-happy policeman Mammootty has played a million times in his long career.

Unda then is often funny, despite its grave setting. There is also a sweet simplicity to the team spirit of Mani’s men.

Ultimately though, like Dr Biju’s Kaadu Pookunna Neram (2017) starring Rima Kallingal and Indrajith Sukumaran, what Unda leaves us with is an overwhelming sadness at the realisation that these policemen, members of a much-hated profession, are in their own way a victim of the system that daily threatens the lives of Bastar’s tribals. A local man called Kunalchand (Peepli Live’s Omkar Das Manikpuri making his Mollywood debut here) laments that he is in the firing line of both the Maoists and the police, because the Maoists think he is a police informer and the police simply assume he is a Maoist, this eternal round of suspicion leaving space for another enemy altogether to invade their peace. The Kerala Police team are not as impoverished and desperate as Kunalchand, but they too are pawns in the hands of larger forces who take advantage of their need for employment.

That said, Unda does not paint these policemen as unflinchingly flawless, nor dismiss the north India-based security personnel as unmitigated nasties. Bhagwan Tiwari’s Kapil Dev, for instance, at first does come across as unfairly impatient and mean – observe how he is initially contemptuous of Mani & Co because they do not know Hindi, as though it is his right to demand that they do – but we see other sides to him as the film rolls along.

And remember that Biju is taunted not by these newcomers, but by the very people who travelled with him from home. The writing of Biju is elegant, believable and so illuminating, a gentle note that prejudice does not always come from the unequivocally evil but often from those who might by and large be deemed good, that bias is often so deeply ingrained in us that we do not even realise that we are giving expression to it.

Unlike Kapil Dev, Unda is respectful of language differences. If you buy a ticket for a Malayalam film it is reasonable to expect that the film will be in Malayalam, yet many Mollywood films feature dialogues in various languages (especially Tamil) without subtitling them for the benefit of its primary audience who are Malayalam speakers. Unda not only features English subtitles throughout for the benefit of non-Malayalam-speaking viewers, but it also has Malayalam subtitles embedded in the print through large swathes of the film’s Hindi dialogues – the latter are missing in some places, but the fact that they are there at all is a refreshing change. Mahesh Narayanan’s Take Off is another rare recent film that did likewise.

Although there is a lot to recommend in Unda, the complete absence of the female voice in the narrative is troubling. The women who do appear in the story are so marginal that they may as well have not been there. In this area, Kaadu Pookunna Neram scores considerably over Unda. Women are usually the biggest sufferers in any conflict situation, and to ignore them completely when you otherwise show so much sensitivity in the treatment of a delicate subject, is just inexcusable. The marginalisation of women was an issue with the director’s first film too – Anuraga Karikkin Vellam gave more screen time to women but failed to enter their minds unlike its male leads.

Unda could have also done without the distant exotic figure that Mani keeps seeing in Chhattisgarh. If the idea was to convey a man’s anxieties translating into hallucinations, I wish it had been done without playing on the stereotype of the Adivasi held by city-based viewers.

It is precisely because there is so much to love in Unda that these issues are disappointing.

Expecting the unexpected is par for the course for Malayalam film buffs, but it still takes a moment to get used to Unda. Not because its story, setting and treatment are unique (they are), but because Mammootty agreed to subsume his stardom in a role. It is such a pleasure to see this great artiste so thoroughly inhabiting a role that at least for the 2 hours plus of Unda’s running time, he becomes a distant memory because S.I. Manikandan C.P. is all he will let us see.

His ensemble of co-stars are equally credible and real. Lukman as Biju, for one, is sheer perfection. And Shine Tom Chacko switches smoothly chameleon-like from the repulsive Alwin in Ishq just recently to the many shades of Unda’s Jojo – miserable, fearful, unwilling to admit to his fears, likeable and unlikeable in equal measure. Jojo’s sketchy grasp of Hindi gives Unda one of its most hilarious scenes.

Of all the art lovers in this world, the Malayalam film follower is especially blessed. I cannot believe my good luck that I live in an era when Madhu C. Narayanan’s Kumbalangi Nights, Aashiq Abu’s Virus, Manu Ashokan’s Uyare and Khalidh Rahman’s Unda have all come to theatres in.the.same.year.

Rating (out of five stars): ****

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	130 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/unda-movie-review-2019-is-the-year-of-mammootty-this-sweet-sad-funny-ode-to-the-kerala-police-seals-the-deal-6821261.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/Mammootty/

REVIEW 678: JUNE

Release date:	Kerala: February 15, 2019 Delhi: March 8, 2019
Director:	Ahammed Khabeer
Cast: Language:	Rajisha Vijayan, Aswathi Menon, Joju George, Sarjano Khalid, Arjun Ashokan Malayalam

There is no genre better suited to the widely celebrated New Age slice-of-life Malayalam cinema than the coming-of-age film. Writer-director Ahammed Khabeer facilitates a well-suited match between the two in June, the story of a young woman from Kottayam called June Sara Joy.

Khabeer’s film, which he has co-written with Libin Varghese and Jeevan Baby Mathew, travels with the girl from her teens to her 20s, from her first day in Class 11 to approximately a decade later, accompanying her through adolescent crushes and adult romance, her relationships with parents and friends, encounters with misogyny and patriarchy, and her pursuit of her dreams.

June makes for an interesting choice of heroine, because there is absolutely nothing remarkable about her or uncommon about her experiences. In fact, this is how she introduces herself to her class on Day 1, as someone with no special talents unlike the rest of them.

In the time we spend with her as viewers, nothing happens that would seem dramatic to the average observer, no tragedy, no great achievement. Yet in her own eyes, of course, her life is packed with drama as we see her shed buckets of tears through a major confrontation with her normal-as-hell parents and other situations.

This perhaps is the point being made by the writers: that what seems routine to the outside world can be trying, stressful, joyful, exhilarating and/or depressing by turns to the person going through what we are just watching. That “normal” and “ordinary” are often a matter of interpretation.

Khabeer’s storytelling style is easygoing, naturalistic and a good fit here. While June could have done with a paring down of the number of songs fitted into the narrative, Lijo Paul’s editing works well for it. We are occasionally taken back and forth in time through the many passages in the protagonist’s life, with Paul making smooth jumps that usually illustrate how she got to a particular point or how she has changed.

Rajisha Vijayan, who debuted to critical acclaim in 2016 with Anuraga Karikkin Vellam, has the task of portraying this blossoming youth. She is most convincing in June’s teenage years when she captures the child-woman’s sprightly demeanour, affectionate nature, immaturity and innate decency in equal measure without over-cutesifying her, and again in the transitional phase during which she confronts gender prejudice with undiluted spirit. Not so convincing is the writing and acting of the oldest June we get to see in the film when she is well into her 20s. This is a young woman who was shown to have matured in preceding scenes, yet her body language remains unchanged and her artificially energetic, child-like behaviour comes across as contrived during her first meeting with a new beau, when she seems like a bit of a regurgitation of the old Manic Pixie Dream Girl cliché.

Her physique and styling too seem unaltered. I have read that Vijayan lost considerable weight to play the teenaged June. The problem is that she looks exactly like the teenaged June right up to the last scene. I do not understand why anyone thought this actor needs help to look younger. The fact is her appearance is so youthful, that she could have done with better makeup and an intelligent stylist to look older for the 20-something June.

This is also a concern with at least two of the actors playing her classmates who look too baby-faced to be women well on their way to 30 in the end. The boys are much more believable as men and, in truth, some of them are less believable as schoolkids.

By this point in the film though, much water has passed under the bridge, and Ms Vijayan under Mr Khabeer’s guidance has drawn us so inexorably into June’s existence, that I, for one, as a viewer, found myself in an indulgent mood.

The Dad quietly pouring her her first drink while the mother is not watching, her first kiss, her first open battle with patriarchy are all handled perfectly naturally without creating a big shindig around them as other contemporary commercial filmmakers do. However, the one folly – and a big folly it is – is the inconsistency in the definition of June’s dream. (Some readers may consider the rest of this paragraph a spoiler) In one crucial, well-executed portion, she is shown avidly fighting for a woman’s right to be more than just a stay-at-home mother whose decisions are made by a dictatorial husband. Not long after, an important character asks her what precisely her own dreams are for herself. She has no answer then, and by the finale, both she and the writers seem to have either lost interest in finding one or have completely forgotten about it. (Spoiler alert ends)

This forgetfulness implies a lack of commitment. Along with the schmaltzy, over-stretched climax that extends way beyond the nostalgia it intends to convey, it subtracts from the overall impact of June.

Still, there is plenty to like in this teens-to-20s saga, not the least reasons being its gentle tone, Rajisha Vijayan’s likeable screen presence, and her comfortable chemistry with her co-stars, especially the lovely Joju George playing her liberal-yet-conservative Dad and Sarjano Khalid who is cast as her first boyfriend.

I would gladly re-watch June just for the joy of revisiting the warmth in the leading lady’s scenes with her indulgent father.

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	141 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/june-movie-review-slice-of-life-malayalam-cinema-meets-the-coming-of-age-genre-to-gentle-effect-6228151.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/JuneMovieOfficial/