Polandine Patti Episode 20
We continue our discussion of The Sea with the films: Chemeen, Amaram, Moonam Pakkam, Mosayile Kuthira Meenukal, and Akasathinte Niram.
Download Episode Twenty. [https://polandinepatti.toutes-directions.com/PP_Episode_20-2022-08-21_The_Sea_2.mp3]
Episode Twenty Highlights:
Spoiler Alert! We try to remember to alert listeners to spoilers, but just in case, know that we talk about the films in-depth, so be sure to watch them first if you’re concerned about spoilers!
[00:00:30] Katherine notes that we seemed a bit, well, at sea in Episode 19 – for her, she felt she didn’t have a firm grasp of what the sea represented in the films we explored.
[00:00:55] Katherine also points out that Harsha mentioned that none of the filmmakers or writers of the films in Episode 19 were connected to the communities they were set in – so Katherine wonders how faithful the representations were. She felt we did get a glimpse of how people who live on coastal waters work and live. (with some reservations about some of the stereotypes).
[00:02:08] Harsha notes that with older films, sometimes there are technological or stylistic details that are inaccessible to her. She understands that for Chemeen in particular, it represented a big change for Malayalam movies.
[00:02:23] For Harsha, the other movies we talked about are basically fantasies about what people who live by the sea are like.
[00:02:45] In the films we’re exploring today, Harsha feels more of the people’s humanity, as well as seeing how the sea plays a key role in people’s lives.
[00:03:10] When both of us are struggling with the discussion around the films, what is it about the films (and maybe our understanding of them) that causes that?
[00:03:20] Katherine notes that this is the first time she found all the films we’re talking about today with subtitles, and that it’s the first time she’s loved all the films we’re examining. Though she notes she found Moonnam Pakkam on Hotstar with subtitles in Canada, but it doesn’t seem to be there any longer.
[00:03:53] We very often talk about films we don’t like because they do suit a theme we’re exploring. At the same time, we’re trying to cover a cross-section of Malayalam movies, we’re not just looking at films from 2010 onwards that resonated with us. We’re thinking of movies across eras, and perhaps also the way people responded to them and thought about them.
[00:04:32] We sometimes talk about movies (like The Great Father, as an example), and it’s not really an endorsement to go watch them. We do like discussions about films we don’t like, even if we give the occasionally warning about them.
[00:04:57] We don’t want people to think that all Malayalam cinema is good, or that it always has the right perspective. We just want people to know that the cinema comes from a culture and in a lot of ways it’s representative of that culture. Sometimes it has misogynistic and/or casteist views, and we’re always trying to represent that fairly.
[00:05:24] We feel this is important, too, when someone is new to Malayalam cinema – they sometimes try to search out the best, and that’s great, but sometimes the best flies under the radar, and sometimes things that get a lot of attention may not be worth your time to watch them (in our opinion).
[00:06:35] Harsha decided to take a deep dive into the internet talking about RRR (note that we recorded this when RRR frenzy was at its height). The film had incredible reach (even as Harsha recognizes the movie wasn’t made for her). She recalls the time when Magadheera was released, when a show called The Soup would take clips from the film – the craziest moments – making fun of it, but also recognizing how awesome it was.
[00:07:56] A lot of context has gotten lost from the discussions around RRR, including ideas around nationalism and caste. And that’s probably to be expected when you’re watching just one film from an industry.
[00:09::10] This loops back around to our discussions of Malayalam cinema – perhaps we want the fans of these movies who have been getting into them since 2018 or so (when they arrived more frequently on streaming) to understand that maybe what we’re doing is sharing a view for them. They may like what the cinema has to offer, but we can help when you think it’s time to think a little bit deeper about them.
[00:09:38] At the time, Katherine hadn’t watched RRR yet – as Harsha points out, she wanted the hype to die down so she could give it a fair chance. At the same time, it’s interesting for an Indian film to gain this kind of attention.
[00:10:15] The fan space around a film like RRR can be uncomfortable because it’s often very white male centric, with a distinct lack of curiousity about what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes, or flip the perspective and see things from someone else’s point of view. There’s sometimes a distinct lack of empathy, and that’s not how we like to watch movies.
[00:11:20] We are two women talking in a space that is, generally, very male centric. Our aim is to add a different voice and a different perspective.
[00:12:30] Harsha is, however, happy for the buzz around NTR Jr. — she knows the kind of life he’s had, being the son of a mistress, it was nice to see that for him.
[00:12:55] Katherine hopes that the attention on RRR will eventually spark some people to become curious and go further. Just don’t think that RRR represents the entirety of Indian cinema.
[00:13:45} Harsha apologizes to the Telugu speaking listeners.
[00:14:37] We turn to the films about the sea, and remind people there are spoilers.
[00:15:19] The order of films today came from Katherine, and seemed logical to her after watching all the films. We’re starting with the 1991 film Amaram, directed by Bharathan. It’s the first Bharathan film we’ve talked about! Harsha notes we’re also talking about a Padmarajan film in this episode: in her words, “What a treat!”
[00:15:46] Amaram was written by another heavy hitter of Malayalam cinema, Lohithadas. It’s a classic film in the repertoire, and should definitely be watched. It’s about a fisherman who is a father raising a child alone. She’s the apple of his eye.
[00:16:25] He is very focused on her education and wants to make her a doctor. She passes her exams with flying colours, and is on her way to get the education her father wants for her. But her father discovers she’s in love with her childhood friend and neighbour, and when she’s given an ultimatum to choose, she decides to get married. This leads to all kinds of repercussions in the coastal community, between the father and daughter, and between the father and a woman he has a relationship with.
[00:17:42] Katherine loves the film, and notes it’s on YouTube with some funky subtitles [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLpX0uRm1cg] (which are better than no subtitles). She loves it in part because it’s a contrast with the films we watched in Episode 19. You get a firm grasp of the community, and there’s an insistence on the part of Mammootty’s father character that his daughter is not going to be one of the women who take the catch and sells it. She is smart, and he wants better for her, but part of his reasoning is that there’s no doctor in the community.
[00:18:33] It’s often difficult to attract doctors to communities like this (Katherine mentions a couple of Canadian films on that very subject), and it’s also important in this case because the girl’s mother died soon after giving birth, because there wasn’t a doctor to attend to her.
[00:19:05] The film gives an insight into the concerns of the fishing community, but there’s also this idea that one generation wants to work hard in order to educate their children so they’ll have a better life.
[00:19:33] Katherine felt a little frustrated that the daughter chose to throw her opportunity away (at first). The young man she decides to marry pushes back at the idea that she should be educated: isn’t enough that they love each other and they’re together? But in the end, she does go back to school.
[00:20:03] A problem that Harsha always had with the movie is this teenage love aspect. Her father, too, has some odd ideas as well – he tells her if she’s with her college friends, and she sees him and he’s in his work clothes, pretend not to know him. Because he wants her to go beyond, and almost cut her ties with this community.
[00:20:30] That’s unhealthy, and his daughter cries because she wonders if he thinks that if he’s in dirty clothes, would he stop being her father? He wants to keep her in this bubble where she’s well-educated and around people who are well-educated.
[00:20:54] Raghavan is a strong tie for her back to the community, and he is all like, why do you need to be educated? Why do you think you’re better than us because you go to college? He’s like an archetypal teen-aged boyfriend who wants to stay at home and live the same life his parents did, holding back his girlfriend.
[00:21:41] Harsha feels it’s the wrong choice she’s made to marry him, especially as she did so because he emotionally manipulated her. It’s a toxic young love-type situation.
[00:22:01] Remember, too, that she’s probably all of fifteen at this point. It’s not even legal for her to get married. They might have had a religious ceremony, and not a civil one, and she abandons her education because he tells her to.
[00:22:22] Eventually he sends her back, but mostly because her father taunts him, saying he doesn’t have the money for her schooling.
[00:22:50] Katherine loves the film because there are these tensions at play (whether you like them or not or whether you agree with them or not.) This makes you think about these positions. Neither Mammootty’s character nor Ashokan’s character are right, and there’s this poor girl caught in the middle of it.
[00:23:17] When she’s asked what path she wants to take, she says she’ll do whatever her father wants her to. She doesn’t even have the agency to say, “I’m good at all of this, so I will choose this.”
[00:23:38] The way her father is pushing her out of her community has to be very isolating. Imagine what her life is, where she’s going to school, with people who are middle or upper class, you might see how she could feel excluded, and how they might look down on her. Maybe this is why she clings to her boyfriend, because he’s something solid. He’s a peer who understands where she’s from.
[00:24:47] Harsha wishes that her moral dilemma was delved into a little bit more in the film. The film is very much focussed on her father’s sacrifice and the pain of losing his daughter, and even his community, because they’ve turned their backs on him for not blessing the marriage of these two young people who are meant for each other.
[00:25:22] Katherine can see how she might choose the marriage, because it represents stability and a link to the community she’s from that her father is trying to deprive her of.
[00:25:45] Harsha has also thought about the fact that the path her father has set her on is where she becomes a doctor, and then she marries a doctor, but he’d have to be someone from the kind of community she’s from, because India is very classist and very casteist. The family of a middle or upper class doctor is not going to bless the marriage to someone from the fishing community. Her father might not have considered what her adult life would look like, that she might be lonely and she might not find a partner. But she might be, even at her young age, seeing what is ahead of her. But as viewers, we only see what Achutty sees.
[00:26:52] Katherine finds the film profoundly sad in many ways, in part because of some of the things we’ve discussed, but also because the community – and these two families in particular – gets torn apart. There’s also the relationship between Achutty and the aunt in the other family, and that, too, is completely destroyed.
[00:27:18] There’s a little bit of admiration on Achutty’s part for Raghavan. It was clear that that Achutty looked down on Raghavan even before he discovered the relationship with his daughter, for not going to school,
[00:27:45] Despite Achutty’s initial sense of betrayal at the marriage, as time went on, he seemed to cope with it, perhaps thinking that if this is what his daughter really wants, he’ll allow it, and he’s sending her back to school, so that’s also good. There are a lot of emotions happening in a short space of time, and you could see how the families could make amends. In the heat of the moment, people say things they don’t necessarily mean.
[00:28:20] Part of the issue, here, though, is that to prove himself, Raghavan goes out to sea to try to capture a hammerhead shark. Achutty goes out to sea at the same time – at first he seems to be dissing him, saying he’s not good enough to do this, but he ends up kind of grudgingly admiring the fact that he’s more capable of catching this shark than Achutty thought.
[00:28:51] This scene is the thing that causes the biggest rift in the community, when Achutty comes back, and Raghavan does not, and Achutty is accused of killing him.
[00:29:21] Achutty goes back out to sea and finds Raghavan, who lives, but Achutty is so devastated by what he sees as a betrayal by the community, that the last we see of him is that he heads back out to sea, saying that the only thing that has been steady and constant in his life has been the sea.
[00:29:43] Harsha wonders if he was going out to sea to die, or to leave his community? This is a man who is very overtaken with emotion, and he’s just going out to sea to just cope. But the ending is very open, open to a number of invitations. The speech he makes about the sea being his one constant doesn’t sound like the speech someone would make if they were going to die. Harsha points out that earlier in the movie he notes that being out on the open ocean, you can be alone with the sea, talk to the sea, the birds, the wind.
[00:31:18] We think it’s a fair interpretation of the ending that he’s just going out to have a chat with nature, and there have been people who have assumed he’s died at the end of the film, but we really don’t know that.
[00:31:32] Katherine could see him coming back and the community trying to work this out. There are lots of moments in the film where people are heated and angry, and then resolve things once their anger dies down. Not everything that happened can be undone, but there are ways to repair relationships.
[00:32:20] The force in this movie is the immense love he holds for his daughter. It’s hard for Harsha to imagine him leaving her behind, especially when the driving force in the movie is his intense love for his daughter.
[00:32:46] The film opens with a song that immediately establishes the very close bond between father and daughter, where she’s always with him on the boat, even reading while he works. It also foreshadows her relationship with Raghavan, who is in the song, and we see him growing up alongside her. For Katherine, it’s impeccable filmmaking to open in that way and establish the relationship.
[00:33:41] Katherine thinks, especially with the open ending, that some of this is due to the writing, where Bharatan is such a good writer and filmmaker himself that he would allow us this open ending and allow us to interpret things he’s laid out for us.
[00:34:07] For Harsha, the film’s last scene has a tonne of sorrow, and it’s framed in a way that could mean death. This connects to what she thinks about what the sea means in Malayalam cinema. In all of human history, the sea represents the place where the world as you know it ends. When you go out to sea, you’re stepping beyond what your personal history, your family, your community, your society knows to be the world.
[00:34:49] In some ways, the sea can represent death or the beyond. So it makes sense that people might think of it as a death at the end, because in some sense he’s going beyond the end of what people on shore know.
NOTE: Check out the Ala/അല podcast on Rethinking “Keraleeyatha”: Centering Oceanic Histories [https://alablog.in/issues/47/rethinking-keraleeyatha-ocean-history/]
[00:35:08] Also, Malayalam movies of that time often had a sad ending. Like in Kireedam, where someone is taken off to jail, or often had a death of the hero at the end. So it’s both the way the ending has been framed, but it was also the trend in Malayalam cinema of the time.
[00:35:56] It’s a pleasure to watch a film like this several times and look at it form different perspectives. We talk a lot about New Gen films, for good reasons, including the fact that they sparked some really great filmmaking. But Katherine was reminded over the years to not forget the Golden Age films, from the 80s and early 90s. Even if things like patriarchy and misogyny make us angry, there’s often still something thoughtful to take away from them.
[00:36:50] Harsha describes it as a “meaty” film – there’s a lot to think about and a lot to contemplate. And there’s a very sweet father/daughter relationship. It’s a very iconic film, and there are themes and images that resonate in her own life.
[00:37:34] We move on to discuss Moonam Pakkam. It’s a Padmarajan film from 1988. At the time we talked about this, the film was on Hotstar with subtitles, and the print wasn’t bad, but it doesn’t seem to be there anymore.
[00:38:08] Harsha watched it on YouTube, and found it not bad either. It’s still the 80s so we’re not into the strong editing, and some of those things we see in the 90s. Unlike in Amaram, where it was focused on the ocean and the community that lives on the shore, this film pulls back a little bit. These are not fisher-folk – they’re middle-class to upper middle-class people who are living along the South Travencore area. They don’t make a living off they sea – they enjoy the sea recreationally.
[00:38:57] The film also gives us another strong relationship, between a grandfather (played by Thilakan), and a grandson (played by Jayaram) who has just finished his medical studies. There’s also a really lovely song establishing the relationship between the grandfather and grandson.
[00:39:20] The grandson sends a letter to his father saying that he and his friends are going to come to visit. The grandfather is excited, and there’s a whirlwind of preparations to make sure they’re ready for the arrival of the young men.
[00:40:17] There’s almost a kind of female gaze on these young men as we watch them loaf on the beach and frolic in the water in their tiny, tiny underwear.
[00:40:30] Katherine was a little surprised, because films these days tend to be much more modest, and this one is not, though everything about the context is appropriate.
[00:42:48] The film really shows us the sea not as a place of work, but as a place of leisure and pleasure. But there’s also a reminder that even as the sea is a place of enjoyment, it’s also quite dangerous. Jayaram and Rahman’s characters are out swimming, and they get caught by a riptide.
[00:43:31] The title comes from a bit of local folklore – if a body is pulled into the ocean, then it will reappear on the third day.
[00:43:52] The film starts off charming and idyllic, but there’s also a constant thread of death as an undercurrent. The grandfather says several times (about himself and his friends) that they should be dead by now. At one point he even decides to have his will done, and they have a celebration, despite the fact that this is literally planning for what comes after your death.
[00:44:53] The assumption is that you, as the grandfather, will die before your grandson, so you have to make sure he’s taken care of. But it’s the grandson who ends up dying, and the film goes from being joyous and lively to profoundly sad and sorrowful.
[00:43:23] It’s fascinating to watch Thilakan play this grandfather, because he is in complete denial at first – he even has dreams about his grandson swimming back to him. He firmly believes he’s going to come back, and Katherine just found it so heartbreaking.
[00:45:38] In a less skilled director’s hands, the joyful part of this film, the anticipation of someone you’re looking forward to coming, and the liveliness that a house has when you have visitors could be forced, could be said and not shown.
[00:46:36] These characters are not children, so the grandparent can’t really put restrictions on them, but for these guys, there’s a feeling of invincibility about them, because they’re so young and so carefree.
[00:47:05] It’s also classic vacation behaviour in Kerala – you’re in someone else’s home, so someone else will make tea for you. There’s constant eating and tea drinking. For Harsha, the film was very nostalgic, and you could really feel the happiness in this home.
[00:47:42] When the tragedy happens, it’s like everything that was right with this world, the carpet is ripped out from under them, and that’s exactly what Thilakan’s character was experiencing.
[00:47:52] At the moment they realize that Jayaram’s character is not coming back, Ashokan is literally shrieking – it’s very theatrical, and in another film it might not have worked, but here it’s a complete realization of the devastation of this moment. You also feel the guilt of Lopez as the one who survived, but also the incredible generosity of the grandfather towards Lopez in this moment when he’s grieving.
[00:48:46] We see the grandfather going through all of these emotions, all these stages of denial.
[00:48:58] At one point, the grandfather puts a sign up on the beach, warning people about the tides. He’s very resigned about it, thinking the sign will likely fall down, or people will likely ignore it. He’s probably right – the invincibility of youth combined with people going to the beach not even thinking that anything bad could happen.
[00:49:32] The way the film balances its two halves – the joyous first part, with the tragic second part – is really lovely.
[00:49:43] When the grandfather talks to his friend the doctor, he notes that as old people, they’ve experienced a lot of loss, and the young people haven’t, so it’s up to the older generation to show them the way out of it.
[00:50:08] But both Jayaram’s character and his love interest have experienced loss (death for the former, parental divorce for the latter), and as young people, you kind of see their trauma.
[00:50:47] At the end of the day, it’s the grandfather who just cannot find a way out of his grief. For him, his grandson is his only living relative, and he’s his last connection to his family. It’s just so tragic. He’s managed to cope with all the loss in his life, but this loss seems to have broken him.
[00:51:40] Both this and the previous film we talked about end with a main character going out to sea. Here, they’re doing the funeral rites, and he just walks out to sea instead of releasing the vessel.
[00:52:08] The film is so incredibly sad – some of it is in how the film is written and constructed, but Thilakan’s performance brings so much to it. Katherine is also reminded of Ustad Hotel because of the profoundly loving relationship between a grandfather (played by Thilakan) and a grandson.
[00:52:36] Thilakan spent thirty years of his career playing amazing grandfathers, and the characters in both those films are played with a lot of warmth and affection. We both miss him so much as an actor.
[00:53:33] Katherine also finds the connection she’s made with actors like Thilakan so interesting, because she’s coming to the films as an outsider, and they connect to something inside of her. The emotions of a character like the grandfather feel so lived in.
[00:55:24] Jayabharathi plays Jayaram’s mother in the film, and there’s something about her performance that’s very soulful. She’s just accepted that loss is a huge part of her life.
[00:56:31] The impression Harsha has is that this women is so beaten down by loss that she’s afraid to embrace her son too tightly.
[00:56:42] It’s a small role for Jayabharathi, and there’s a lot of back and forth between the grandfather and the doctor – they know they have to call her, but they don’t even know how they begin to tell her what’s happened.
[00:56:59] The only thing she wants to know from her son’s friends is if he ever thought about her or said that he loved her. It’s so profoundly sad. Harsha felt that scene was a hint that this was someone too afraid to even ask her own son if he loved her. We learn so much about her just from these small moments.
[00:57:54] Don’t be put off by us talking about how sad the film is – the sad part is only in the final portion of the film. The majority of it is filled with life and joy. It’s a very joyful movie in a lot of ways.
[00:58:16] It’s also a very realistic film – this is what life is, moments of joy peppered with moments of sorrow. Sometimes you have to learn how to go on, and other times, it’s just so hard to go on.
[00:58:48] Harsha noted that in the end credits there was a separate crew for the underwater scenes. It makes sense you would need someone with expertise shooting underwater, and they seem to have brought someone in from Mumbai to do that.
[00:59:14] There’s a trope called “symbolic serene submersion”, which comes into this movie a lot, where people are under water, and there’s this feeling of escape, and of some sort of peace. Underwater scenes can represent escape, but also a great deal of turmoil that, maybe, we’re trying to escape from.
[00:59:50] The shots might not be technically great, but they suit the film and what it’s trying to convey. But we’re going to see some much better underwater scenes in one of the other movies we’re going to be talking about.
[01:00:03] Harsha is a big fan of underwater scenes, and the trope she just learned about, “symbolic serene submersion”. And it connects us to our next film, Mosayile Kuthira Meenukal, directed by Ajith Pillai.
[01:01:23] This is the only film Ajith Pillai has made, and it’s one of the harder films to find (though you can rent it on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nd7vwM4e7M]). He seems to be working in advertising these days, and we hope he hears this just so we can tell him just how much we both love this film. You MUST go watch this film!
[01:02:06] The title of the film is a tongue-twister, and most people wouldn’t know what it means, but there’s a conversation in the movie that explains it.
[01:02:38] The movie is bifurcated – you start off with the story of Asif Ali’s character, Alex, who is the youngest son of a family where the men are very proud of how many kids they have. He’s the last child in this huge family. His parents die because they had him when they were so old. He’s pretty much a young guy left by himself to figure out the world on his own. He eventually gets into trouble with the law, and goes to jail, where one of his relatives is one of the wardens.
[01:03:34] Alex decides to break out of jail, and at the same time, there’s another prisoner doing the same thing. But then the movie does a complete flip. Asif Ali’s portion is drenched in dark colours, representing the hedonism of his life. But then the film becomes light and airy when we get to Akbar Ali’s story.
[01:04:00] Akbar Ali is played by Sunny Wayne, and as much as Alex has no aim in life, Akbar Ali has one aim: to get back to his home in Lakshadweep. As the film progresses, we find out why it’s so imperative for him to return. As Alex travels with Akbar Ali, he learns the story of this beautiful romance between Akbar Ali, and Isa, played by Swathi Reddy, who is just a delight.
[01:05:01] The film is, essentially, about how Akbar Ali gets to his goal, and how Alex finds his aim in life.
[01:05:12] The film is from 2014, so we’ve got a definite New Gen style. The film is filled with lots of amusing and interesting details, including a reference to the Mohanlal film Season. The film is very deep in its references to Malayalam cinema.
[01:06:04] The desire for the men of the family to prove their virility is represented through a boxing match. Katherine notes that boxing is kind of a pointless activity, but so is proving your virility by having so many children.
[01:06:52] Harsha points out that there’s a certain Lijo Jose Pelissery-ness to the film as well. And the music director of the film’s beautiful music is Prashant Pillai, who works in a lot of LJP’s films.
[01:07:17] We loved Sunny Wayne in this movie, he’s so convincing as a romantic hero. He’s a solid enough actor, but in this film he gets a really meaty role.
[01:07:44] Katherine loves his voice! And she adored this character and his relationship with Isa.
[01:08:00] The escape is through dark tunnels, and then they arrive in the beautiful, light-filled world of Lakshadweep – it’s like a re-birth for both Alex and Akbar Ali.
[01:08:42] There are some specific beliefs about the sea that are tied into this movie, one being that whatever you take from the sea, the sea will take it back. That feeds a through-line in the movie. Isa tells Akbar Ali that whatever you take from the sea, you’ll have to give it back.
[01:09:06] Akbar Ali, in 2022 parlance, is a bit of a simp for Isa. She’s in love with another guy, but Akbar Ali is so willing to do anything she wants so she’ll be happy. Her love interest gets Akbar Ali involved in this illegal business of hunting for whales, which is how he ends up in jail.
[01:10:03] There’s also a complicated Islamic tradition in which a man cannot remarry a woman unless she’s been married to someone else afterwards. Akbar Ali becomes the “middle guy” for Isa to remarry her husband again. That’s why he has to get back to Lakshadweep – to give her “talaak”, ie, to divorce her so she can remarry.
[01:10:28] We see his perception of Isa – he’s profoundly in love with her. It’s about at the interval point where she turns to him and asks him to marry her, and we suddenly think, hey, she’s in love with him, too!
[01:10:54] As Alex tries to piece together the threads of the story, we realize what a loser Isa’s first husband is. The speculation becomes, then, that Akbar Ali knows this, and he deliberately chooses to sell the whale in a place where he will be caught, so that Isa won’t be able to marry her first husband again, or at least not right away.
[01:12:01] Isa is indulged by her father, who was not in support of her marrying the first husband. Isa returns to her family after the divorce, and when the couple is planning to remarry, her father demands a huge maher, which is the bride price, and this is how the selling of the whale connects to it all.
[01:12:39] Adding to this is Deena, who is very cute, often there for comic relief – she ends up being the love interest for Alex. She’s going to Lakshadweep to work for the post office there. She mentions something her mother said – that the greatest purpose in life is to make other people smile, and Alex supports Akbar Ali because he realises that if he can fulfill the things he needs to, he might be able to smile again.
[01:13:17] It’s a very simple message, that we just need to be nice to other people and make them feel happy.
[01:13:32] Except for the ex-husband, Hisham, there are no real bad characters in this movie. There’s nobody with malevolent intentions, and that makes it such an enjoyable watch.
[01:13:47] There are people who are negligent or a little bit self-centred (like Alex), but generally everybody is kind of nice, and it’s shot in this beautiful location.
[01:14:01] Anarkali was another film from around the same time, shot in Lakshadweep, but Katherine found it very stark – a kind of unromantic view of Lakshadweep. But with this film, both of us *so* wanted to go there, to see just how beautiful it is.
[01:14:41] The film also makes you think about this island and how at the mercy of the sea it is. The subtext of the film is about the fragility of that landscape and how it can get taken back into the sea. This plays into the fatalistic view of the people who live along the sea and on the islands – they’re very much at the mercy of the sea.
[01:15:16] That connects to Moonam Pakkam, too, because the only time we see coastal/fisher people in that film is in relation to the local story about a body returning on the third day. The family is desperate to get a search party out, but the people who live and work on this coast are just, you have to wait, the body will wash up. They’re very resigned to this, and in this film we see the same kind of fatalistic view of the environment they live in.
[01:15:45] Akbar Ali says at one point that he hadn’t realized before how beautiful the place they live in is until he saw it through the eyes of a tourist he was guiding. Aside: it’s really hard – almost impossible – to visit Lakshadweep, and also hard to get a license to shoot there.
[01:16:59] There are so many tiny details in the film that really make you connect to the characters, like the seasickness remedy.
[01:17:43] This is a movie, too, where being Muslim is not problematized at all. There’s less of this, maybe, today, but there are times when people have looked at the hijab and felt some kind of civilizational anxiety, because women in Kerala did not wear hijab until the Gulf migration started. Prior to this they wore a thattam, essentially a piece of cloth that sat on your head.
[01:18:32] But for Isa in this film, wearing a hijab is not a problem. She’s shot beautifully, and she’s given the full heroine treatment even though she’s dressed very modestly.
[01:19:00] Katherine points out the misconceptions outsiders can have about Muslim women – note, she says “hijab”, but what she means here is women wearing full burqas.
[01:19:38] The way the two female characters are portrayed is also interesting – for example, Deena is a Christian, and in Malayalam cinema, Christians are much more central characters, and Muslims are much more marginal. Here, Deena is the comic relief while Isa gets the full heroine treatment.
[01:20:14] The hijab and abaya are treated as items of beauty and adornment, much in the way a sari would in other films.
[01:20:23] When Katherine watches this film, she’s often profoundly sad that Ajith Pillai has not made another film, but also grateful that he made this film. As Harsha says, the film is a treasure.
[01:20:42] Katherine notes that we often complain about some of the films we watch, even if they fit a theme we’re exploring, but for the two of us, we are just gushing over this gem of a film.
[01:21:14] Aikbareesa [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_aKObJv_CU], which is the theme of these characters, sung by Preeti Pillai, and directed by her brother Prashant Pillai, is SO beautiful
[01:22:07] After all that gushing, we turn to the final film of our discussion, Akasathinte Niram, directed by Dr. Biju.
[01:22:16] Anyone who has watched a Dr. Biju film knows it is a lot of vibes, not a lot of talking.
[01:22:25] Katherine loves his films, and issues a disclaimer that she is connected to him as an acquaintance on Facebook, and he has generously given her access to some of his films that she otherwise might not have had a chance to see.
[01:22:47] He’s a director that places his films in a lot of festivals, they aren’t generally mainstream commercial films. For Katherine, she thinks you’re either going to get his films, or you’re not. He’s also a director who is interested in issues – like his film with Suraj Venjaramoodu (Names Unknown/Perariyathavar).
[01:23:24] She has heard the phrase “poverty porn” aimed at his films, especially Perariyathavar, but she thinks that’s a little unfair – he is a director who is absolutely interested in issues, and over the years she’s grown to appreciate his films.
[01:23:42] In today’s film, none of the characters has a name. It’s set on Neil Island, part of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, on the eastern side of India. There are parts of Andaman & Nicobar that are forbidden for people to enter, because there are indigenous people there who have not had contact with the outside world.
[01:25:19] In a lot of ways, the Andaman Islands are a liminal space where Indian laws don’t apply in certain parts of the islands.
[01:25:38] As much as the sea is a border, think of these islands as a liminal space between the sea and human society.
[01:25:46] In the film, the island is not named, it’s very isolated, and none of these characters have names. That means we end up with a film that’s kind of a metaphor for human experience in this very isolated nature.
[01:26:11] The story starts with a thief, played by Indrajith, who attempts to rob an elderly man, played by Nedumudi Venu, of the money he has made selling handicrafts in an island market. Indrajith hides in the old man’s boat while the old man is onshore and threatens him with a knife to hand over the money when he returns. The old man instead asks if he can swim, starts the boat, and throws the knife overboard when the startled thief drops it.
[01:26:55] This threatening figure is diminished because the old man is unperturbed.
[01:27:03] The old man takes him back to his island home where he lives with a man who stutters, a young woman who does not speak, and a young boy.
[01:27:13] The thief is very angry and destructive at this turn of events, especially when Amala Paul’s character does not respond to his questions, not realizing she cannot or will not speak. It’s a metaphor for the life he has chosen, which is destructive to everyone around him.
[01:28:02] At one point, a doctor, played by Prithviraj, visits the island and remarks, “Oh, you’ve been captured too.” The thief attempts to escape when he spots a ship from the shore and tries to catch their attention.
[01:28:37] He comes to learn there’s a community for old men who have been abandoned by their family on another part of this island. It allows these men to have a meaningful end of life that they otherwise would not.
[01:29:09] Every time the thief asks the old man why he has been brought to the island, the old man’s response is, “Fate.” He has been brought here to understand his real purpose by fate.
[01:29:25] Harsha didn’t get this movie. She wrote down, “Lots of vibes, sprinkled with Gandhian philosophy,” specifically in regard to how no one in the house responds to the provocations by the thief.
[01:30:15] Katherine feels the story ties to the other topics in this episode because of the thief’s experiences in the isolation of the sea and edge of the known world being a rebirth. It’s not a complicated idea but that gentle philosophy connects with her. She believes Dr. Biju’s work resonates with you or not because it’s not targeted towards a mainstream audience.
[01:31:23] Prithviraj is one of the mainstream stars who has worked with Dr. Biju in Veettilekkulla Vazhi. He works mostly with the peripheral stars of Malayalam cinema like Suraj Venjaramoodu, Nedumudi Venu and Indrajith. He has a specific auteurish language that can be inaccessible.
[01:32:10] The late cinematographer MJ Radhakrishnan worked on a lot of his films and they are gorgeous visually. After his death, his son, Yedhu Radhakrishnan, has taken over as cinematographer for Dr. Biju’s films. He has a crew that he works with consistently who brings a level of quality to his films. Dr. Biju’s son, Govardhan, plays the character of the little boy.
[01:32:50] Harsha remembers a discussion with her dad about the art films he used to watch as a college student and their tropes, which echoes some of the beats of Akashathinte Niram where the thief chooses to remain on the island at the end having been changed by his time on it.
[01:34:19] What did Katherine find most appealing by this film? She think there’s space for films that are quiet, small and ask something different of the viewer. Since she reviews a lot of festival films, she has some appreciation for the cinematic language of those films and appreciates them alongside more mainstream films.
[01:35:32] Katherine admires the conviction of a filmmaker who has decided they will work in this particular space and who surrounds himself with other talented who believe in the same project.
[01:35:47] Harsha quibbles with the Wikipedia summary that states this film is about a man who learns to live in harmony with nature. She thinks the film is about a man who has nowhere to go who finds himself among people who also have nowhere to go.
[01:36:27] The connection to the sea comes in as he ends up physically in the middle of nowhere and in the literal margins of the Indian map with people who are figuratively marginalized.
[01:36:43] He is resentful of life and comes to learn that instead of anger, he can respond to the world with less aggression and learn to go along with its rhythms if his material needs are met.
[01:37:41] Katherine was reminded of the animated film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys. Toys that do not work perfectly learn even if they do not conform to an ideal of a toy, they belong there.
[01:38:43] It reminded Harsha of a commune or kibbutz. The capitalistic system has no use for them anymore and these people are actively taking themselves out of that machine. They value themselves for their inherent humanness whether they’re aged, disabled or have no skills that are valued in the labor market. Is it too utopian?
[01:40:40] The film serves as an invitation to discuss why society discards certain kinds of people. Katherine believes the conversation is important in light of how certain classes of people were abandoned by the system during Covid.
[01:41:29] Charlie is a mainstream film delving into this topic despite being a much brighter film. The theme of people withdrawing from society to heal themselves together is found in many films in the last decade.
[01:42:02] The isolation of the island brings out the true nature of people similar to other works of fiction like Lord of the Flies.
[01:42:43] The thief tries to help the older men in the old age commune garden and he is so violent with the tools, they instruct him to be gentle. That remains the core message of the film and possibly what the Wikipedia entry is referring to. Instead of struggling with life and nature, he learns gentleness in how to relate to them.
[01:43:34] Many religious philosophies, including Indic religions, emphasize the importance of holding yourself in the moment; to not rush or be impatient in your circumstances, rather to take it all in and observe.
[01:44:03] Harsha finds maybe there is a meta-narrative in the film that asks the viewer to learn from the islanders as well. The plot does not need to rush forward and we do not need to be impatient to know its “real” point. It can simply unfold at its own pace and we can learn about the island and inhabitants in its time. We meet the old men and the doctor in its own time.
[01:44:42] Dr. Biju’s mind works in a similar way and his films are in conversation with other films like Lijo Jose Pellissery’s where there’s a lot of action but the character does not change over the story.
[01:45:44] Talking to Katherine has helped Harsha gain an appreciation for this film and this filmmaking style.
[01:46:17] The thief is transformed by very simple experiences in which the other characters do not respond to his anger.
[01:47:12] We covered a lot of ground in this episode and went from feeling uncomfortable with this theme in the previous episodes about the sea to seeing common themes develop and greater ease in understanding how these films are in dialogue with each other and narratives about the physical and metaphorical borders of society.
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