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Release
date:
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June 14,
2019
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Director:
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Khalidh Rahman
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Cast:
Language:
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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
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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): ****
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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130 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
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