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 

Crew: Girls just wanna have fun and break the law – Bollywood finally gets it (Review 801)

 

Release date:	March 29, 2024
Director:	Rajesh A. Krishnan
Cast:	Tabu, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Kriti Sanon, Rajesh Sharma, Saswata Chatterjee, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Kapil Sharma, Diljit Dosanjh, Trupti Khamkar
Language:	Hindi

   

Why are women-centric films always about serious issues? Why don’t we get to act in crazy comedies of the kind routinely made for guys? I remember Madhuri Dixit Nene raising these questions in an interview she gave me about 20 years back while I was with The Indian Express. Back then, blue moons would pass between goofy, fun flicks revolving around women, such as Seeta aur Geeta (1972) starring Hema Malini, Khoobsurat (1980) with Rekha, Chaalbaaz (1989) headlined by the great Sridevi, and Dixit’s own Raja (1995). The Hindi film industry’s approach to comedies is still unfair to women, but it has improved in recent years, owing considerably to the producer Rhea Kapoor whose latest screen adventure is Crew, jointly produced by Ektaa Kapoor, directed by Rajesh A. Krishnan, written by Nidhi Mehra and Mehul Suri.     

Starring Tabu, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Kriti Sanon, Crew comes not far behind 2023’s Thank You for Coming! in which Bhumi Pednekar’s character (spoiler alert, hehe) attained sexual nirvana at her own hands after years of trial and error in bed with men. In Crew, Geeta Sethi (Tabu), Jasmine (Kapoor Khan) and Divya Rana (Sanon) have settled for their respective Plan Bs because Plan A has not (or not yet) worked out. They are flight attendants on a sinking ship called Kohinoor Airlines run by the stinking rich and corrupt Vijay Walia. The minimal effort invested in disguising the real-life entities referenced here is just one of the sources of amusement coming at us from all directions in Crew.  

 

Geeta has long wanted to use her PF to start an eatery in Goa with her husband (Kapil Sharma), but Kohinoor is not paying up. Jasmine is waiting for her business idea to find takers. Divya was an academic achiever and ace athlete in school whose actual aim was to be a pilot. As Kohinoor gradually goes under and the friends see their dreams receding further into the distance, they decide to break the law in a bid to improve their bank balances and ultimately, to also get back at the unscrupulous Walia. Their mini scams culminate in one big fat heist.  

  

Crew has no pretensions to being intellectual. The tone is determinedly flip for the most part. To dismiss it as mindless would be wrong though. In a cinematic universe where Dixit Nene’s hope for women is still only being fulfilled in baby steps, Crew’s significance lies in the way it defies the industry’s tradition of equating “women-centric” with “grave” and “weepie”.  

  

Discrimination, harassment and violence are intrinsic to the experience of being female in most cultures, but laughter is one of the tools that helps us survive – and finally, finally, the Hindi film industry seems to be getting it. Crew is part of the emerging trend sparked by this realisation. The bonus here is that, as with other women-led Hindi film comedies so far, the director and writers of Crew too demonstrate that it is possible to elicit laughs without being sexist in the way makers of mass-targeted men-centric comedies usually are.  

 

After years of crass quips about women’s bodies and rape jokes in men-centric comedies, it is a pleasure to see the agency in a film’s humour being handed to its women characters, and to watch these women crack up as they toss double entendre about themselves at each other without trivialising violence or themselves or women at large. When a passenger gets handsy with one of the trio in Crew, his conduct is not humourised. What is humourised is his shock at a woman striking back. And guess what, Dudes Who Write Sexist Comedy? Team Mehra & Suri have written an entire women-centred comedy film without a single wisecrack about the rape of men. 

  

The lesson from Crew for the likes of Indra Kumar (the Masti series) and Sajid Khan (Housefull 2) is this: you can joke about sex without demeaning other genders, without making light of violence, and without lazily aiming at the oppressed and their oppression. 

  

The film is high on energy owing to its unrelenting plot developments and infectious music, in particular the reboot of the blockbuster number Choli ke peeche from Subhash Ghai’s Khalnayak (1993) and Sona kitna sona hai remixed from David Dhawan’s Hero No. 1 (1997). Geeta, Jasmine and Divya are spunky, funny and flawed. Though they have a mountain of troubles on their plates, their ruminative and sorrowful moments are never maudlin.  

 

Crew’s script and craft could have done with some polishing up though. There is, for instance, an awkwardly shot post-interval scene in which the three women hide behind a luggage trolley, and for some seconds, it looks like a decapitated Kapoor Khan’s head is on top of a suitcase. Sanon does not come off much better in that frame. If this was intentional, it would have been a hoot, but it comes across as unwitting. Greater finesse would have made Crew a better film and a different film but as things stand, it is both entertaining and thoughtful, despite its rough edges.  

  

I want to believe that Crew’s and Laapataa Ladies’ simultaneous success at the box office marks an important turning point for the representation of women in mainstream Hindi cinema. For the record, both are very different. Laapataa Ladies is sublime and finessed. Crew is rambunctious (in a good way) but some of the writing also feels hurried. The heist, for instance, is simplistic. What makes it work nevertheless is that the narrative pace and the cast’s conviction leave little time for analysis. Frankly, I have felt no differently about most heist films I have watched. This genre tends to demand a suspension of disbelief. A filmmaker’s challenge is to convince the audience that the film is worth that effort. Krishnan is very much up to the task. 

  

Geeta, Jasmine and Divya get equal treatment and space in Crew’s screenplay. Cinematographer Anuj Rakesh Dhawan has also shot them without celebrating one body over the other, without being sheepish about any one’s girth or complexion, without de-emphasising any one’s age.  

Tabu is now reportedly 52, Kapoor Khan is 43, Sanon is 33. The camera does not make any visible distinction between them. Any concessions made have been made unobtrusively.  

 

Dhawan’s work in Crew, no doubt in keeping with Krishnan’s vision, is a reminder that, as I wrote in The Economic Times in the context of Laapataa Ladies, “‘The male gaze’ is not merely ‘the gaze of a man’. It is the gaze of a man who lacks empathy... Likewise, ‘the female gaze’ is not merely ‘the gaze of a woman’. It is the gaze of a woman who possesses empathy.” Illustrating this premise, the women in Crew are treated as people, not mere bodies. That each in her own way has a fabulous body is a bonus, which too is celebrated unapologetically. 

 

Given the care that has gone into these choices, I do not see why Crew’s soundtrack is dominated by male voices or why the heroines are shown lip syncing to a male singer’s voice in the end.  

 

In an interview she gave me after Veere Di Wedding, Rhea Kapoor had explained why she got Badshah to sing Tareefanfor the central female quartet: “The idea came from this Beyonce-Jay Z video where Beyonce has kind of taken on Jay Z’s mantle and kind of raps for him – there’s something so f*cking empowering about that.” The problem is that a woman singing for a man has been used over time as a comical device in films, so describing the reverse – a man singing for a woman actor – as “empowering” comes from the same subconscious conditioning that has got even progressive women equating the “balls”, not the uterus or vagina, with courage. 

 

This discordant note particularly stands out because Kapoor, Krishnan & Co have got so much else right here. Quite unusually for an overtly commercial film, Crew’s scriptwriters do not view the presence of a male romantic partner as mandatory to complete a woman. The leads don’t measure their self-worth in such terms either. Geeta has a warm relationship with her spouse that is unconventional going by society’s expectations of who ought to be the income provider in a family. Without batting an eyelid, the writers write Jasmine as a single woman, while Divya bumps into an old flame (Diljit Dosanjh).  

 

There is so much that Crew does unobtrusively while doggedly entertaining us, that its politics could easily be underrated. Its attitude to women apart, note how a turbanned Sikh is not only the romantic interest of a glamorous woman, Dhawan’s camerawork and Dosanjh’s vibe in the role purposefully make the man sexy. This is not a lens that usually falls on Sikh men in Hindi cinema who have for decades been positioned variously as boisterous, patriotic, dutiful, loyal, comical, buffoonish, innocent and loveable, but rarely as hotties. Nice touch.  

  

Krishnan’s first film, Lootcase (2020), too dealt with a primary character’s questionable morality and ill-gotten wealth. It was well begun but half done. In Crew, he lives up to the initial promise of a lark right till the end without once treating the audience like idiots or insensitive jerks.  

 

The smart script is elevated by Tabu, Kapoor Khan and Sanon’s crackling chemistry. The casting coup goes well beyond their stardom. The three come across as real-life friends who had a blast while shooting this film. Their enjoyment is contagious and makes for a cracking combination with their natural affinity for comedy, adding yet another feather to Rhea Kapoor’s expanding filmography of resolutely women-centric, resolutely hilarious-not-stupid Hindi cinema.  

      

Rating (out of 5 stars): 3.5   

 

Running time:

120 minutes

 

Visuals courtesy: IMDB 

 

RELATED LINK: Read my column in The Economic Times on Laapataa Ladies and the female gaze published on February 18, 2024

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/et-commentary/engazing-with-empathy-through-the-female-gaze/articleshow/107783299.cms 

 

Amar Singh Chamkila: Brave in its stand on religious despots, lazy when it clubs harassment with fun and equates censorship with all criticism (Review 800)

Release date:	April 12, 2024
Director:	Imtiaz Ali
Cast:	Diljit Dosanjh, Parineeti Chopra, Nisha Bano, Anuraag Arora, Anjum Batra
Language:	Hindi-Punjabi

When a song overlaying a film’s opening credits describes the hero in deliciously mischievous terms – as “sexeela, ttharkeela Chamkila” (sexy, horny Chamkila) – the promise of an unapologetic sense of humour with a distinctive earthy flavour is unmistakable.

 

This lively number lifts the curtain on director Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila, an eponymous biopic of the iconic Dalit folk-pop singer from rural Punjab whose murder in 1988 was never solved. The film platforms career-defining performances by the actor-singer Diljit Dosanjh as Chamkila and Parineeti Chopra as his wife and singing partner, Amarjot Kaur, alongside a fabulous soundtrack combining A.R. Rahman originals and Chamkila’s works. 

 

Delightful though the musical prologue is in many ways, it also briefly signals a troubling element that recurs later in the narrative, by casually clubbing instances of harassment with the amusing albeit crude eroticism that runs through the film. Shots of men and boys watching bathing women without their consent and peeking into rooms where women are changing their clothes roll out on screen in a manner that suggests an equivalence between such male voyeurism and the consensual, clandestine sexual liaisons also depicted during that early audio-visual montage. 

 

This mindless, poorly developed take on Peeping Toms and consent diminishes an otherwise well-crafted, mostly thoughtful, entertaining film on a man whose raunchy music enraged religious bigots and terrorists in Punjab, until he was assassinated at the age of 27. 

 

Too many biopics by filmmakers worldwide are PR exercises for their subjects. Amar Singh Chamkila is not one of those. Imtiaz Ali and his co-writer Sajid Ali along with their editor Aarti Bajaj present Chamkila as an enterprising, canny, courageous, yet sometimes dubious man.

 

Chamkila in this narrative stands up to caste chauvinism, strives hard to rise above his poverty, calls out the hypocrisy of conservatives when confronted about his no-holds-barred compositions, and in the long run, snubs his nose at censorious religious fundamentalists and extremists. The same Chamkila also lies, deceives more than one woman, and rationalises his lies. 

 

Sometimes writers gloss over such discomfiting aspects of a protagonist’s personality or journey in a bid to further a political agenda or to safeguard their financial interests, sometimes they do it to pander to fans or extra-Constitutional censors, very often they do so because it is simply too challenging to write a script that neither canonises nor vilifies an icon but portrays them as is. What sets Amar Singh Chamkila apart from most biopics is that the Alis don’t bury or sidestep the leading man’s flaws. It is what it is. 

 

This is a risk and one that ends up giving the film its layers and credibility. 

 

The script also risks spotlighting pro-Khalistan violence. Hindi films set in 1980s Punjab tend to confine themselves to police atrocities against Sikh civilians, Operation Bluestar and the pogrom that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination in Delhi. This partial picture ultimately does a disservice to the minority group that it seeks to protect. 

 

As I wrote recently in my column in The Economic Times about liberal filmmakers largely avoiding a scrutiny of members of oppressed communities: “The fear is not only that one might be misunderstood, cause offence and hurt, but also that irrespective of the chronicler’s intentions, such stories could be misused by hate-mongers to further demonise an already beleaguered people.” However, “The counter to demonisation is not deification, or whitewashing. The counter is normalisation and unprejudiced truth-telling.” Amar Singh Chamkila provides a much-needed illustration of how this can be done – it recounts a passage from actual history in which members of the Sikh community themselves suffered at the hands of the enemy within, while doing so it does not stereotype Sikhs, it does not over-stress or de-emphasise any character’s religious identity, and it does not tar the entire community with one brush.

 

This, to my mind, is the film’s most noteworthy achievement.  

 

It is because of the gutsy, quality writing in these areas that the Alis’ take on Chamkila’s lyrics is disappointing. The bulk of the songs he’s shown singing with successive women collaborators and, finally, Amarjot, are hilarious in-your-face accounts of sexual encounters in conservative societies. There are endless stories of men lusting after their brothers’ wives and those wives surreptitiously hooking up with their brothers-in-law. I had a good laugh listening to them because of their frankness, their impish tone, the articulation of women’s sexual desires, and the way they blow the lid off the pretence and propriety that our country values above the truth. However, the film also fleetingly refers to songs humourising voyeuristic men. The former are fun, the latter are creepy – if this is indeed Chamkila’s body of work in its entirety, then well, it should not be brushed under the carpet. The issue is that the Alis’ own confused gaze enters the picture here.

 

In the film’s weakest portions, the script conflates Chamkila’s funny, audacious material with lyrics about intrusive, non-consensual, criminal male conduct. Women in rural Punjab are shown celebrating Chamkila through the joyously wicked number Naram Kaalja complete with sexually assertive lyrics and suggestive dance moves. That they would endorse his songs about covert, consensual sex in a society that demands coyness from women is believable, but the script does not stop to ask if they also approve of him making light of unwanted men peering into women’s bedrooms and bathrooms, nor do they touch upon legitimate concerns about such works. 

 

Instead, that task is left to an English-speaking woman journalist in Western clothing, the conceptualisation of whom indicates the writers’ disdainful, uninformed, clichéd definition of feminism. It is even implied that this stereotypical character was an instrument of Chamkila’s jealous rivals.

 

There’s a technique that storytellers employ when they wish to feign neutrality while taking a stand: they depict a confrontation between two people, ensure that the one they are batting for is a sympathetic character, and write more convincing arguments for this person in debates unfolding on screen. The American sitcom Last Man Standing is one of the wiliest examples of this cinematic device. Actor Tim Allen on the show plays a conservative who upholds Republican Party values that his wife (Nancy Travis) opposes. Each time they clash, the writers write weak political arguments into her lines that make his views – and conservatives at large – come off as smarter and more credible than progressives, as exemplified by her woolliness. Last Man Standing does this while appearing to give both of them equal room and strength. It is no coincidence that Allen, who is one of the show’s executive producers, is a Republican Party supporter in real life. 

 

The charmless, confrontational, joyless, jeans-wearing feminist with fuzzy logic using big words like “objectify” in a conversation with a guileless, rustic singer is Amar Singh Chamkila’s Nancy Travis. Chamkila himself is the film’s Tim Allen.  

 

Chamkila and his oeuvre are undoubtedly complicated. By simplistically positing feminists, terrorists and Sikh conservatives on one side, ranged against him, the script loses the opportunity to address certain questions that struck me while watching his female admirers in this film. Did the religious establishment target Chamkila because he wrote of women as sexual beings with wants and needs? Was the patriarchal clergy rattled by his popularity among women and afraid it could spark a female sexual Rennaissance in rural Punjab? 

 

Caste too is not examined with any depth here. Amar Singh Chamkila assumes significance as a rare Hindi film with a Dalit protagonist, but the script does not even look into the possibility that at least some of the resentment towards Chamkila may have come from members of oppressor castes unable to digest the rise of a Dalit. 

 

Multimedia packaging is used throughout to remind us that Chamkila and Amarjot were living breathing creatures who once walked this earth. Scenes with Dosanjh and Chopra sometimes turn grainy, and sometimes transition into or share space with footage of the real Chamkila and Amarjot, interspersed with watercolours, animation, old newspaper clippings, graphic-novel-like illustrations, photos of the actual couple and stills of the stars playing them. This mosaic of images adds to the period feel and gives the film the air of a docudrama. They complement Sylvester Fonseca’s restrained camerawork and production designer Suman Roy Mahapatra’s recreation of 1980s Punjab to make Amar Singh Chamkila a rich and varied visual experience. 

 

Two components of this mix are superfluous. English transliterations – sometimes of Punjabi lyrics, sometimes of Hindi translations of Punjabi lyrics – repeatedly flash on screen. They are terribly distracting. I had to force myself to ignore them so as to catch the English subtitles. And the captions that pop up at regular intervals serve no purpose at all. 

 

Chamkila and Amarjot dominate the plot, but satellite figures too are meticulously characterised. One of my favourite scenes involves Surinder Sonia, the artiste with whom Chamkila performs his first duet. The attitude she throws as a star of the stage in rural Punjab, her contempt for this unknown man, the high ground she takes about his lyrics, and the lightning-speed change of heart when the audience reacts positively to him are captured impeccably by the lovely Nisha Bano. 

 

I wish this film had been as much about Amarjot as it is about Chamkila, but given that she is a supporting character, Chopra invests her everything in the diffident young woman who blossomed on stage. In her hands, Amarjot exudes shyness belying a steely will and an occasional roguish grin. Chopra adapts her body and body language to the role. Most astonishingly, she has also sung for Amarjot in the film, holding her own against her co-star who is a superstar singer. 

 

Dosanjh was born to play Chamkila. He displays incredible range and immaculate timing here. He knows he is likeable and releases that charm in measured doses to jostle with his character’s lowest ebbs, even as he embodies the determination, desperation and savvy that made Chamkila a legend. 

 

Imtiaz Ali’s film, like the man it seeks to immortalise on screen, is a melange of black, white and grey: brave in its stand on religious despots, lazy when it clubs harassment with fun and equates censorship with all criticism. It is also beautifully acted and uses music in the best way a film can, making it a memorable tribute to a folk hero who had so much more to give the world. 

 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 3.5   

 

Running time:

146 minutes

 

Visual courtesy: IMDB 

 

RELATED LINK: Read my column in The Economic Times on minority representation in cinema published on April 13, 2024

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/et-commentary/challenging-stereotypes-a-fresh-perspective-on-minority-representation-in-film/articleshow/109274630.cms

Manjummel Boys: Thinly written, inconsistent but ultimately rewarding survival drama (Review 797)

Release date:	February 22, 2024
Director:	Chidambaram
Cast:	Soubin Shahir, Sreenath Bhasi, Deepak Parambol, Chandu Salimkumar, Khalidh Rahman, Ganapathi S. Poduval, Balu Varghese, Abhiram Radhakrishnan, Arun Kurian, Lal Jr, Vishnu Reghu
Language:	Malayalam with Tamil

 

“Jeevithathil stuck aayitulla paara.” That’s how one of the key players in the new Malayalam film Manjummel Boys, describes a precariously poised, giant boulder that he sees while wandering around Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu with a gaggle of man-children. His words are appropriately poetic and thoughtful for the setting, in a departure from the gang’s unruliness and loudness until then. The contrast is emblematic of the effect that nature can have on even the most restless of humans, and offers an insight into what Manjummel Boys might have been if it had lived up to the potential of its premise all the way. As things stand, this survival thriller cum coming-of-age saga is outstanding in part yet thinly written and inconsistently toned for the most part. 

 

Manjummel Boys features an ensemble of boisterous buddies – all of them men, all barring one of them young, all of them old enough to be deemed terribly immature for their age – in a decade before cellphones and social media had flooded our world. Manjummel is the name of a locality in Kochi with which the ‘boys’ christen themselves. Their wayward existence is disrupted by a tragic turn of events during their hill station sojourn that tests their spirit and their relationships. 

 

The film is written and directed by Chidambaram who notched up a hit with his directorial debut Jan-E-Man. The latter smoothly and effectively combined a sense of humour with grim themes such as depression, separation and death. Manjummel Boys aims at a drastic shift in mood from light-heartedness at first to utter gloom tempered by hope, but without the same finesse.

 

The narrative kicks off by introducing us to the rambunctiousness and camaraderie of these men-who-are-still-boys. The friends are captured making merry at a wedding, engaged in fun and games including a bout of tug of war, hanging out, planning an out-station trip, and at last, actually making that trip. This goes on for what feels like an endless stretch replete with clichés that are rampant in Malayalam male bonding chronicles. In these passages, they shout at rather than speak to each other, noise is used as a substitute for substance and storytelling verve, and precious length that could have been spent on character development is squandered away. 

 

For the record, it is not essential for survival flicks to create character arcs before the high drama of the central plot takes over. The point here is that Chidambaram does spend a lot of time with the ‘boys’ before disaster strikes, but does not make effective use of that period. Later, it becomes clear that their activities in that portion foreshadowed their actions in the second half, and showcasing their layaboutery early on was a way of stressing their strength of character later on. Too bad that this was done through repetitive, formulaic scenes shorn of depth. 

 

There are lots of familiar faces and names in this crowd: Sreenath Bhasi, Soubin Shahir (who is also one of the producers), Deepak Parambol, Ganapathi S. Poduval, Arun Kurian, Balu Varghese and Abhiram Radhakrishnan among them. Half these characters would have been indistinguishable from each other if they weren’t played by recognisable actors.  

 

After much yelling and posing around at scenic spots, towards the end of their stay in Kodaikanal the group decide on a last-minute stop before heading home. Their destination is Devil’s Kitchen a.k.a. Guna Cave, nicknamed after the Tamil cult classic Gunaa (1991) starring Kamal Haasan and Roshni that was shot there. The men continue to act idiotically, but now Chidambaram thankfully also finds space for calm as Shyju Khalid’s camera roams around in awe of the mountains, running its eye over and between rock faces, deep into caves and high above the land, examining the dramatic arrangements of trees and rocks engineered by natural forces. 

 

The tiresome scenes that preceded Manjummel Boys’ arrival at Guna Cave become a distant memory when an accident caused by the men’s irresponsible conduct turns their holiday into a nightmare. The shock of that turning point, the suspense and technical accomplishments of the film from then on – intelligent sound design by Shijin Hutton and Abhishek Nair, and intelligent use of Sushin Shyam’s music complementing the cinematographer’s imaginative exploration of the location – compensate for the continuing limitations in the writing. 

 

In short, Manjummel Boys is an uneven experience. On the one hand, the shooting of the Guna Cave area and the treatment of the twist are impeccable. On the other hand, the scripting continues to be patchy and unsophisticated. The first flashback to the characters’ childhood leading into their  behaviour in desperate circumstances in Kodaikanal is well done. But it gets predictable when it happens again, and then again when their seemingly purposeless shenanigans before the interval come of use in rescue operations. 

 

The last half hour is packed with nail-biting tension despite this. 

 

Manjummel Boys is challenging for another reason. Malayalam and Tamil are fitted naturally into the script, but there were no subtitles played in the hall in Delhi where I watched it. While this could have been the multiplex management’s mess-up (even when producers subtitle their films, theatres in Delhi very often don’t bother to play the subs), a question remains for the makers themselves: since Manjummel Boys’ primary language is Malayalam, why are Malayalam subtitles not embedded in the print itself throughout the Tamil dialogues (in the way they are in one portion depicting characters in Tamil Nadu regaling the visitors from Kerala with lore surrounding Guna Cave, its recent history and mythology)? In its present shape, the film is inaccessible not only to non-Malayalam speakers in that particular hall, it is tough even for Malayalam speakers who do not know Tamil.

 

The Malayalam film industry does not often visit the survival genre, and on those rare outings it has a mixed tracked record. Helen (2019) and Malayankunju (2018) are recent examples that got it right. Like these two, most survival films tend to be intense studies of human nature. They need not be. Manjummel Boys’ problem is that it is not satisfied with action and suspense alone. It wants to be profound but can only partially pull it off. For one, the tribute to Gunaa has not been thought through. If the iconic Tamil film was merely the motivation that spurs the ‘boys’ of Manjummel to visit Guna Cave it would have made sense. However, pointed references are made to Gunaa through song and dialogue that gradually draws a parallel between the pivotal relationship in the earlier film and the willingness of the ‘boys’ here to give up their lives for each other in the end. But Gunaa was not about a healthy love or friendship, it was about unhealthy obsession and delusion. Kamal’s character in that film was mentally unwell, he abducted a woman with whom he believed he had a divine connection, and ultimately preferred death over life without her. To evoke nostalgia for the lovely music of that film is all very well, but the concerted mindless effort to evoke nostalgia for the ‘love’ and ‘sacrifice’ in Gunaa makes Manjummel Boys both intellectually pretentious and intellectually lightweight.

 

Text on screen post-climax reveals that Manjummel Boys is based on the true story of a bravery award winner called Siju David. Knowing that what happened at Guna Cave in Manjummel Boys actually happened in real life adds a layer of chills to the better half of this flawed, partly rewarding film. 

 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.5   

 

Running time:

135 minutes

 

Visual courtesy: IMDB