Ullozhukku: Parvathy and Urvashi together on screen are just priceless. (Review 802)

Release date:	June 20, 2024
Director:	Christo Tomy
Cast:	Urvashi, Parvathy Thiruvothu, Arjun Radhakrishnan, Jaya Kurup, Alencier Ley Lopez, Veenah Naair, Prasanth Murali
Language:	Malayalam

 

There are few places on Earth more devastatingly beautiful than Kuttanad. Few settings better suited to a film named Ullozhukku.   

 

The title is the Malayalam word for undercurrent. Kuttanad in the monsoons, with its vast, often intimidating expanses of water punctuated by thick greens and islands of human habitation, is home to many such hidden tides.   

 

The placid liquid terrain on which Ullozhukku unfolds is a metaphor for the outward calm of conservative societies. In these circles, silent suffering to keep up a façade of ‘respectability’ is valued over the truth, and the floodwaters of social conformity often drown happiness.   

 

The protagonists in this story are Anju (Parvathy Thiruvothu) and Leelamma (Urvashi). Anju had an arranged marriage with Leelamma’s son Thomaskutty (Prasanth Murali). Rains are lashing Kuttanad, and the swollen backwaters have covered the grounds of their home when he dies following a grave illness. With preparations underway for Thomaskutty’s burial, long-submerged secrets rise to the surface and lies are unexpectedly exposed.  

 

Ullozhukku is written and directed by Christo Tomy whose firm hold on the material at hand, aided by Kiran Das’ editing, complements the casting coup of the season. The joy of seeing Urvashi, a giant of her craft, share the screen with Parvathy Thiruvothu, one of the finest actors of her generation, is enough to make a cinephile dizzy. When the gripping narrative culminates in a satisfying climax, there is reason for even greater euphoria: because here at last is a script worthy of these wonderful women who have snatched stardom from the jaws of patriarchy but deserve far more than they’ve got in India’s men-obsessed film industries.  

 

From the moment we first meet Anju and Leelamma, it is evident that they care for each other. Gradually though, we see that nothing is as it should be in this tharavad.   

 

Mainstream Indian cinema rarely explores relationships between women at length or sans  stereotyping. Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen (2020) showcased female allyship for a change when it defied the social stereotype that daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law are forever at war. While that was just an aside in that film, albeit an important one, Ullozhukku in its entirety is devoted to a complex ammaayiyamma-marumakal bond written without pre-conceived notions.  

 

Anju and Leelamma’s sense of desolation is mirrored by their desolate surroundings.   

 

Shehnad Jalal’s exquisite panoramic views of the scenery in Ullozhukku hark back to M.J. Radhakrishnan’s glorious frames in Jayaraj’s Ottaal (2015) which, to my mind, featured arguably the best use of the camera ever in Kuttanad. When Shehnad’s lens is trained on people, he seems to shadow rather than just observe them. The effect, when teamed with Sushin Shyam’s music and Jayadevan Chakkadath and Anil Radhakrishnan’s sound design, gives the film a brooding thriller-like air, although it is more social drama than mystery.  

 

The quiet of the countryside belies the churn in and around this extended family. The elders among them presume the right to decide their offspring’s future. One man grants himself the right to violently subjugate an ‘errant’ woman. Society grants another the right to use her without a care for her wishes. And a seeming progressive momentarily reveals a regressive mindset. 

 

Ullozhukku features a disturbing scene of spousal violence, but not of the sort one is accustomed to. Physical abuse is not normalised here in the way abuse by husbands often is in mainstream Malayalam cinema (Exhibit A: Ayyappanum Koshiyum). Instead, the implication is that domestic violence is the stuff a woman’s nightmares are made of possibly because it has been her reality. Over the course of the narrative, the film also invites us to reflect on a husband’s disregard for his wife’s reluctance to have sex with him on a particular occasion.  

 

Christo’s script has an interesting take on the manner in which society and family lay claim to the female body, more so a pregnant woman’s body. Malayalam cinema has already engaged in depth with the pro-choice debate in Jude Anthony Joseph’s Sara’s (2021) – a theme that the rest of India’s cinemas largely avoid. Ullozhukku nudges us to ponder over maternal rights instead through characters aggressively describing a foetus to its mother as “my son’s baby” and “my child” rather than hers. Their attitude is reflected in a woman clinging creepily to the belly of an expectant mother despite the latter’s obvious discomfort at being touched in this fashion.  

 

For the record, Anju and Leelamma’s families are Christian, a fact that’s there for all to see but becomes a point only in a fleeting flash of sectarianism in their midst. Ullozhukku’s representation of the community is different from the cinema of Lijo Jose Pellissery and Don Palathara that are packed with Christian symbolism and customs. This spectrum of portrayals is in keeping with the normalisation of Muslims and Christians as a whole in Malayalam cinema, and a divergence from Hindi cinema’s idea of Muslims as a homogeneous bloc to be featured in scripts if their religious identity plays a part in the plot, while Christians are more or less invisible these days. Normalisation makes space for depictions of class and caste hierarchies within a minority group. In the case of Ullozhukku, the starting point of Anju’s troubles is that her parents wanted to marry her into a wealthy, reputed family, unlike theirs, irrespective of the emotional cost to her.

 

Because of the maturity and nuance on display almost throughout Ullozhukku, two elements stick out for suggesting that all parties here are equally culpable in the goings-on. No, they are not. Some deserve to be held to account more than others. The first instance of this balancing act is a conversation between Anju’s mother-in-law and her sister who is a nun – it is jarring but excusable. The second is Anju’s father George (Alencier Ley Lopez).  

 

(Minor spoilers in this paragraph) Hypocrisy can be debated. Beating a woman cannot. The glint of peace in George’s eyes as the camera rests on his face one last time in the finale is unearned. Every other individual in this saga may merit redemption, not he who assaulted his daughter. The script, however, finds another lying relative to blame for Anju’s present misery.

 

This absolution for a fictional man is a glaring contrast to the eagerness with which a real-life woman was convicted on screen by Christo’s true crime series, Curry and Cyanide: The Jolly Joseph Case (2023) on Netflix. That show was beset with loopholes and unaddressed questions, while it damned an alleged serial killer whose trial is still on in a lower court in Kerala.

 

The indulgence towards George in Ullozhukku parallels the long rope that the film industry has given Alencier himself for his transgressions including sexual misconduct, while women like Parvathy have faced consequences for speaking out against patriarchy and violence in the industry. Before anyone brings it up, I’ll add: no viewer is obliged to separate the art from the artist, more so when the art mirrors the artist (in this case, when a writer’s sympathy for an undeserving character mirrors society’s high tolerance levels for the wrongdoings of the actor playing that part).

 

Unwittingly then, the leniency shown towards a man in the script underlines Parvathy’s brilliance alongside Urvashi’s towering performance.  

 

It has been too long since we last saw Parvathy as a well-written lead. Anju’s trauma and anger are the pivotal ullozhukku in this film. Aided by excellent characterisation, Parvathy gives Anju a compelling interiority that pulls us along as she oscillates between kindness and deception, fear, desperation, indecision, barely controlled rage and assertiveness in rapid succession.  

 

In a sense, Leelamma is the most challenging role in this script because she is not always likeable but it is crucial that the audience does not outrightly reject her. In Urvashi’s hands, she becomes a person towards whom one feels anger, even irritation, yet also, empathy. Her vulnerability is a constant. Unlike George, Leelamma’s redemption is well-earned. 

 

Men-centric cinema routinely treats women as dispensable addendums in a world that is rightfully male. Ullozhukku’sclearly delineated supporting characters are the nth example of how women-centric cinema is never similarly dismissive of men. My reservations about Anju’s father are to do with the politics of the writing, not its rigour. The most comprehensively written man in the story is Arjun Radhakrishnan’s Rajeev. Arjun is a perfect pick to play a person who automatically invites warmth, and when he attracts disgust, is not completely diminished by it. 

 

Ullozhukku marks the Malayalam debut of the Hindi film major RSVP (producer Ronnie Screwvala’s company) along with Honey Trehan and Abhishek Chaubey’s MacGuffin Pictures. They have chosen well. In a year in which the biggest Malayalam blockbusters have either sidelined women or failed to acknowledge their existence, Ullozhukku – like the exceptional Aattam before it – spells hope. Powered by Urvashi, Parvathy and consistent direction, Ullozhukku is everything that is precious about the best of Malayalam cinema: naturalistic, realistic, and an illustration of how both qualities could be a source of edge-of-the-seat entertainment, contrary to conventional wisdom in commercial cinema elsewhere.  

 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 4   

 

Running time:

123 minutes

 

Visuals courtesy: IMDB 

 

RELATED LINK: Read my column in The Economic Times on Premalu and the sidelining of women in films that claim to represent us, published on March 2, 2024

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/et-commentary/view-not-waxing-too-eloquent-about-waning-reenu/articleshow/108167230.cms 

PARVATHY INTERVIEW: ON COPING WITH DEPRESSION, KERALA DURING THE PANDEMIC AND VIRUS

Parvathy Thiruvothu is in a great place with her career. After back-to-back successes with Uyare and Virus in 2019, she is now preparing for her directorial debut. The National Award winning Mollywood star, who earlier forayed into Bollywood with Qarib Qarib Singlle in 2017, has had scriptwriting and studies to keep her occupied during the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, the ongoing national lockdown has not been easy on her. Although she is relieved that her loved ones are fine, she explains that she has swung on “a pendulum of calm to absolutely anxious” in this time due to the political climate in the country and her own personal challenges. 

In this freewheeling conversation, the actor speaks at length for the first time about her long-time battle with depression. She also discusses her home state Kerala’s response to COVID-19 and lessons from Virus, which is based on the true story of Kerala’s handling of a Nipah outbreak in 2018. Excerpts from an exclusive interview: 

What have you learnt about yourself during this lockdown?

I have learnt that I have incredible mind power. (Laughs) I apply that at my workplace most of the time, but the way I have treated characters that I have played is so much better than how I generally used to treat myself. (Laughs) So, this period has been a deep dive into how I am dealing with my deep-seated depression. I’ve had regular bouts of it that I have been taking care of, without medication at this point, with all the help I can get from online therapy and also being connected to my closest friends.

I’m used to taking time off after 2-3 films, but a choice to lock myself in is different from when it’s mandatory – it suddenly feels stifling. That feeling lasted for about a week of the lockdown. Now I’ve been focusing on my work. Currently I’m writing for my directorial venture and another project with a friend from the industry. It has been very rewarding, but being self-employed is difficult because it requires self-motivation. So, each day I realise a new facet of my mental strength.

What did you mean by saying: I treat my characters better than myself?

My research, pre-production work and under-production work are usually quite meticulous. That’s the period when the focus on Parvathy takes a backseat. Once the routine of getting up at 4 and shooting till 11 at night for about 45-50 days is over, you are suddenly accountable for a full-focus shift back to yourself. You need to do certain housekeeping for your mind and body, and of late I have found that when creating a character I utilise everything in my power for a great output, but with my own mental or physical health, I have not been that meticulous.

I am unlearning the mindset that working on yourself is vain. When it’s something outside of yourself there is so much more value attached to it. What you put out there is visible and tangible. Somehow, you tend to overlook the progress you make within and the importance of it. 

You are not using the word depression casually as people often do. You’re using it to mean clinical depression?

I only use it to mean clinical depression. Sadness and depression are different. I am still learning what all it entails but I understand what it feels and looks like when somebody says they have anxiety and panic attacks, because I struggle with it myself. I have been clinically diagnosed in the last 5 years.

How come you’re being open about it? That’s unusual in India because of prevailing prejudices and ignorance.

I have been open about it from a very young age. Whenever I felt emotionally low, I used to open up and talk about it with school and college friends. Unfortunately, some people I was close with used to say, “Oh my god, you’re addicted to self-pity. Snap out of it.” That was an issue because for a long time I did try that, you know. For years I thought I was making a big deal out of it, maybe I should just snap out of it. Then I realised I was repressing things, that I end up imploding sooner or later. No one would know what to do with me. So, I learnt to be honest with myself. I sought medical help. I figured ways to write down my feelings and tell people.

As an actress I’m used to people having an opinion on me – I stopped giving a damn a long time ago. And while I do suffer from depression, I’m proud of myself. I’m everything I am today, right now speaking to you in this moment, because of how I’ve survived. And continue to. At some point I switched to the mentality of a survivor rather than someone who is suffering every day. Sometimes it’s every waking minute, and I have to literally say out loud: no no, you’re not giving up. It has been an important journey to constantly unlearn the mentality of victimhood and to remind myself with every tool possible that I have the strength to overcome.

Some people do not like to talk about it. That is okay too, as long as they know there is help when they need it. I talk about it a lot but then I go quiet too. And it boils down to one point, Anna – I have benefited a lot from my loved ones making every effort to understand me, but I never expected that from others. First, it’s none of their concern. Second, they don’t owe me understanding. I owe myself understanding. I’d make the effort to let my closest people know what I’m going through, and if they had shamed me then that would have been another fight to win, yeah.

Who or what helped you realise that it’s okay to seek help, to not see it as self-pity?

A family member I am close to once reached out for help and said, “I don’t think I can do it on my own. I am unable to sleep, I am unable to take care of my mind, I am going out of control. Please take me to a doctor.” I was at that juncture when I was “snapping out of it”. The process of taking him to the doctor, seeing his courage, helped me see that I had been in denial and that I too needed proper care.

Initially it was very difficult to go see a therapist – I was afraid of being judged by a stranger. Another struggle was that I was surrounded by a few people who didn’t know what to do with me unless I was in a state of crisis. I held on to my crisis as an identity for a long time. It was difficult to manoeuvre my way out of that. I am no longer in touch with many people who eventually didn’t know what to do with me because suddenly I seemed more confident, open about my issues, dealing with it on my own.

Also, my panic attacks had started physically manifesting as illnesses, pain or breathlessness. It is typical of me that anything coming in the way of my craft will be immediately taken care of, so my initial reason for seeking help was that I wanted to focus better on work.  Now though, I have reached a point where I consistently work on bettering myself. Period.

It’s been a long, really curvy road. I don’t know where it began to be honest, I’m just thinking about it right now when you’re asking me. And now this interview has become about mental health – very interesting.

I wasn’t expecting it either.

How does one distinguish between sadness versus knowing a problem requires a psychiatrist?

I cannot speak for everyone, but I can tell you how it was for me. When my panic attacks first led to breathlessness, I was taken to hospital and nothing was found to be wrong with my body. The doctor said, this is an anxiety attack. The first time – and this was funny – I was at work, and my director and the rest of the team were like, “Wait a second, are you stressed at work? You seem fine.” I was like, “I thought I was fine too, I don’t know what’s happened.” I really didn’t know what was wrong. It was just years of repressed issues that I had okayed without being okay. Eventually the inability to physically perform, the fatigue, the darkness that would engulf me resulting in not wanting to get out of bed, the fact that despite being a stress eater, I even stopped craving that relief, all this told me something was really wrong. If anyone probed, even with the best of intentions, I used to spiral back into panic.

It took several sessions of therapy and me giving up on it too – because I was too scared, I thought they don’t know me, I can’t even relate to what they’re trying to help me with – before I realised that was just scraping the surface. It took a lot of courage to keep going back.

I realised I needed help when it became a norm to not lift my head off the pillow, not want to take care of myself. At the same time, if a loved one was in need I’d be up and helping them, but coming back to myself would immediately paralyse me. That happened a couple of times. I thought I’ll just be given medication to help me sleep, and I did take medication for a little while. That period turned my entire life, physical well-being and my body’s functioning completely topsy-turvy. So, I wanted something better. Ever since I went to therapy and I was clinically diagnosed, I have been on this path of trying different ways to just stay, not leave. To stay in with myself has been the biggest struggle. Yeah. 

Is it the sensitivity that has come from your own mental health concerns that caused you to issue an apology, a clarification, for using the word bipolar in an interview?

Yeah, it was. I was genuinely apologetic. Bipolar by definition alludes to absolute opposites, but that is not the meaning attached to the word in general parlance these days – the word has become synonymous with the mental health condition. So when somebody who I assume has experience with being bipolar called it out for me, I thought it was important for me to correct myself because I would have wanted that if I was on the other end and felt someone was stigmatising or slighting a condition. Yeah.

People often use words like “schizophrenic” and “Alzheimer’s” casually. Is it lack of sensitivity that we need to personally experience something or see a loved one suffering to become conscious of insensitive language, or is this understandable?

It takes a lot of sensitising in terms of either going through it yourself or someone close to you going through it. For example, I was sensitive to any facet of feminism and aware that I will always be a feminist, because I had personal experiences, but when I met further marginalised people speaking up about their struggles, it took listening to them intently for me to realise that you cannot equate your experience with theirs. You have to listen and understand that they are in pain and it’s not a pain that you have endured. It doesn’t cancel out your journey, but it’s important to know more about how uniquely terrifying each person’s struggle is. 

When it comes to language, we are trying to change words that are used to speak about feminists as well, words that used to be treated as a joke.

Words like feminazi?

Ya, like feminazi, and we would be told, “you’re not a good sport, you should just laugh at it.” It took me a long time to stop encouraging those terms, and to not laugh at sexist jokes even when the majority in the room would. Not participating would be my silent yet powerful way of saying I don’t think that was cool.

When did you first speak about your mental health in public? How did you get to a place where you could do that without worrying that people are judging you?

This is the first time I have spoken at such length. Ever since we formed the Women In Cinema Collective (WCC), fear took a good long vacation because everything was at risk. Well, everything is still at risk, so it gave me that sense of there’s no time like now to just be completely who I am. I started alluding to the episodes I have in certain interviews, when the context asked for it. But in my closest circles, since I’ve never been shamed, it’s still easy for me on a day-to-day basis to speak about my emotions. So that gives me confidence too, to be speaking like this to you. Yeah.

The Government of your home state, Kerala, as far as I can recall, was the first to speak about mental health during the lockdown, domestic violence and alcoholism. Was this surprising or expected?

It was completely expected. There was a lot of faith in our administration and our Health Minister, Shailaja Teacher (K.K. Shailaja), especially because of how she handled both waves of the Nipah virus – the first where I actually was in Calicut, the epicentre of the outbreak (in 2018), and the second was in Ernakulam (in 2019) when the movie Virus was about to release. The way hundreds of people were quarantined promptly (during the second wave) and there were no deaths, shows the focus and the immediate jumping into action that our Government has prioritised when it comes to health crises. I personally thought the first wave of Nipah would end up in a massive epidemic or a pandemic. So, the way they’re hitting it out of the park with COVID-19 is completely expected. Anybody who is pro or against, even the Opposition, would commend their handling of this situation despite the glaring lack of support from the Centre. I am proud of them and support them 100 per cent in this matter. Yeah.

People of Kerala seem to have confidence in K.K. Shailaja and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s handling of the pandemic. This public confidence is missing from the rest of India. Is this a correct assessment?

It is. I’m certain there are glitches here and there, but there’s an earnestness with which the Kerala Government has taken care of the situation, they are constantly at it, they hold regular press conferences. There is also a difference between the language of Kerala’s communication and the communication from other states. Kerala’s ministers and healthcare representatives are not just giving constant updates, they are also invested in boosting our morale. When they come on screen they always say: we will get over this, we are together in this. As a people, we can sense their confidence. This confidence is reflecting in the undeterred spirit of our nurses and doctors as well. The state government’s handling of COVID-19 has everything to do with it. That is definitely missing in how the Centre is handling this crisis.

In the middle of the pandemic came news that Kerala is the only big state in India with an infant mortality rate in single digits. But Kerala is not perfect. How do we guard against pedestalisation of the state because of all the great things it is doing?

It is critical for people to hold the Government accountable at all times. Like I am supporting what the Kerala Government is doing with COVID-19, but through WCC we have constantly sought answers regarding systems in the film fraternity. As citizens, we seek answers to why there is so much domestic violence and alcoholism in Kerala and what the government will do to solve these problems. We will not forget these things once we are done beating COVID-19. That’s something Kerala is always consistent with: the criticism never dies down. And it shouldn’t.

It is important to commend a government when we are benefiting, but whether you support or oppose the party in power, constantly see what area of society needs more work and keep at it. In Kerala, I know people who support the Government but are the most critical. This is missing in the rest of India. It’s difficult for me to have a conversation with a Central Government supporter with whom there cannot be any criticism. That’s a totalitarian leadership and behaviour of followers. Yeah.

Your film Virus shows the Centre pressuring the Kerala Government to view the 2018 Nipah outbreak as an act of bio-warfare but the state insists on investigating further. Seeing how COVID-19 has been communalised in India, what can we learn from that scene in the film?

That scene was vital to show the handling of such a situation, when we already have a certain blatant warfare towards this minority community. When the Tablighi Jamaat scandal came out, there were big debates happening in internal circles, but at no point did anyone I know (in Kerala) focus on a faith or its failings. This is not to say that Kerala is immune to such communalisation or that it is devoid of Islamophobia and the caste system, but that as of now these social ills are kept in check because we can see what’s happening outside – since our social fabric remains fragile, we must continue to stay alert. 

In popular culture you will notice in recent films a more sensitive portrayal of different communities and more inclusion. Malayala thanima (typical Malayali tradition) does not mean Thrissurile oru mana (an upper caste family home in Thrissur) and a main character is the head of that tharavadu (old household), that’s it. For years we had only one narrative while representing Keralatham (the idea of Kerala) or Malayala thanima. Now we get every aspect of different communities and their stories being told as a regular story, not an exceptional story. The ordinariness of each minority is shown in our popular culture a little more, and that has had a lasting impression on people. I hope this continues.

I’m not blind to the extreme cases of biases I witness in my circles despite all this, but this is what’s keeping us afloat, and that scene in Virus had to be there for us to take a page out of it now. It would be really cool for people to watch Virus at this time.

Why is it important for people to see Virus during this pandemic?

Virus gives an insight that no other film on a pandemic can give because it happened for real. The basic medical facts we have shown in the film are real, and it is an affirmation that things can get better if handled correctly. In Calicut, most people who got the Nipah virus got it because they tried helping someone who was already infected, but then it also took the entire population coming together in a systematic way to stop the spread. It shows the power of community spirit. That is the point of Virus, that is a message that needs to be driven into people, and there’s nothing like cinema to drive a point home. 

This interview was first published on Firstpost on May 27, 2020:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/parvathy-interview-on-coping-with-depression-how-proud-she-is-of-kerala-during-the-pandemic-and-why-every-indian-should-see-virus-8415051.html

A Malayalam translation of this interview was published in the July issue of Grihshobha magazine:

REVIEW 619: KOODE

Release date:	Kerala: July 13, 2018. Delhi: July 20, 2018.
Director:	Anjali Menon
Cast: Language:	Prithviraj Sukumaran, Nazriya Nazim Fahadh, Parvathy Thiruvothu, Maala Parvathi, Ranjith Balakrishnan, Atul Kulkarni, Devan, Roshan Mathew, Darshana Rajendran, Santhosh Keezhattoor    Malayalam

“Coach Ashraf was the first person to ever pass the ball to me,” Sophie tells Joshua, on a gray day up in the mountains of southern India. She is a rebel who has been paying a price for her self-respect, and is grabbing a moment of solace here with an old friend.

Joshua is young like her, but his shoulders are slightly hunched under the crushing burden patriarchy places on men. “Actually, I was the one who passed the ball to you,” he corrects her shyly, before acknowledging that the coach had asked him to do so.

A lesser filmmaker may have framed this brief dialogue such that it cries from rooftops, “See this, viewers! See how socially conscious I am!” Producer-director-writer Anjali Menon though leaves us to make of it what we wish. Read it, if you will, as an exchange of inanities between two people hesitantly picking up the frayed threads of a precious relationship snuffed out in its infancy. Or read in it thoughts left unspoken – by a woman remembering a mentor who backed her when she took the reins of life in her hands as a child, and by a man who may still not grasp the magnitude of that moment but is glad he was in it anyway.

Koode uses words sparingly. Menon even cheekily stresses the risks involved in this creative choice during the early banter between Joshua and his sister Jenny, when he laughingly takes a swipe at her incessant chatter and she shoots back: “If even I don’t talk, this will become some kind of award-worthy art film.”

Jenny is what conformists might call “comic relief” in an otherwise intentionally languorous narrative. But to speak in terms of formulae would be a disservice to this lyrical film. Koode is a remake of Sachin Kundalkar’s Marathi venture Happy Journey in which a sister who has barely met her brother while she was alive appears to him after her death. Kundalkar is credited with the story and Menon with the screenplay and dialogues of Koode. In the Malayalam retelling, Joshua is the older sibling who was sent off to work in the Gulf at 15 since he was floundering at school and the family desperately needed cash to treat baby Jenny’s congenital, life-threatening condition.

The film opens with an adult Joshua (Prithviraj Sukumaran) returning home on receiving news of Jenny’s death. From the moment we first meet him, his entire being seems enveloped in a halo of sadness. It soon becomes clear that Joshua has long resented his family for destroying his youth. He is now resigned to a future of loneliness but Jenny (Nazriya Nazim Fahadh) comes back and will have none of that. Joshua is the only one who can see her, and she tries to help him see beyond his fatalism and bitterness. Whenever she is on screen, she lifts his spirits and Koode’s melancholic air.

Parvathy Thiruvothu plays the schoolteacher Sophie, who was kind to Joshua when they were classmates and on whom he had a teenaged crush. In a bow to Happy Journey, the coach they love is played by Atul Kulkarni who was the lead in the Marathi original.

“Koode” means “with” or “in the company of”. It is a word not usually seen on its own. By picking it as the name of her film, Menon therefore seems to be reminding us that solitude is one of life’s many acceptable possibilities and that relationships are worth having not to fulfill social obligations but when they enrich us. The title is perhaps rooted in Gandhi’s favourite hymn Abide With Me, a Christian funeral anthem of sorts, a Malayalam version of which, Koode parkaan, can be heard playing after Jenny’s passing.

So much is said without being said, about fleeting acts of consideration that can alter lives, about how a patriarchy that overtly stifles women also covertly smothers many men, about the consequent silence around male child sexual abuse and the social opprobrium a divorcee in a small town faces, about how financial independence gives women the courage to opt out of suffocating relationships, and about the very human fear that we are or will be forgotten when we are not physically around our loved ones.

Menon does it all in a film that is almost dreamy in its tone, with bursts of energy and sunshine provided by Jenny and sections of the soundtrack. Raghu Dixit’s background score and the songs – by Dixit and by M. Jayachandran – move smoothly from languid to lively, depending on the mood of the narrative. Having listened to the music in a loop since watching Koode, I am not yet sure of its standalone appeal for me independent of the film, but within the landscape of Joshua, Jenny and Sophie’s story, it is a great fit.

The atmospherics of Koode would have been impossible without its spectacular camerawork. Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where it was reportedly shot, are nature’s gift to every gifted cinematographer, but DoP Littil Swayamp serves us beauty even in grubby pictures. From that breath-stopping opening shot of a group of men at an oil refinery to dreary desert sands to a wealth of greenery to the actors’ speaking faces, everything is an opportunity in his hands. He makes particularly good use of repeated aerial shots that, apart from visual magnificence, provide some perspective on the lead trio’s place in the larger scheme of things, which further serves to underline a point Jenny makes about focusing on the here and now since the past is gone and we know not what comes next.

Parvathy has the most challenging role in Koode since she has the least dialogues and the least screen time of the three leads. I felt vaguely dissatisfied with the limited space given to this interesting individual, but the actor makes it work, imbuing Sophie with both a sense of intense dejection and a fire that marks her out as a contrast to Joshua: he is mostly battling inner demons, hers are external.

The writing and Nazriya’s acting often cutesify Jenny, but it is possible to explain this away as the fallout of her being a sickly, much younger, possibly pampered child around whom her whole family’s existence revolved as long as she was around. Though this sort of hyper-bubbly girl is too familiar a sight in commercial Indian cinema, Nazriya’s charm is hard to resist. Besides, Jenny provides a necessary foil to the despondent Joshua.

The fulcrum of Koode of course is the scripting of Joshua and Prithviraj’s brilliance. He turns his eyes into bottomless pools of sorrow while playing this broken man, every line and angle of his physique embodies the pain Joshua carries inside him, and yet whenever he is with Jenny, the actor manages to lighten up and transition into an attractive young man who has not, after all, forgotten how to laugh. It is a pleasure to see this fine artiste so absorbed in a character, especially because Mollywood often taps his stardom in films undeserving of his immense talent.

Of the top-notch supporting cast, Ranjith Balakrishnan stands out for his sympathetic performance as Joshua’s auto mechanic father. I did not quite get the cameo by Sajitha Madathil as a teacher whose initial harshness towards the unwell Jenny is not consistent with her later actions. On the other hand, Devan is cast well in one of the film’s nicest satellite parts, as Jenny’s father who is, to overturn a cliché, the man behind this gutsy woman.

Anjali Menon is best known among serious cinephiles outside Kerala for her direction of the blockbuster Bangalore Days (2014). Critically acclaimed though it was, I confess I am not thoroughly sold on it. Sure I enjoyed it for the most part, but I found Dulquer Salmaan’s briefly stalkerish behaviour and the othering of Nivin Pauly’s girlfriend problematic, as was the faux youthful hipness of some elements in the film. I fell in love with her work actually with Ustad Hotel (2012), which she wrote but did not direct. The trivialisation and othering of DQ’s European girlfriend was troubling there too, but it was a barely-there reference barring which the film was a gem.

Koode’s vastly different storytelling style proves Menon’s versatility. It also tells us that she is a mistress of the unsaid. There are no banner headlines in this film so watch it carefully or you may just miss that hand sliding down a body where it ought not to be, a man in a conservative world reacting without judgment to a younger woman’s sexual curiosity and adventurousness, a girl in a position in which we tend to expect boys in music troupes, or the flash of a realisation that a woman at a steering wheel in a vehicle in which a man is also a passenger is a rare sight in an Indian production.

I might have preferred it if the concluding scenes involving Joshua and Sophie’s stories had completely abjured social conventions or been left to the imagination, but that is a marginal quibble in a film that is, in its entirety, a near spiritual experience. Anjali Menon’s Koode is a sharply observant, occasionally humorous, emotionally stirring piece of cinema.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	2 hours 35 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/koode-movie-review-anjali-menon-weaves-prithviraj-parvathys-brilliance-nazriyas-charm-into-a-mystical-experience-4791031.html

Visuals courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/koodethemovie/