Sexy Durga Director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s Unmadiyude Maranam Is Wacky Irreverence In Search Of A Platform
“Thank God”
“Vande Mataram”
In another place,
at another time, say in a Hindi film starring Manoj Kumar, these words might
have been taken at their face value. In India of 2018, in maverick Malayalam
director, certified rebel and avowed atheist Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s latest
film though, in a socio-political scenario where religion and nationalism are
being aggressively stuffed down the throats of the citizenry, I find myself
laughing as they appear on screen right at the start.
“Vande Mataram”
Both expressions
are flashed – separately, in succession – on a black, otherwise blank sheet as
a preface to Sasidharan’s so-far-unreleased Unmadiyude
Maranam (Death of Insane). Coming as they do from an iconoclast, these
seemingly innocuous words take on a whole new meaning that serves as an
indicator of the irreverence to follow. Context, after all, is everything.
Unmadiyude Maranam is set in a dystopian world
where dreams dreamt without permission are declared illegal and anti-national,
and an Emergency-like situation leads to under-the-counter sales of these
forbidden visions. It is not a conventional feature film – it has barely any
dialogues, instead a monologue in Mollywood star Murali Gopy’s voice is
juxtaposed against a montage of seemingly unconnected visuals including scenes
played out by actors, shots of idyllic landscapes and archaeological sites, and
actual archival news footage.
The videos sourced
from news channels include the nationwide anti-rape protests that followed the
2012 Delhi gangrape, the Kiss Of Love campaign in Kerala, sloganeering in
favour of Tamil writer Perumal Murugan, coverage of Gauri Lankesh’s
assassination, and Sasidharan’s own high-profile battle with the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa a year back when his Sexy Durga was dropped from the programme
– along with the Marathi film Nude –
despite being picked for a screening by the festival’s selection committee.
Sasidharan
describes Unmadiyude Maranam as a
very personal reaction to his traumatic experience with Sexy Durga, as a result of which he “was undergoing a kind of
depression”, a feeling “that there is no way out”. This explains the ruminative
tone of Gopy’s narration. The text is purportedly fictional, essay-like
and heavily abstract when heard in isolation and interpreted literally, but
when seen in the context of the visuals, it mirrors today’s India to an
unnerving extent. The film’s clever impertinence lies in the fact that it does
not name any political party or specific ideological group, so if anyone were
to claim that it is a criticism of their particular party or ideology, their
accusation would amount to an admission of guilt.
The choice of
Murali Gopy is interesting, since he is perceived in some quarters as being
pro-RSS/BJP. The fact that his late father, the legendary actor Bharat Gopy, joined
BJP no doubt contributes to this assumption, as does the actor-writer’s gritty 2013
Malayalam film Left Right Left, which
faced heat for exposing the rot in Kerala’s Communist party. Yet, as Khaleej Times’ Deepa Gauri puts it, with
Left Right Left he “annoyed partisan
left and right-wing parties in equal measure”. Besides, he was vocal and unequivocal in his support for Sexy Durga when the BJP government embarked on a witchhunt against the film. (Gopy’s
recurrent good-man-as-victim-of-scheming-woman line, evidenced in Left Right Left and this year’s Kammara Sambhavam, requires a separate discussion.) Zeroing
in on him as the voice of Unmadiyude
Maranam may be Sasidharan’s resistance against the mindless slotting of all
unbracketable individuals as compulsorily “Communist”, “Congressi” or “Sanghi”
in the current public discourse if and when they are critical of one or the
other of these ideological/political streams/organisations.
In short, Unmadiyude Maranam is fascinating,
surreal, frightening, hilariously cheeky, deeply philosophical and political,
and while it will most certainly be labelled artsy by those whose tastes don’t
lie in the direction of experimental cinema, it is hard to pin down in terms of
genre, content or even ideology. It is documentary-like but flirts with
fantasy, it is fantasy that reflects reality only because our current reality
is so bizarre that no writer of the past could have guessed that an imagined
hell would ever become the truth we live in.
It is also,
frankly, uncensorable. Although the news footage used in the film covers episodes
spanning several years and states governed by various parties, the present BJP
government at the Centre is likely to view Unmadiyude
Maranam as being aimed at this establishment, if not in the same way that
they have interpreted any exhortation to “vote for secularism” since 2014 to
mean “vote against BJP” then because Sasidharan’s spirited defence of Sexy Durga (in contrast with the Nude team’s virtual silence at IFFI) embarrassed
the sarkar. In that sense, there is
no point in submitting Unmadiyude Maranam
for Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) clearance.
Not that the film
would stand a chance if another party were heading the Central Government.
India’s prevailing Censor practices and continuum of social conservatism place
curbs on CBFC officials across ideological divides, making it impossible, as of
now, for even a liberal to okay a film such as this that repeatedly uses the
naked human body (all sides displayed) both as a metaphor and in enacted
scenes of harassment and assault. At the very least, massive cuts or
pixellation would be demanded, which would amount to slaughtering the film on
the outside chance that Sasidharan were to agree.
For his part, the
director does not want to waste his time submitting Unmadiyude Maranam to the CBFC, having burnt his fingers severely
with Sexy Durga. His point is not
merely that he sees it as a purposeless exercise since the outcome is
predictable. He admits that if Unmadiyude
Maranam is rejected by the Board “there can be a huge news on that: ‘Sanal’s
fourth film also ended up in a Censor problem’,” which could translate into
audience curiosity, but the lesson Sexy
Durga taught him, he says, is that a controversy diverts attention from the substance of a film.
“In India at least
people could not find the essence of Sexy
Durga and remained stuck on the title,” is his lament. “People know
the film and me only due to the controversy, and what I was trying to convey
was not conveyed at all.” He recalls with regret that at parallel screenings
of Sexy Durga, before and after its
mainstream theatrical release, all viewers’ questions were related to the
brouhaha over it, not the issues it deals with. Contrary to conventional wisdom
in PR circles, Sasidharan feels “the controversy was actually killing the film.” This
attitude reflects his desire for something beyond the spotlight and box-office
returns, a desire to get to people “who I can ignite” to generate a
conversation.
This is why he
wants Unmadiyude Maranam to reach
audiences “without any unwanted noises” so that they “just watch, understand
and discuss it without any kind of burden or baggage”.
How he can make
that happen is the big concern now. Without a CBFC certificate, a theatrical
release is ruled out. The filmmaker’s current predicament arises from knowing that
Unmadiyude Maranam is unlikely to be
showcased even on India’s festival circuit where at least one major fest has
already rejected it.
As permitted by a
provision of the Cinematograph Act 1952, the country’s Central governments
have, over the years, by and large given festivals an exemption from CBFC
clearance for films to be screened at these events. The present government’s
I&B Ministry denied this exemption to Sexy
Durga for Mumbai’s MAMI fest last year. Following the subsequent noisy
imbroglio at IFFI 2017 over Sexy Durga
(changed to S. Durga by then by a
CBFC directive) and Nude, India’s
festivals have become cautious –self censorship by organisers over general
fears of greater government monitoring and mob violence combined specifically with
their awareness of Sasidharan’s already strained relationship with the powers
that be, leaves Unmadiyude Maranam in
the position of being perhaps a domestic festival outcaste.
Festivals abroad
that he has approached so far have found the film too personal or beyond the
understanding of non-Indian viewers. Yet, the personal is most often universal
too, and cultural nuances notwithstanding, Unmadiyude
Maranam has global relevance in an age that has seen the simultaneous rise
of divisive right-wing leaders across the world, from Donald J. Trump in the
far West to Rodrigo Duterte in the far East.
The film was
completed this summer. E-platforms Sasidharan has approached so far have not
bought into the concept either – not surprising since Unmadiyude Maranam is more wacky and wacko than anything these
websites have sourced from India so far. Besides, orthodox voices in the
country have already been raised against uncensored works being available for viewing online.
Be that as it may,
Sasidharan is determined to get Unmadiyude
Maranam to audiences before the 2019 general elections in India, because “I
feel now everything is, like, concentrating towards a kind of Emergency
situation.” He is no longer in a state of despair though, as he was during the Sexy Durga affair. He has almost
finished work on his next film, Chola,
which is unlike all his previous starless projects since it features marquee
names Joju George and Nimisha Sajayan. Once that is done, he intends to shift
his focus back to Unmadiyude Maranam
a.k.a. Death of Insane. “If it is
not in theatres, okay, then let people watch on their own personal
computers,” he says.
The fact that a film
on thought control requires intricate planning to escape the thought
police proves the very point it set out to make. QED.
This
article was published on Firstpost on December
13, 2018:
Related article by
Anna M.M. Vetticad: Sexy Durga or S Durga? How the government’s reaction proves the very point the film makes
Photographs courtesy: Sanal Kumar
Sasidharan
