Movie review - വരത്തൻ

The first question I try to answer before reviewing a movie is why I chose the movie in the first place and in this case 'why this amongst a deluge of Malayalam releases after the real deluge'

A decade ago it took only 35 bucks to get a balcony ticket in Kerala and I have seen many from neighborhood States come over to watch movies. Probably the chairs wouldn't recline but still it was worth it.
Today you spend 10 times that amount for a movie and the only difference being you can recline back to sleep and forth if the movie gets too boring.

So choosing a lousy movie means waste of time, money and digesting the cheap pop corn. These days the paisa-vasool factor comes in first when I pick something. So in this case I hoped the big names in title-credits wouldn't disappoint. The popular reviews too had given a thumbs up with cliche phrases including- strong woman, survivor, abuse, patriarchial fascism etc. So I decided this was the one I will be burning my money on.

The movie is set in the picturesque, hilly locales of central travancore and based on the lives of a agrarian community. The community is largely portrayed as xenophobic, misogynist and largely machoistic. The movie touches on the issues the post-liberalization , middle class , urban generation of Kerala today can identify with.

There has been a generation shift in the way the movies are told today. When cinema shifted from indoors to the rustic countryside a bunch of story tellers brought up in a rural background told us their stories. As the movies shifted to cities the characters too shifted out, but thanks to the effect of Nehruvian socialism we still couldn't stop glorifying the rural India and all the old school morality and fidelity. We had a dark patch in the timeline of Malayalam cinema during the shift through the liberalization of 90s. Characters were reduced to caricatures and so were the shallow ethics.

The current lot of movie makers are more comfortable with their urban upbringing. The present movie reels off from Dubai, from the concrete jungles to picturesque locales of Kerala. The characters today are more comfortable and flexible in their ethics and doesn't mind fiddling with loose morality. If we do a careful study of the body of work of Amal Neerad, we can't help but notice that most of his subjects are based on issues faced by the upper middle class urban youth- ranging from religious radicalization, trafficking, substance abuse to greed and revenge. Even still, the director doesn't dive deeply on the subject and in the end a hero with grey character shades destroys the whole bunch of bad guys.

If you have a look at the present cinema, which I am trying to analyze, we can't miss the fact that the objects used in the movie to sketch the characters are largely inaccessible to the average middle class and are largely removed from their lives. In a larger context the average guy is reminded that he's still in the slums and has a large corner to turn.
Another observation of many reviewers that the movie is about the 'bold-woman' , is very curious. I found the movie is about a average ordinary-Joe transforming himself in to a super human avenger and that too without much logical reason. The problem I find here is reducing the bold-woman into a caricature who's clothed prettily and doesn't mind flaunting her curves. This is a larger problem in every other new age movie where the characters are reduced to caricatures and we can conclude that malayalam cinema hasn't wholly shaken off the demons yet.

The next problem I find is with the politics of the cinema. The young Malayalam film makers, to a larger extent, proudly don their left liberal cards on the lapel. In the present movie there were so ominous mentions on the popular  right wing, patriarchal figures trying to curb the every day freedom. But unfortunately, again, there's no deep thought that has gone into the issues.
Even when the politics takes a left identity, we don't see much of class struggles in the theme. It's where the mainstream left politics of the country, unable to take a stand on neo liberalization is. They have said permanent good bye to class struggles and is more of socialist Democrats in nature.

We see a agrarian society which has lost its economic independence and hence the identity. They see their land and belief system being encroached by the monster which is fondly termed as global village. The film maker prefers sweeping the garbage under the carpet and then elaborate on the stench.
I sign off with a question if it is fair to sketch a whole community as misogynistic?

The film is said to be 'inspired' from a Hollywood flick. Another Amal Neeradh signature