Poetry and courage across languages, from Assamese to Hindi,
Khasi, Malayalam and more
2019 was a year in which small
films in the Assamese and Khasi languages drew eyeballs beyond their traditional
audiences, the Kerala-based film industry a.k.a. Mollywood outdid itself,
and its counterparts
in Bollywood under-performed. In this year
that no seer could have predicted, here is a list of my favourite Indian films, with
the top spot going to one that enjoyed an unprecedented months-long run in
theatres across India, from Thiruvananthapuram to Chennai and the National
Capital Region.
1:
Kumbalangi Nights / Malayalam
Madhu C. Narayanan’s Kumbalangi Nights feels like
what you might get if you were to sit by your window in a house in Kumbalangi –
a tourist village on the outskirts of Kochi – and gaze at life as it passes by.
Realism has never been as enjoyable, educational and romantic as it is in this
delicately woven saga of a dysfunctional family. A couple frolicking in the
bioluminescence in the waters outside their home, an angry woman telling her
boyfriend her biopic could be titled “The Girl Who Fell For An Idiot” and a
generally light-hearted veneer partner this film’s grave concerns ranging
from patriarchy to mental health. At
once hilarious and thoughtful, Kumbalangi
Nights is a sublime experience.
2:
Aamis /
Assamese
Bhaskar Hazarika’s Aamis revolves around the attraction
between a married doctor and a PhD student in Assam. A love of
meat here becomes a metaphor for carnal longings, but gets a whole new layer in
this story’s setting, since India’s North East is othered by the rest of the
country for, among other reasons, its differing food choices. Only a deliciously
wacko mind could zero in on this everyday reality and mould it into the
surrealism of Aamis. If you have seen
Kothanodi, you
already know Hazarika has just such a mind.
Aamis is about
sexual desire in a repressive society and the definition of “normal”. It is scrumptiously
twisted and an electric shock to India’s cinematic conventions.
3:
Iewduh / Khasi
Iewduh
is set in an iconic marketplace in Shillong,
which serves as a microcosm of Indian society. While the film’s characters go
about their daily grind, the hustle and bustle of the bazaar absorbs a
constant and lethal churning. Pradip
Kurbah’s naturalistic storytelling is perfect for this slice-of-life film
in which a community seems largely unmoved by a
battered wife’s cries that are now a background score to their lives, but kindness too rears its head amidst apathy and
despair. Iewduh is a beautiful film, and Kurbah one of the most significant
voices to emerge from Indian cinema this decade.
4:
Virus / Malayalam
How Keralites joined hands in
2018 to contain a deadly Nipah outbreak forms the story of Aashiq Abu’s Virus. The film’s clinical tone mirrors what must have
been the business-like persistence of the politicians, bureaucrats, healthcare professionals and average citizens involved in this real-life emergency. Virus’
massive ensemble cast featuring some of Malayalam cinema’s most respected names
in
big, small and even tiny roles serves to underline the importance of every
available individual in a crisis, including those who have no clue that
they served a role. The film is a stirring ode to human
compassion and a reminder of the best that we can be in trying times.
5:
Asuran / Tamil
In Asuran,
writer-director Vetri Maaran gives his hero a larger-than-life
persona and all the trappings usually reserved for upper-caste male leads in
masala films. The protagonist journeys from defiance to pacifism
then all-out aggression through his life-long battles with the caste system and
class. Within a mainstream format, in a space most unexpected, Asuran demands that we step out of our
privileged existence and confront the demonic force of caste in our
midst.
(For the full
review of Asuran, click here)
6: Jallikattu / Malayalam
When a buffalo goes wild in a Kerala village in Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Jallikattu, the men pursuing it go wilder. Their chase soon becomes an outlet for their true selves, a
camouflage for personal battles and ultimately, the
most imaginative deconstruction of the self-destructive nature of patriarchy seen on the
Indian screen.
(For the full
review of Jallikattu, click here)
7: Super Deluxe /
Tamil
Some of the biggest stars from Telugu, Tamil
and Malayalam cinema come together in Thiagarajan
Kumararaja’s gut-wrenching Super
Deluxe, which tells the stories in parallel of an
unhappily married couple trying to dispose of a corpse, teenagers surreptitiously watching pornography, a trans woman returning to
the wife and son she abandoned in an earlier life and a porn actor seeking hospital
treatment for her child. The fine balance it strikes between its sense of humour and its sensitivity is one
of Super Deluxe’s many
achievements.
(For the full
review of Super Deluxe, click here)
8. Article 15 /
Hindi
In Anubhav
Sinha’s Article 15, an upper-caste policeman is dragged out of his privileged
cocoon when two Dalit girls are raped and murdered in an Uttar Pradesh village
where he is posted. Through
the Dalit activists Gaura and Nishad, he is forced to confront the very real dangers faced
by India’s most oppressed community. This line spoken by a policeman in Article 15, “Aap se nivedan
hai Sir, santulan mat bigaadiye (I beg you Sir, don’t disrupt the
balance),” must rank among the starkest samples of status quoism ever showcased
in a Hindi film.
(For the full
review of Article 15, click here)
9.
Hellaro /
Gujarati
A group of women discover dance and with it the courage in their
veins in Abhishek Shah’s Hellaro. The
story is situated in an isolated Gujarat village where women have accepted domestic
violence including rape as a way of life, even as some of them in turn target
the less fortunate in their midst. Swept up in an outburst, a hellaro, a gust of energy and optimism when
they chance upon dance, they learn the power of solidarity and find in it
a reason to live.
10. Gully Boy / Hindi
In the richly rewarding Gully Boy, Zoya Akhtar places a poor Muslim slumdweller in Mumbai’s underground rap
scene. Gully
Boy’s gripping story is bolstered by the
addictive rhythms of the hero’s compositions and his infectious
rebelliousness, which are the handiwork of a host of Indian rappers including Naezy and Divine whose lives Akhtar acknowledges as the
inspiration for her film.
(For the full
review of Gully Boy, click here)
A VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE IS ALSO ON
FIRSTPOST:
ALSO READ:
Photographs courtesy:
