Polandine Patti Episode 21

Polandine Patti Episode 21

We introduce a new theme with a discussion about Historical films with Urumi (dir. Santosh Sivan, 2011) and Swathi Thirunal (dir. Lenin Rajendran, 1987). Download Episode Twenty-One [https://polandinepatti.toutes-directions.com/PP_Episode_21-2022-10-16_Historical_1.mp3]. Episode Twenty-One 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! [00:00:40]  Harsha is keen to start the historical films series.  This was at the time that Ponniyin Selvan was released, and she’s in a space of being very keen to explore Indian history.  She gives a shoutout to the podcast Echoes of India [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcBVsra3A46ojK94XEg5_e6kUNsB3EKuj]. [00:01:02]  Katherine mentions she went to see Ponniyin Selvan in a very crowded theatre.  She notes the issues in Southwestern Ontario where a lot of incidents happen and there’s an unofficial ban on Tamil films.  The screening she went to was at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, under tight security. [00:04:45]  Harsha notes that the film was released pretty much like any other American movie where she lives, and it was nice to be able to go see a movie without any prior planning. [00:05:35]  Katherine has read the book – which she knows is very beloved – and watching the trailer she felt that Mani Ratnam was getting things right.  She felt the respect for the material in the film, even though there were changes made in the course of the adaptation.   [00:07:26]  Both of us were hearing that people would have wanted it as a TV series, but Katherine notes that Mani Ratnam always said it would be two films, so it’s not surprising it ended on a kind of cliffhanger note. [00:08:50]  Harsha notes that those of us who are not Tamil speakers/readers wouldn’t have the same emotional connect.  Bottom line, though, it’s a fun movie. [00:10:00]  Katherine appreciated the care that went into the production, especially the costume and jewellery design [https://www.thevoiceoffashion.com/intersections/film-x-fashion/eka-lakhani-on-dressing-ponniyin-selvan-5243]. [00:10:54]  Harsha notes that Katherine might be falling into the pit of comparing Ponniyin Selvan to RRR – she doesn’t want to do that, but for her, the costume design fell short, with things not being remotely faithful to fashion of the period. [00:11:35]  Harsha hasn’t seen the film, but has seen the songs, and notes that the costumes look more like something you’d find in community theatre.  Which is fine up to a point – but for an audience who also might consume BBC costume dramas, for example, there is a level of detail and tailoring that goes into the outfits.  [00:12:15]  Katherine thought the RRR costumes looked Edwardian, and the film is not set in the Edwardian period.  But the upside is that the film pushed Katherine to do a little more research on costume designing.  One of the videos she watched was about the costume design for Miss Fisher Mysteries [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRrKH-1Oaqs] (which is set in the same period).  She wouldn’t have expected that level of attention to detail, but you could at least look at the kinds of shapes and silhouettes.  But everything about the RRR costumes was some sort of flavour of Edwardian England.  For her, it kept pulling her out of the film. [00:13:42]  For Katherine, it kind of spoiled the experience, and she notes this is a peculiarity for her alone.  Harsha rightly notes that it didn’t ruin the experience for the majority of the audience for this film. [00:13:50]  Katherine doesn’t have high expectations for costuming, but would like to see some kind of minimum standard. [00:13:59]  Katherine also notes that Western actors in Indian films are not usually great actors, and we’ll see that in some of the films we explore.  It’s a reality that you’re not going to attract an A list western actor to an Indian film. [00:14:25]  Harsha says that since the death of Tom Alter there hasn’t been a good white actor to play random colonialists in Indian cinema. [00:14:30]  Katherine notes, though, that Tom Alter grew up in India and spoke impeccable Hindi and had a love for the place so he could bring something to those roles. [00:15:10]  Harsha notes there are some connections between the Ponniyin Selvan costume designer Eka Lakhani and Urumi, our first historical film of this episode (top hint, she was also the costume designer for that film. [00:15:20]  The film involves Vasco da Gama’s initial attempts to gain a foothold in what is now the Malabar region of Kerala, which at that time was divided into two kingdoms, one ruled by the Kolathiri and the other ruled by the Samoothri. [00:15:45]  This has to do with the interactions between Vasco da Gama and the Kolathiri and the Samoothri rulers of Kannur. [00:15:50]  It starts with a young man in present day India who is trying to sell off an ancestral property.to a multi-national mining corporation.  He’s home to take care of the paperwork and get through some red tape.  He gets kidnapped by some insensitively depicted indigenous people -Adivasis – and is told the story of his ancestor who, during the time of Vasco da Gama, was one of the people fighting against the Portuguese incursions into Kerala. [00:16:35]  His ancestor decides he needs to kill Vasco da Gama, and he mounts a rebellion against him. [00:16:45]  Katherine finds it interesting to think back on this film, which was kind of considered as the first Malayalam global film, particularly since in recent years you’ve had this heavy emphasis on Pan-Indian films, which are, generally, these big, blockbuster historical films. [00:17:05]  Here we have a big star cast from across a number of industries, including Arya, Tabu, Vidya Balan, Genelia de Souza, Prabhu Deva.  This was the first time Katherine was seeing something like that, and she thinks they were breaking some ground with this film. [00:17:30]  This was also the first Malayalam film that Katherine saw in a theatre – she watched it without subtitles, but then watched it again with subtitles when the DVD came out.  She hadn’t watched it again until we decided to talk about it for the podcast, and she doesn’t think it aged well.  Harsha agrees, and it surprised her. [00:17:50]  It was hard to find a Malayalam version of the film on streaming, mostly only the Hindi dub was available, so Harsha was watching it in Hindi (after having initially watched it in Malayalam). [00:18:02]  Katherine’s DVD was from Moser Baer, with terrible subtitles and their banner at the bottom of the screen.  They eventually disappeared, probably taking their back catalogue with them. [00:18:20]  Katherine remembers enjoying the film at the time.  She notes, though, that she usually watches films for the podcast a couple of times, but in this case, she just couldn’t go back and watch it again.  For her, some of it involved the camera work, with so many very tight shots, especially of people’s eyes.  We joke about eye acting, but there were these intense close-ups of eyes. [00:18:50]  Harsha kept noticing that Prithviraj’s eyes are not symmetrical.  She thinks, laughingly, that those are not the eyes of a handsome man.  But he’s overall very handsome, so she was confused about the close-ups of his eyes. [00:19:07]  Katherine suggests that the budget for kohl on this film must have been through the roof. [00:19;11]  Katherine notes that there is a gorgeous colour sense at play in the film, perhaps not unexpected of Santosh Sivan – good cinematography, good colour grading palette.  It reminded her of Anandabhadram (which we watched for the supernatural series), which was also directed by Santosh Sivan. [00:19:30]  Harsha was also making comparisons – everything has that slightly damp haziness to it. [00:19:35]  Katherine comments that that is very Santosh Sivan – water, wet, reflective surfaces, mists, haze – those are all his hallmarks.  Even the colour palette, too – the slate greys, saffron and orange, golds. [00:19:51]  Harsha also assumes that this might be because of the dyes that would have been available.  Harsha recalls the research that Eka Lakhani had done on which dyes were available during the 10th century, and on which trade routes, to understand what was available at the time. [00:20:14]  Katherine agrees that this makes sense.  Katherine also comments on the costumes for the Portuguese, thinking they might not have been 100% accurate, but they were still close enough. [00:20:35]  Once again, Harsha finds all the wigs to be a problem.  We complain so much about wigs in historical dramas, and Harsha feels that Prithviraj has the worst problem with wigs.  Who is his wig man?  His hair looks so ratty.  Prithviraj is a handsome man, that’s not the issue here.  Harsha compares it to the elaborate hair that was going on in Ponniyin Selvan — the hair was so well done, especially for Vikram.  This is especially remarkable because normally men’s hair doesn’t get the attention that women’s hair does, especially in Malayalam cinema. [00:21:30]  Harsha mentions the “Siddique Wig Quality Chart”, Katherine’s theory (about how you can tell the quality of the movie by the quality of Sidiqque’s wig). [00:21:44]  Katherine notes that some of this comes down to money, and wonders if things like the tight shots she found dizzying, especially in the action scenes, were because they couldn’t afford to do really good action.  But you do what you have to do to make your money go as far as you need it to go. [00:22:05]  Katherine had also forgotten that there were a LOT of slo-mo shots. [00:22:11]  Harsha’s assumption was that it was to show the urumi moving, especially since this is the central motif of this movie.  It *is* very beautiful to watch the urumi being used. [00:22:30]  It had been a while since Harsha had seen the film, but watching it again reminded her that she didn’t like Genelia’s acting in this film.  She does a lot of what Harsha describes as “Telugu/Tamil Manic Pixie Girl” acting in the movie, in the beginning where she’s playing a character in contemporary Kerala where she is intellectually not fully an adult versus her character in the past where she’s just making a pouty face when she’s supposed to be ferocious. [00:23:01]  Katherine notes that it’s a shame, because technically that is supposed to be a good character, a woman warrior, but she just isn’t able to give the weight to that role. [00:23:16]  Urumi was the film that had Katherine looking at Jagathy Sreekumar and realizing he was much more than a comedy uncle.   That was the moment when she started searching out more films that just didn’t only slot him into the comedy sidekick roles. [00:23:35]  Harsha notes that in Urumi, he plays a kind of prime minister or privy council member or adviser to the Kolathiri king.  He’s an effeminiate, gay-coded man, using some of his semi-feminine wiles with the king, making paan for him and things like that which would be considered a typical feminine role.  He’s a supporter of Da Gama and wants more Portuguese interference into the kingdom. [00:24:05]  Katherine has us take a step back, noting that in the conversation she and Harsha had prior to recording, she approaches the films as an outsider.  She did a degree in history in university, and one of the courses she took was an overview of the “great explorers”.  So she learned this history, but from a Western colonizer perspective.  Urumi was probably the first time that she saw that she had to take a step back and question the POV of that history. [00:25:31]  Katherine feels the film was consciously trying to reframe that history, using the idea of globalisation as the new colonisation.  The films in this series have her thinking about what she knows, what she needs to think about, and what she clearly doesn’t know. [00:26:12]  Harsha’s primary school education was mostly in Indian schools, and what she remembers most from her books was that Vasco Da Gama came to India for pepper.  But in her Malayali culture, there are songs mocking Vasco Da Gama.  He’s a kind of hoity-toity clownish figure in Malayalam culture in general.  So she did know watching Urumi that he wasn’t a “good guy” from a Malayali perspective.  What she got was a kind of nuance: you always hear about all these small kingdoms fighting each other and jostling for power, and that created tensions that Europeans could exploit to their own advantage [00:27:11]  Harsha did read something that suggested that the way things happened in the film is not actually what happened, because the Samoothiri  was the one who was very against the Portuguese and the Kolathiri was actually quite favourable to them. And there couldn’t have been much of a dispute between the Arakkal family (the only ruling Muslim family of Kerala) and the Chirakkal family because the Arakkal Beevis were descended from the Chirakkal house, and they always maintained good relations.  So there are a lot of nuances to this story, but the film gives you the general gist that it’s because of all this jostling for power among these groups that the Portuguese got the chance to come in and take over. [00:28:11]  Katherine wishes that Da Gama had not been portrayed as a giggling loon (though as an afterthought,given what Harsha has said about how he’s perceived in Malayalam culture, maybe that makes sense).  From what she’s read he was incredibly ruthless, and she would have no qualms about that depiction at all.  She notes that the opening scene, where there is a mass killing, that is actually recorded history. Also where he has them slice off the ears of the messenger and sew a dog’s ears on is, perhaps, an apocryphal story, but given how ruthless Da Gama was supposed to have been, it certainly could have happened.  She did set some of the portrayal stuff aside because it always comes down to the quality of the (Western) actors, and she’s fine with the reframing of history to show how ruthless these people were coming in to, essentially, colonise. [00:29:33]  Harsha notes that even if the dog story is apocryphal, there is recorded history of maiming and injuring people for many colonizers, so it’s clear that some of this is taken from the general history of European colonisation. [00:30:23]  Katherine says that we need to keep challenging the notions of who is “civilized” and who is “uncivilized”. [00:30:25]  Harsh feels that Prithviraj did a solid job in a role that is very much up his alley.  It’s at the beginning and the end where he’s playing a “casual young man of today” – we’ve discussed this, he as an actor is not very good with “lightness”.  So here he has to play a light character and make funny faces because he’s been kidnapped by scary Adivasis and that is not as convincing.  But what he does in the proper 1400s chunk in this movie he’s very much playing this fierce warrior who’s rescuing girls, beating up Europeans, and putting people in their place.  That is a very satisfying character.  Chirakkal Kelu did exist in the past, though the script writer has taken a lot of liberties with his story — why he wants to kill Da Gama, and why he died in the first place. [00:31:40] Harsha sees Prabhu Deva as probably the most solid core of the movie.  He’s very good in the book-end portions set in the contemporary era and also in the parts set in the past.  You get the benefit of having a very experienced hand playing his character because he’s kind of a sidekick, but brings a lot of pathos to the role as well. [00:32:02]  Katherine notes that Prabhu Deva brings what Prithviraj can’t bring because he’s playing this solid, solemn warrior.  So it’s nice to play off each other with what’s going on. [00:32:20]  Harsha thinks Prithviraj is very fearless warrior, but he’s not swashbuckling.  Prabhu Deva gets to do a little more of light swashbuckling.  And he gets to flirt with the girls, especially Nithya Menen’s character.  Harsha loves their portions of the film because they’re both very into each other and he’s just like, “This girl is into me, too?” in the parts where she’s flirting with him. [00:32:40]  Nithya Menen plays a noblewoman, a princess, the Kolathiri’s daughter.  She decides she’s taken a fancy to these two guys who rescue her, but especially Prabhu Deva.  He plays a Muslim character, who is not as high caste as Prithviraj’s character, but she has her heart set on him. [00:33:10]  Katherine notes that the relationship is very cute, and Harsha mentions the “Chimmi Chimmi” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGT0XYc0CCA] song, which is also very cute. [00:33:13]  Katherine notes that the songs are wonderful, and they did hold up for her (where the film did not).  [00:33:25]  Harsha thinks the films is still a solid watch, but what it represented in 2011 was very much of its time.  It was definitely an event to go watch this movie, and to have all these pan-Indian stars come together to make a movie that is fundamentally of Malayalam cinema. [00:33:50]  Harsha notes, too, that this represented the dawn of August Cinemas. [00:33:54]  The other unfortunate thing, for Katherine, was that at the beginning of the film, in the part where Arya’s character kidnaps Prithviraj, they couldn’t get Arya to do the dubbing, so Prithviraj dubbed them, and that gives you Prithviraj and Prithviraj in terms of voices.  But she feels they were doing the best they could with the money they had at a time when nobody was thinking this far into doing a film with this cast from across Indian industries. [00:34:35]  Katherine is reminded that they had big plans for the film.  They were going to do an English language version.  Nothing ever came of it in the end, but they did have big plans to go further with the film at the time. [00:34:48]  What Harsha read about that on the Wikipedia page was that it was going to be a Da Gama biopic.  Katherine thinks that could have been unfortunate, depending on how they did it. [00:34:57]  Katherine notes, too, that there was a plagiarism suit for one of the songs, “Aaro Nee Aaro”, filed by Canadian musician Loreena Mckennitt.  A judge prevented the makers from releasing the film’s music in English, Hindi, and Tamil. [0036:50]  Katherine wonders if that influenced what they could do with the film, taking the air out of the balloon they were trying to lift in terms of reaching a wider audience.  She reminds us they were trying to do something unique at the time in Malayalam cinema, and more than a decade later, those kinds of things are more successful. [00:37:20]  Harsha believes that the role Malayalam cinema is playing today in Indian cinema was the vision Prithviraj had ten or fifteen years ago and what he was talking about back then.  Unfortunately, partly because of the decline of Hindi cinema and what it is bringing to the audience, Malayalam cinema found a void to step into. [00:37:50]  It’s not just because Hindi cinema has, fundamentally, a lack of fresh talent, or that the families have a monopoly on star power in the industry.  It’s also because of the government in India right now having a boot on Hindi cinema’s neck, so they’re not able to do interesting things they way that Malayalam cinema is allowed to do partly because it has a state government that doesn’t interfere as much. [00:38:30]  In a lot of ways, Kerala and Tamil Nadu get the brunt of national Hindutva anger about the kind of things in Kerala and Tamil Nadu being a bit independent from the Modi government.  They’re able to keep doing these movies that aren’t influenced as much by the government. [00:38:54]  Harsha points to an interesting article in the Washington Post about how much the Modi government has been interfering in Bollywood.   (We’d link to it, but it’s paywalled). [00:39:15] Katherine brings things back to Prithviraj who has, for years, said that Malayalam cinema deserves a wider audience.  As Harsha notes, Mollywood has the content for it, but it’s been hard for people to access it.  The last few years, though, have proven Prithviraj right.  The minute people started being able to access more movies on streaming with subtitles, the fans just started coming in. [00:40:00]  Now it’s almost a cliché to say that Malayalam cinema is the best in India – Harsha feels it’s the cynical Malayalee in her that feels like they’re just saying what everyone has been saying, being just a bandwagon jumper. [00:40:15]  Katherine notes we’re seeing this not only in Malayalam cinema, it’s also happening with Tamil and Kannada cinema as well.  Kannada has had a kind of root of very good films and filmmakers, but they never seem to have enough of it.  [00:40:49]  Kannada cinema for the longest time was kind of the ugly step-child amongst the other South Indian industries.  Tamil and Telugu could always say, “We have big budgets and big fan bases,” and Malayalam cinema could say, “We have the content,” but Kannada cinema didn’t quite have an identity amongst those three.  Now it’s got KGF, it’s got Kantara, it’s definitely developing a stronger identity than it had in the past. [00:41:15]  Actually, a lot of people who are not native Kannadigas, we’re having a lot of Tulu speaking actors, people from the Bunt community who are becoming Kannada stars. [00:41:33]  It’s interesting to think about how Karnatika itself is divided  linguistically between Kannada, Konkoni, Tulu, and some of these smaller languages that exist in that state.  Harsha has felt that is part of the reason  Kannada cinema has had a hard time dominating.   [00:41:50]  When Katherine thinks of the good Kannada films she’s seen, a lot of them tend to be art house films that would have gone to festivals.  Harsha notes that Mani Ratam’s debut film Pallavi Anu Pallavi is the only Kannada movie she can think of.  Katherine saw a film called The Turtle (she couldn’t recall the title in Kannada, but it was the film Koormavatara, directed by the pioneering parallel cinema director Girish Kasaravalli).  So Katherine knew there were good films being made there, and the potential for more, but she didn’t expect to see the growth in the Kannada industry that has happened in the last few years. [00:42:25]  Looping back around to historicals:  historical and period films allow people to reclaim their history, and that’s part of what they’re doing in all of this storytelling, in these films that we’re starting to see throughout all of these industries.  It’s a good time for the, especially, because there are now budgets for them, and there are technological advances which means the films look much better, so maybe it’s not surprising that we have this confluence of all of these things happening and we’re seeing a bunch of great big period/historical films. [00:43:04]  Harsha notes that specifically a lot of this is happening in the south because what’s happening in Bollywood is Akshay Kumar is making a lot of historicals and they’re not great.  They have a very firm point of view, and it’s not necessarily one that’s interested in entertaining so much as inspiring with jingoism. [00:43:28]  We are getting a lot of historical films, but there’s definitely a divide between ones that are becoming a hit with people, versus the ones that are not and are there to serve an agenda.  RRR does a little bit of both. [00:43:48]  Katherine mentions Asim Burney from the Khandaan Podcast [https://www.khandaanpodcast.com/], who coined the term “jingoricals”.  Both of us think it’s funny, but also an apt description. [00:44:05]  Katherine was struck by the fact that those films are not doing well.  The last one Harsha can think of is the Mission Mangal movie that Akshay Kumar did, and that was actually a genuinely good movie and had a good cast.  But there’s a joke that people in India are now afraid of doing anything great or admirable, because they’re afraid that Akshay Kumar is going to make a movie about it. [00:44:35]  In some ways it’s really sad, but on the other hand, we now have other industries to go and enjoy.  Katherine reminds us that she got into Malayalam movies because of Bollywood, and she has some very great affection in particular for some of the older masala movies.  So it is sad to see this happening and to see history represented in ways that can be troubling. [00:45:01]  Even people whose allegiances might be more towards the BJP or a right wing government are picking up on the inherent falseness in some of these movies, that they’re not there to entertain them, they’re there to make them feel certain ways that are meant to serve political power.  That’s where this kind of interference really goes wrong. [00:45:29]  Katherine invites us to turn to the second film we’re talking about in this episode, which is Swathi Thirunal from 1987.  It’s about the Travancore king, so we’re going from northern Kerala all the way to southern Kerala, and we’re going from the 1400s to the 1800s. [00:45:48]  Swathi Thirunal was one of the kings of Travencore, who was also a big fan of the arts.  He was very into classical music and classical dance, and he was supposedly one of the people who was influential in Mohiniyattam being the current art form that it is.  Check out the blog Cinema Nritya [https://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.com/] Gharana which is a fan of Indian cinema writing about classical dance in cinema.  She does a really good job talking about Swathi Thirunal [https://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.com/2011/10/classical-dances-from-film-swathi.html] specifically. [00:046:25]  Swathi Thirunal was also a reformer.  He established libraries in Thiruvananthapuram, he established English medicine – still today in Kerala allopathic medicine is called “English medicine”, because it’s the English doctors who first started administering it.  But Swathi Thirunal also died very young, in his thirties.  He was a pivotal figure in keeping the kingdom of Travancore a British protectorate, rather than become a full colony the way that the rest of India did. [00:47:00]  If you look at a map of British rule of India, you’ll see all of it British colonies up to Malabar, which is where the Samoothri and the Kolathiri ruled.  Those two regions became Malabar, and then there is the kingdom of Kochi and the kingdom of Travancore that remained independent but as British protectorates. [00:47:25]  The movie is heavily loaded with music and dancing so literally every five minutes there’s a song break.  Often it’s live performances so it’s not like there’s dancing around a tree or anything.  The film revolves around his couple of decades of rule where he surrounds himself with his prime minister, his queen (who is not his wife, but his aunt), and his wife.  He’s very in love with his wife at first, but then he takes a mistress who is a dancer, and there’s conflict between himself and the queen that leads to his death (because he’s heartbroken, though Harsha notes the film doesn’t really go into to why/how he died). [00:48:03]  Katherine says that this is a film she watched without subtitles (as she occasionally does), and for her the fact that the film was heavily music and dance was a plus.  She felt the print of the film (on Hotstar) was kind of dreadful, but that you could still see that there was some good filmmaking going on.  The cinematography is really lovely and she can only imagine what it would have looked like in a good print. [00:48:31]  The film was also Katherine’s first exposure to the kingdom of Travancore and this figure who she knew nothing about.  She feels he’s a figure she should know more about – everything she’s read so far emphasizes his interest in and support of the arts. [00:48:50]  There’s a point in the film where he’s talking with someone from the British East India Company.  They want him to get rid of some of the musicians and artists from his court for political purposes.  He doesn’t want to do it because he sees them only as artists and wants what they can bring in terms of their art to his kingdom. [00:49:10] There’s a whole plot line in the movie where the Resident (the person Katherine was referring to), the representative of the British East India Company, is asking for reports on how the treasury is spending its money.  The King, Swathi Thirunal, is spending a lot of money on his artists, so there’s some conflict where the King refuses to give a report to the British East India Company.  But his aunt, the Queen, is advising him not to fight with the British, because the British East India Company has basically taken over most of India, and they could at any time take over Travancore because they have so much debt towards the East India Company. [00:49:58]   The King of Travancore is the servant of Sri Padmanabha, but at some point he makes a biting comment to his aunt who is trying to get him to make peace with the East India Company and he says that he’s become the servant of the East India Company and not of Sri Padmanabha. [00:50:18]  It’s not like anyone is plotting, but there are political machinations happening.  It’s just that his aunt, who was regent for a very long time before he achieved majority, has a point of view about how she can maintain her relationship with the British.  The King, however, does not want to give an inch with them. [00:50:42]  Katherine notes that in recent years, people have been taking another look at the British East India Company and what they did in India.  William Dalrymple, for example, has written a book called The Anarchy:  The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, which is more honest in its perceptions of what the East India Company did and what it was trying to do (along with the French and the Dutch). [00:51:10]  As a result, Katherine sees the film as another chance to look at the Kingdom of Travancore from the Keralam/India perspective, rather than from the perspective of the colonizers.  We in the west have to be constantly challenging these narratives that see colonization as good (because it was only good for the colonizers). [00:51:45]  Katherine was disappointed that she couldn’t find her copy of The Ivory Throne by Manu S. Pillai, one of the people doing a lot of writing on the history (and also check out his work on Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvxUjqTtUgI&list=PLMeWtd_NWxObOwpXl1fmdPFH3QZE8edV-]).  Katherine notes the film rights to the book were purchased (by Shobu Yarlagadda, who produced the Baahubali franchise). She’s curious to see what gets made from it, and she’d love to know more about Sethu Lakshmi Bayi and Sethu Pavathi Payi (who were adopted into the Travancore Royal Family). [00:52:15]  Swathi Thirunal is still a very beloved figure, especially in Trivandrum, where many things are named after him (and also after various members of the Travancore Royal Family).  They’re considered revolutionary in their approaches  to public services to citizens, and a lot of Kerala government’s post-1950 commitment to education and health care, a lot of it is supposed to have stemmed from the commitments the royal family ;made in the first place.  That and typically it’s the royal family that gets a lot of credit, as well as missionaries doing a lot of work, both of those play a role eventually in what the Kerala government is providing, and that’s one of the reasons why Kerala has such a high quality of life [00:53:12]  In this movie they make the matrilineal system of inheritance that exists in Travancore, in Kochi, in Malabar, much clearer.  Harsha thinks that many Malayalam filmmakers are hesitant to show how matrilineal systems look, because you inherit from your mother and not from your father.  So, in Urumi, it makes no sense how the king’s son is the one who wants to inherit everything.  There would be no way – it would be his nephew who would become king instead of the son. [00:53:50]  So, this movie shows matrilineal systems of inheritance more clearly than a lot of other historical Malayalam movies, where there’s almost an attempt in some ways to cover up how matrilineal systems work, either because it’s confusing, or as part of Kerala’s throwing off of caste systems, they also threw away matrilineality. [00:54:13]  Matrilineality is still much stronger in Travancore than it is in the rest of Kerala.  You see a lot of that in this movie – his mother is the Queen, and she’s actually the ruler as well.  She’s the reigning queen when he’s born because there’s no man to inherit at that time.  When she gives birth to him he immediately becomes a king.  But he can’t rule when he’s a baby, so she rules on his behalf.  When she dies, his aunt becomes the queen, and she rules on his behalf. [00:54:45]  In that way, it’s brothers and sisters who become kings and queens, rather than husbands and wives. [00:54:48]  Katherine managed to understand this, but she also notes she’s done a lot more reading over the years.  But it’s always helpful to outsiders to have Harsha explain these things on the podcast.  In exploring things on the podcast, we also want to encourage people to do their own exploration and look deeper. [00:55:27]  Something Harsha hadn’t realized until watching the movie was that two very famous songs that many Malayalees will know – Omanathinkal Kidavo  (which is a lullaby and was written for Swathi Thirunal) and the song that a lover sings, Praananaathan (also written for Swathi Thirunal by his wife) – she didn’t realize that both of these two famous compositions were written for this figure.  The movie does show you that – that the two compositions were about him. [00:56:05]  There are various scenes in the movie where you see Carnatic musicians dueling Hindustani musicians.  The movie is very heavy with classical compositions, if people are interested in that sort of thing. [00:57:02]  Harsha notes that the ages are very weird in the movie.  He’s depicted at sixteen looking fully like a forty-year-old man.  And Srividya who plays his aunt is much younger than the actor playing Swathi Thirunal, Anant Nag.  So she wasn’t sure why Anant Nag was the actor chosen to play this figure.  [00:57:24]  Katherine notes that he’s a Kannada actor – and Harsha adds that yes, he’s not a Malayalee and he didn’t dub for himself in this movie.  Neither of us knows why he was chosen, and Harsha notes there were probably quite a number of Malayalee actors who could have played the role.  He’s very tall and skinny, which is the way Swathi Thirunal has been depicted in paintings, so maybe that’s what they were going for. [00:58:00]  The film is directed by Lenin Rajendran who, even for Malayalam cinema, was kind of an art film director, and you can see it in this film.  It wasn’t meant for a big, popular audience.  It was definitely meant for the art film circuit. [00:58:42]  Katherine watched it without subtitles and even so, found it compelling and found the music really lovely.  But it’s a reminder that things that don’t get subtitled are aimed at an audience that doesn’t include her. [00:58:52]  Harsha notes that with this film, we’re very much in the weeds of Malayalam cinema.  If you’ve seen a bunch of Mohanlal films from the 90s where there’s a lot of classical and semi-classical music and dance –  this is where a lot of that history is drawing from, because Mohanlal himself is a little like Swathi Thirunal, he loves classical architecture, he loves classical music, he loves classical dance.  He is drawing from this 19th century tradition of courtly dancing music. [00:59:36] This represents a lot of what South Indians are proud of, especially in terms of Carnatic music and various classical dances – even a younger generation is being trained in these dances from Swathi Thirunal and that era of rediscovering Indian arts. [01:00:00]  It’s not the same now.  There’s not as much classical influence in the day-to-day person’s life. [01:00:19]  Even in contemporary music, you may still find people saying, “Oh, I used this raga as the base for this,” so you still get that, and Katherine’s perception is she sees less of that in North India these days. [01:00:58]  Harsha notes that in all the singing contests on Malayalam TV channels, you’ll see that before somebody starts singing, they’ll say, “The song is in this raga and this tala,” which is pretty much the basic building blocks of Carnatic music.  She thinks that’s less common in the Bombay based music shows. [01:01:21]  Katherine feels she’s getting more depth and learning out of this film that we chose to watch for the podcast. [01:01:32]  Harsha suggests we think about this as background research for the Malayalam cinema watcher. [01:01:41]  Harsha doesn’t have a lot to say about the performances in the movie.  Everybody kind of did what they were supposed to do.  Innocent is in the movie, but he gets barely any attention in his scenes.  Babu Namboothiri plays the prime minister, and it was an important role in the Travencore kingdom.  You can see that he wanted to indulge the king, but he was also concerned about how much the king self-indulges in music and art and doesn’t pay attention to other aspects of his role, including playing politics with the British. [01:02:29]  That was definitely a character that Harsha found interesting, and he’s clearly not a Malayali, his name is Subbaravu.  Like a lot of diwans in various Indian kingdoms, he came from outside the kingdom.  They were just learned men that the king thought would be beneficial to his rule. [01:02::55]  Katherine has been doing some thinking about what’s to come over the next few episodes, including what makes a period film, what makes a historical film, and what’s going to be important in terms of Malayalam cinema.  She thinks that’s what they’ve been trying to pick out in terms of the films that were chosen. [01:03:18]  Nest time we’re going to be looking at Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha, and Marakkar: Lion of the Arabian Sea.  Marakkar is too new to have a a legacy, but Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha definitely has a very long legacy.  Katherine notes that that was the one film people constantly told her she had to see, and for a very long time it wasn’t available with subtitles.  There’s a relatively decent print now available on YouTube. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjufSxVXILw] [01:03:48]  Harsha admits that she had never seen the movie, despite it being a classic.  She suggests there’s a little bit of a plodding historical aspect to the movie, even though she’s been told many times that it’s very, very good.  She’s excited to see what it’s about as well. Subscribe to our feed here [http://feeds.feedburner.com/totallyfilmipresentspolandinepatti]. You can also connect with us on Bluesky:  @polandine-patti.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/polandine-patti.bsky.social] Mail your queries and comments to polandinepatti@gmail.com [polandinepatti@gmail.com]

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. Subscribe to our feed here [http://feeds.feedburner.com/totallyfilmipresentspolandinepatti]. You can connect with us on Bluesky: @polandine-patti.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/polandine-patti.bsky.social] Mail your queries and comments to polandinepatti@gmail.com [polandinepatti@gmail.com]

Polandine Patti Episode 19

With this episode, we begin a look at Malayalam films centred around the sea, and examine the importance of the sea to those that live near it and from it, and examine the sea as a metaphor. Download Episode 19 [https://polandinepatti.toutes-directions.com/PP_Episode_19-2022-07-31_The_Sea_1.mp3] Episode 19 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! While we didn’t get to mention this in the episode, Harsha recommends the podcast “Rethinking ‘Keraleeyatha’: Centering Oceanic Histories [https://alablog.in/issues/47/rethinking-keraleeyatha-ocean-history/]” as an excellent companion to our series on The Sea. [00:00:17] Spoiler Alert! [00:01:33] We will start with Chemmeen and it’s important to note that the personification of the sea, Kadalamma (lit. Sea Mother), is revered in many fishing communities shown in these films. [00:02:43] Chemmeen is a huge milestone for Malayalam cinema. It’s the first Southern film to win the National Award and frequently mentioned in lists of the best 100 Indian films. Alas, good prints with subtitles have been hard to find. [00:03:14] There have been critiques in recent years from the community depicted in the film that it’s a regressive and unflattering portrayal of them. [00:03:40] The film is an adaptation of a novel by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai and centered around a belief that a fisherman’s fate is dependent on his wife’s chastity. [00:04:00] The story is about Karuthamma, played by Sheela, who is in love with the wealthier Muslim, Pareekutty, played by Madhu. Her ambitious father tasks her with getting money from Pareekutty for his own boat and nets. Pareekutty agrees with the understanding he is able to sell the catch for them. [00:05:18] When Karuthamma’s father becomes successful, he marries her off to a man who is able to live with her family and join them in the business. [00:05:45] So much pining [00:06:20] Karuthamma tries to be loyal to her husband but the tragedies start on her wedding day, along with the rumors following her about her relationship with Pareekutty. [00:07:22] Harsha always found the movie hard to get into. It might be partly because Thakazhi is not from the community he is writing about. [00:08:53] The music is beautiful. You don’t see these big orchestrations today. [00:09:20] Katherine finds Madhu gorgeous. Harsha finds Sathyan’s acting more accessible. [00:10:48] There’s a lot of sadness and loss in the story. Stories about marginalized groups in the mainstream often portray them as happy people despite their poverty and marginalization. [00:11:58] Bobby, in Hindi, has a similar portrayal of Christian fishing communities. [00:12:23] In Malayalam, the problematic depiction of fisherman is an issue of caste more than religion. [00:13:15] When your way of life centers on something as unpredictable as the ocean, it makes sense to have superstitions and beliefs built around it as a means to control the uncontrollable. [00:13:55] North American coastal homes often have something called widow’s walk, a balcony intended for sailors’ wives to look out for their husbands who have been lost at sea. [00:14:30] In Ireland, there’s a myth that Aran sweaters were supposed to have unique stitches for each family and drowned men were identified by the stitch used by the women in their family. [00:15:03] The film’s legend persists because of the National Award and because of the crew, including Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Manna Dey.  [00:16:20] There’s a pre-Chemmeen Malayalam cinema and a post-Chemmeen Malayalam cinema. In the film Celluloid, the Father of Malayalam Cinema, JC Daniel, is depicted hearing the news of Chemmeen’s win with a mix of pride and sorrow. [00:17:45] Celluloid’s thesis about the need to honor our film histories is relevant to Chemmeen. The lack of investment in remastering and making it more widely accessible means it could be lost in time. [00:18:40] There is a chance before Madhu, who is 90 in September 2023, and Sheela pass to capture their experiences in a documentary or oral history project. [00:21:05] The film required a high level of national, or “pan-Indian,” cooperation to make. [00:21:42] Lots of movies are 50 years old so it’s important to provide context on why this particular film turning 50 is important to venerate. [00:23:41] This is a great example of the sea as a metaphor for the lives of people who live off it. [00:23:47] Chemmeen also sets a template for the depiction of Kerala’s fishing communities in Malayalam cinema [00:24:05] Thumboli Kadappuram is our next film and it’s very different in tone, including comedy. [00:24:40] Two fisherman, Methrinju and Williams, played by Vijayaraghavan and Manoj K. Jayan, respectively, are rivals in their fishing community. The locals look up to Methrinju. His love interest, Clara, is played by Silk Smitha. [00:25:28] When Williams elopes with a wealthy man’s daughter, Mary, played by Priya Raman, Methrinju offers them sanctuary in his home. [00:26:26] Soon, the community begins to circulate rumors that Mary is having an affair with Methrinju when Williams is at sea. [00:26:48] Katherine’s previous experience with Jayaraj has been his artsier fare. This is a massy film. [00:27:37] Silk Smitha’s important role also surprised Katherine. Harsha is surprised at her contemporary reputation as just an item girl when she’s done significant roles in films like Spadikam. [00:29:42] Williams and Mary’s meet cutes are shot beautifully and Jayaraj shows off his artier skills. [00:30:39] The character of Stanley/Chellappan is the kind of 90s comedy character that is jarring to those of us watching in the 2020s.  [00:31:36] When fishermen in film are depicted as the epitome of bravery and masculinity, anyone who deviates from that, like Indrans’ character or the lead in Chandupottu, is mocked for their femininity. [00:32:13] We are so glad Indrans can play more full-fledged roles now. [00:32:37] Harsha enjoys Priya Raman from among the early 90s heroines who were not the big stars like Shobana, Revathy and Urvashi. She is now known more as a television serial actor. [00:34:11] The cast includes actors like Augustine and Sainuddin, both of whom have passed away. Others like Prem Kumar and Manoj K. Jayan were omnipresent in Malayalam films of this era and did not transition into New Gen films. [00:36:18] Malayalam films in the 90s employed huge casts of character actors to give them that lived in feeling while telling the story of a hero and heroine. [00:37:36] Harsha believes one of the reasons Bollywood films are struggling recently is because of the lack of a world that feels lived in and familiar populated by tangential characters. [00:37:52] We discuss Anurag Kashyap’s comments on rootedness in South Indian cinema. [00:41:07] Bollywood is stuck between a rock and a hard place addressing the current Indian social context. They would prefer to exist in a timeless, placeless urbanism. [00:42:52] Were fisherfolk in the 90s still talking like they were in Chemmeen and not using motorboats? [00:44:00] Our next is Puthiya Theerangal, directed by Sathyan Anthikkad and his moral values. [00:44:58] The main character, Thamara, is played by Namitha Pramod. She’s an orphan and fisherwoman, who finds and takes in an old man, played by Nedumudi Venu. Nivin Pauly plays her friend and love interest. [00:47:22] Thamara going out fishing on her own boat is a marked difference from the other stories. She is supported by her community and thrives, despite being an orphan. [00:48:12] Sathyan Anthikkad’s characters often survive with the goodwill of the community. [00:49:02] There are references to Chemmeen, once again showing its long shadow. [00:49:35] Nedumudi Venu’s character is written as a plot device. He has little agency. [00:51:10] This is not a Nivin Pauly film. He’s the eye candy. [00:51:28] Once again, we see frequently seen elements like fishermen who have an interest in the arts and theater and the sea taking loved ones away. [00:52:56] Namitha Pramod was a young teenager when she starred in the film. She hasn’t really acted much once she became an adult. We previously discussed her in Al Mallu. [00:54:33] We both thought that it fell apart in the second half. [00:55:01] Rajagopuram, shot in Hampi, is very pretty. Cinematographer Venu shot the film with a lot of color. It was a bright spot in our series on the sea, which can often be bleak. [00:56:23] Next time, we discuss Mosayile Kuthira Meenukal, Akashathinte Niram and Amaram.

Polandine Patti Episode 18

We conclude our series of Malayalam supernatural films — in this episode, we look at Ennu Swantham Janakikutty, Mayilpeelikkavu, and Bhoothakaalam. Download Episode 18 [https://polandinepatti.toutes-directions.com/PP_Episode_18-2022-07-10_Supernatural_4.mp3] Episode 18 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! [00:00:20] We’re back with a final episode about supernatural films in Malayalam cinema.  [00:00:25]  We started off planning this episode around two Jomol films, Ennu Swantham Janakikutty, Mayilpeelikkavu, but also decided to add in a more recent film, Bhoothakaalam. [00:00:44]  Katherine has learned more about yakshis through this series looking at supernatural films. [00:00:48]  As an outsider to a culture, it’s sometimes a challenge to understand things that are so ingrained in a culture that everyone who is part of that culture would immediately pick up on the cues. [00:01:03]  Katherine was searching for “movies with yakshis”, and feels that the movies that have “yakshi” in the title are often not great films. [00:01:21]  Katherine and Harsha realized that Katherine was missing out on yakshi films when it wasn’t expressly stated that this was a yakshi – like in Manichitrathazhu.  But now that Harsha has helped clarify what to look for, Katherine is seeing yakshis everywhere. [00:02:02]  Harsha sent Katherine a list of yakshi movies, and a music video that has a yakshi theme.  Check the end of these show notes for the list of films and a link to the music video.  Without Harsha’s guidance, Katherine wouldn’t have had a clue that Ennu Swantham Janakikutty was a yakshi film. [00:02:25]  Harsha notes that Mayilpeelikkavu is a reincarnation film, and not a yakshi film. [00:02:40]  Harsha watched the short film called Yakshi on YouTube, and made the connection that yakshis and chudails are pretty much the same thing. [00:02:50]  “Chudail” in Hindi films is always translated as “witch”, but you realize they both pretty much have the same characteristics, except for the feet, which are backwards in chudails.  Both terms, yakshi and chudail, have been used to curse women.  Previously, Harsha only thought of yakshi’s as a Kerala – and specifically a southern Kerala – thing. [00:03:23]  The figure of the vengeful woman is common in supernatural stories across the world. [00:03:45]  Katherine realized that she was looking at things through a very narrow lens, and recognizes she was missing details because horror and supernatural are not genres she watches a lot of, nor knows a lot about.  It’s also a good lesson in how we, as outsiders, can miss things in another culture. [00:04:25]  We decide to start our discussion with Ennu Swantham Janakikutty in order to keep going with our yakshi theme. [00:04:29]  The film is from 1998, and stars Jomol along with a number of marquis names, plus a script by M.T. Vasudevan Nair.  It’s directed by Hariharan and produced by P.V. Gangadharan, names associated with classic films such as Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha and Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja, especially if you’re thinking about very literary, dense Malayalam films. [00:04:58]  Katherine notes, as an aside, that this is another example of Scube having the rights to a lot of really excellent films, and again she begs for them to add subtitles.  But you can find the films on their YouTube channel. [00:05:30]  The film is about a young woman who is living with her extended family in the trope many viewers will recognize as the traditional tharavadu (ancestral home in a joint family system).  In this case, it’s very a much a matrilineal tharavadu, [00:06:38]  What were the clues to this that Katherine picked up on?  A household full of a lot of women.  There are age clusters of the women, so she figured some of these would be mothers, some would be aunts, some would be daughters and nieces and cousins.  So she was looking at the group of women and the cluster of ages to come to this conclusion. [00:07:25]  What Katherine did not pick up on is the fact that the grandmother in the film is not Janaki’s actual grandmother, she’s her grandmother’s older sister who has fallen out with her own children, so she comes to stay with her niece. [00:07:45]  Janaki calls her “muthassi”, because all of the sisters’ kids basically look on the mothers’ sisters as interchangeable mothers. [00:08:23]  It’s very matrilineal, though there is one male figure who is there and complains about the fact that there’s the old woman who fought with her kids.  He’s the son-in-law who would have married into the family. [00:08:43]  Their matrilineal traditions are the reason why they take care of her. [00:08:48] Jannakikutty is going through adolescence.  She’s developing her first crush, but she’s very awkward and doesn’t seem to have a lot in common with the other young females around her.  She really bonds with her great aunt and comes to hear the stories we’ve come to expect from Malayalam movies about yakshis that get passed on from generation to generation. [00:09:23]  Janakikutty starts meeting this woman in the woods who we’re led to believe is some sort of supernatural entity, because she comes only when Janakikutty is alone. [00:09:40]  Janakikutty has a crush on a young man who is around the family, and the woman she meets, Kunjathol, played by Chanchal, schemes to help Janakikutty to get what she wants.  [00:09:58]  The young man Janakikutty has a crush on is secretly in a relationship with one of Janakikutty’s cousins.  Part of Janakikutty’s stress/distress is because she discovers the guy she has a crush on is interested in her cousin, and not her. [00:10:50]  Janakikutty’s muthassi tells her yakshi stories and has a book of yakshi stories that she gives her.  [00:10:55]  As a young woman, growing up in this part of the world, you would assume that it’s the stress of adolescence that is triggering this mental breakdown (or whatever you want to call it). [00:11:15]  Katherine saw a description of the film, when she was trying to find out more information about it, that said it was the first Malayalam film dealing with schizophrenia, but Katherine didn’t feel that was really what was going on in the film. [00:11:30]  Harsha feels it’s more like Janakikutty’s manifestation of a poltergeist.  Poltergeists always show up in homes with adolescents, especially young women.  They tend to cause a lot of chaos, which is resolved once the kid is past a certain age, and are mentally more stable.   So you can think of Kunjathol as a poltergeist instead of a vampire in this context, even though she has some vampiric features. [00:12:20]  This is not a scary film, it’s more psychological, but there is a moment in particular where Kunjathol is very frightening. [00:12:30]  At least two of the films we’re looking at in this episode deal with how a person’s psychological stress affects them, and how that gets manifested as some kind of supernatural vision. [00:12:50]  There are points in this film where other members of the film kind of catch Janakikutty apparently talking to herself, or laughing to herself, when what she’s imagining is that she’s talking to Kunjathol. [00:13:06]  Harsha is not perfectly sure whether this is all just supposed to be in Janakikutty’s head, or if only she can see the yakshi.  Harsha doesn’t necessarily believe in ghosts, but she likes the idea of the poltergeist as an external manifestation of somebody’s distress.  She’s very open to that interpretation in movies, that something can both be in someone’s head, and can be supernatural at the same time. [00:13:43]  Katherine notes that a lot of the yakshi films she turned up were more about vengeful women preying on men (sometimes with a sexual undertone), so what she liked about this film was that Kunjathol doesn’t fit into this pattern.  Yes, she is a vengeful woman (as the film reveals), but what she does is show up when Janakikutty needs her (like the idea of the poltergeist).  Janakikutty needs the support. [00:14:33]  For Harsha, this is why, as a yakshi film, this film really stands out.  The romance element is only given weight because of how Janakikutty feels about her crush and her cousin’s relationship with him.  He doesn’t have a lot of personality, he is just the object of her desires. [00:15:00]  Katherine notes that’s often what it’s like for an adolescent girl having her first crush.  It’s an overwhelming emotion, and at times you might be projecting things on the object of your affection that don’t exist at all.  She gives a lot of meaning to things like the Cadbury chocolate bar he gives her.  [00:15:43]  He overlooks her, and gives her the chocolate bar because he sees her as a kid, but it becomes this overblown thing in her mind.  Janakikutty’s isolation is emphasized.  She doesn’t really have anyone to tell her that he’s not really into her, and to point out the really obvious things that are going on around her. [00:16:15]  She’s very isolated, and her central relationship is with her elderly great aunt as well as her vampire friend, and her vampire friend’s friend.  There is such a strong female central relationship in this film, and the movie stands out because of this. [00:16:55]  Jomol won a Special Mention at the National Awards for this film.  Katherine is frustrated that this film isn’t subtitled so she could share with people.  It ends up being overlooked except by people who understand the language. [00:18:09]  Harsha feels that this film and Nandanam are very similar movies because of their connections to a supernatural entity, the relative loneliness of the main character, they can only turn to the supernatural entity for solace. [00:18:41] Karineeli, the friend/aide to Kunjathol, is a very popular and identifiable yakshi character in Malayalam folklore, so anyone encountering her in this movie would be very familiar with her as a yakshi figure.  Janakikutty, as someone familiar with this lore, is pulling in all these details to create this very vibrant inner life.    [00:19:25]  Kunjathol is a glowing, beautiful figure.  Her hair, her sari is luminescent  — she’s a very vibrant part of Janakikutty’s imagination in what is an otherwise dull life. [00:20:05]  Katherine feels this interpretation of a lonely, isolated adolescent reaching for a very vibrant inner life to help her navigate what’s she’s going through, makes more sense than any schizophrenia interpretation. [00:20:45]  Harsha compares it to her experience at the age of twelve, emigrating and being very lonely as a teenager, and internet hyperfixations were a way to cope with it.  This is Janakikutty’s hyperfixation, and it seems very natural and beautiful and organic — it’s not scary or threatening.   She feels that it’s not threatening because this is not M.T. Vasudevan Nair framing this as a story of “what do women get up to in their minds?”.  Contrast the way we see Ganga’s connection to Nagavalli in Manichitrathazhu – because she’s an adult, her hyperfixation is more worrisome.  [00:21:45]  This very strong connection is not depicted as a negative for Janakikutty, and that’s probably why it’s not threatening.  Yakshi’s are not only representative of female sexuality, they’re also representative of female bonding, which is threatening to a patriarchal culture.  This movie, though, portrays it as not threatening. [00:22:24]  If you want to see a happy yakshi movie, this would be the one to watch.  There is a thread of sadness in the film, because Kunjathol has this tragic story, but you can also see why this kind of tragic figure would also appeal to a teenager.  [00:22:40]  Teenagers act like this today (in terms of parasocial relationships and hyperfixation), but they’re accessing different stories. [00:23:05]  Harsha always thought of the movie as pleasant to watch, and extremely relatable.  But talking about it on the podcast, she realized the reason was that it was a teenage hyperfixation.  Janakikutty is telling her problems to this extremely empathetic figure who just wants to help her figure out her teenaged life’s problems.  If she were an actual ghost with a real agenda, she’d be out there murdering people. [00:23:44]  Katherine notes there’s a moment where the sister gets married, and that’s the moment where we see the yakshi get very intense, and her incisors come out.  Nothing serious really ends up happening in that moment, but we can see that for the yakshi, it relates to her own incident and how her life ended up being so tragic. [00:24:10]  We don’t realize it at first, but the grandmother figure/great-aunt has died while they are all at the wedding.  She doesn’t attend because she’s had some kind of incident, but they also don’t want Janakikutty at the wedding.  Janakikutty tries to wake her, but we as an audience perceive she has died.  However, suddenly her eyes fly open, and she runs to the wedding, which she couldn’t have done.  Janakikutty follows her, and they arrive to find the yakshi at the wedding. [00:25:35]  Harsha always assumed that the family didn’t want Janakikutty at the wedding because of her erratic behaviour (in their eyes).  The other thing is that with Kunjathol being the vessel for providing empathy for Janakikutty, this allows her to see that her cousin is being put through something really unfair, even though it clears the way for Janakikutty with her crush.  But the cousin’s wedding is really tragic in its own way. [00:26:08]  At one point, Janaki realizes that the object of her crush isn’t interested in her, and she tries to help her cousin, but it doesn’t work.  It’s a huge step in her growing up – through the move, we see her learn to accept things.  It might be a little cinematic at the end when the crush likes her back, but Harsha puts this down to film needing a kind of “bow-tie” at the end.  Has Janaki learned that as an adult, you don’t always get the things you want? [00:27:23]  We turn to the next Jomol film we’re going to talk about in this episode, Mayilpeelikkavu.  This is a much more mainstream film.  It came out in 1998 as well.  [00:27:50]  Harsha has always assumed they cast her in Mayilpeelikkavu because she started out in a supernatural film, and they liked her for that kind of role.  Except, she plays a very different character here:  it’s a typical kind of mainstream heroine role, with a gaggle of young kids around her constantly.  But for Harsha, she doesn’t care for Jomol in those kinds of roles.  Jomol is amazing in movies where she has to be a little awkward, like in Niram.  For Mayilpeelikkavu, it feels like they wrote a role for Shalini and not Jomol. [00:28:50]  The set up is very reminiscent of Aniyathipravu. [00:29:05]  The film sees Kunchacko Boban and Jomol playing characters staying in the same house for vacation, and they’re both have dreams about a person coming to kill them.  Or are these memories of a past life?  They slowly discover that they were lovers in a past life.  She was murdered, and he was framed for the murder.   The same person from their past life is now out to get them in their present life. [00:29:45]  It’s a reincarnation story, and the other people involved in this story are still alive and in the household.  There are some deceptions around who the killer really is, that set us up for a twist at the end. [00:30:05]  Thilakan plays a character that is similar to the one he played in Manichitrathazhu.  Katherine felt this film was like a cousin to that in some ways:  it’s a traditional household with lots of people in the house, and things are happening.  There’s a mystery and some kind of supernatural things going on.  She sees parallels between the two films. [00:31:35]  Katherine found herself surprised by Thilakan’s character, expecting him to be very much like the one in Manichitrathazhu.  SPOILER:  Thilakan’s character is the murderer. [00:32:05]  Harsha notes that in these kinds of films, a lot of the same actors get cast in similar types of roles.  We’re supposed to pull from our historical film knowledge to understand the type of character they’re playing, so it’s logical to make an assumption about Thilakan’s character.  Katherine thought the plot twist around his character was great, though. [00:35:00]  Harsha is amused by the fact that even after many years, someone will have the same hairstyle, and no one seems to recognize them.  And why do movies that are otherwise complex assume we won’t recognize a character if they don’t give them the same haircut? [00:035:45]  Katherine generously argues that perhaps because the haircut has us make an assumption about the culprit, the twist becomes more impactful.  [00:35:55]  Harsha enjoyed the twist at the end, but she also enjoyed the songs and the background track, which gives spookiness to the movie. [00:36:07]  The flashbacks are made to look visually distinctive either through black and white or sepia colouring. [00:36:28]  The film is otherwise quite colourful – it’s constantly popping with colour, perhaps because it’s a more mainstream movie than Ennu Swantham Janakikutty.  It’s a very accessible mainstream movie, much less scary than films like Manichitrithazhu.  [00:37:15]  Except in a film like Ennu Swantham Janakikutty, Jomol is not great as a lead heroine.  But the fact that she’s paired opposite Kunchacko Boban and surrounded by a big cast allows her to be more integrated into this film despite all of that.  Katherine also felt she was better in the flashbacks to the past, though Harsha notes that both actors are wearing brownface in the flashbacks and it is very distracting.  It also makes no sense in the context of the story:  why did they have to be darker skinned?  And why did they have to have completely different hair texture? [00:38:20]  Possibly the only reason for this is to differentiate them from their present day incarnations, which is maybe not a great excuse, but could be an explanation.  However, the guy we’re supposed to think is the murderer gets to keep his same haircut after fifty years. [00:39:02]  It really is an interesting film to watch and compare with Manichitrathazhu.  Harsha wonders if there were any of the same kind of yakshi bits as there were in Manichitrathazhu?  Katherine says no, but instead there’s a serpent shrine.  The film’s title also reminds us that this shrine is also covered with peacock feathers.  But no yakshis.  It’s fully a reincarnation/revenge movie. [00:40:50]  We turn to the final film in our discussion, Bhoothakaalam, with Revathi and Shane Nigam. [00:42:15]  Bhothakaalam is the story of a mother and son who are taking care of her ailing mother/his grandmother at home.  The mother/grandmother passes away, and strange things start happening in the house.  Asha is a schoolteacher and her son, Vinu, is trained as a pharmacist.  He had to pass up on a job because it would have had him move away from home, and his mother needed him to help with her ailing mother. [00:42:58]  Asha suffers from depression, and in the course of the film we see her seeking treatment for that.  Vinu suffers from the stresses of being unemployed and living in this household with his mother.  As well, he has insomnia and he drinks.   Is he drinking and not sleeping because he’s stressed, or is he stressed because he’s drinking and not sleeping?  In either case, he begins seeing hallucinations or visions. [00:44:00]  A friend of the family calls in a counsellor named George (Saiju Kurup) who comes to talk to Vinu and try to get him some help.  Vinu is very resistent to this, because he really believes he’s seeing something in the house and that nobody believes him. [00:44:20]  Katherine wonders if this is related to “folie à deux”, the French term for a kind of madness shared by two people.  There’s a question about whether they are both stressed and manifesting it in different ways. [00:45:00]  George comes by their house one day, and when they’re not at home, he speaks with a neighbour, who reveals that something terrible happened in the house, and suggests that now the house is troubled.  Katherine has a wee bit of trouble with this character because what he discovers about the house scares him, and he no longer wants to counsel Vinu. [00:45:30]  However, his wife suggests finding out the truth behind the house, and he begins to investigate and discovers that the original owners were a man and his wife and child.  The man killed his wife and child and then killed himself, too.  The house has since been rented out to a series of people who have things happen to them, including more suicide attempts.  So there is something going on in relation to this house, but what that might be isn’t really clear. [00:46:03]  One of the things Katherine noted and liked about the film was the scenes with Vinu’s girlfriend and her family.  Everything is well-lit and bright.  He goes to her sister’s birthday party and the house is brimming with people, and it’s bright with sunshine.  Contrast this to the house where he lives with his mother which is very dark and oppressive.  The cinematography is being used to emphasize that the relationship between these two people is very claustrophobic.  [00:46:00] Harsha wanted to talk about the house.  The timeline the movie gives is that the man who first owned it killed his wife and child six or seven years earlier, and we learn he built the house when they got married.  But the house looks *very* old – it looks like it was built in the 1970s or 1980s.  Even the style of it is very dated.  It also looks like it’s not being maintained at all.  The house was very out of fashion, and Harsha wondered if that were intentional, or because they couldn’t find a new house that was poorly kept up.  This house is meant to evoke something older. [00:48:00]  The house is like a manifestation of someone’s depression with it’s grime and neglect and peeling paint.  The house itself is a character in the film. [00:48:30] There’s a strong enmeshment between the mother and son.  They can’t really stand each other, but they also can’t stand to be apart.  He’s trying to pull away, but his mother keeps reeling him back in because she’s widowed and somewhat isolated, because she lost her mother whom she seemed to be close to. [00:48:55]  The grandmother was played by Valsala Menon, who played the great aunt in Ennu Swantham Janakikutty. [00:49:15]  Of course, we wonder at first if it’s the grandmother who is haunting the house after she dies, and everything starts up after that happens.  It’s connected to the fact that Asha was very connected to her mother and had a hard time letting her go.  [00:49:40]  Asha is up every night crying, and Vinu is unable to sleep because of this.  Asha is taking medication for her depression, but Vinu is self-medicating, so it makes sense that he’s the first person to manifest these hallucinations.  [00:50:15]  Revathi won an award for this performance, which we feel is very well deserved.  It’s so well acted.  In the scenes where mother and son are together, they’re just playing off each other.  This could be a play with just the two of them in that house. [00:50:42]  Katherine wanted to make sure to comment on Shane Nigam in this role, because the film is very much a two-hander between the two of them.  She could connect with both characters and their distress equally.  [00:51:00]  The film is genuinely painful to watch (because the actors are just so good).  The relationship just felt so lived in with its pain and disappointments, and his desire to be away from her, and her desire to keep him close.  She’s so afraid of being alone. [00:51:40]  The film is painful because you can understand both of these people and the pain they’re going through, and the pain of the cycles they both keep going through.  He wants out, he wants to find a good job, but he can’t do that if he stays.  She’s adamant that he needs to stay, but finds the hotel job he plans to take unacceptable because of his education.  They are endlessly dancing around the things that hurt them. [00:52:50]  Harsha notes the film made her think about so many people at the stage of Asha’s life, where parents are aging and passing away, but children are no longer children but adults and they don’t really need you as much.  They might not have flown the nest yet, and there’s a temptation to try to hold them back at this point. [0053:20]  Because this is a contemporary film, there were a lot of things to potentially dig into, like caring for aging parents, which is time-consuming and exhausting.  Asha ends up having to take a leave from her teaching job because she’s unable to function appropriately as a teacher, which isolates her even more. [00:54:55]  Asha is barely keeping things together, and when one domino falls, everything goes down. [00:55:20]  The counsellor also disappoints her because he’s scared of the house.  Harsha thought they might be going to pull a Doctor Sunny moment with the counsellor, which she wouldn’t have been able to cope with because there was so much tension in the household.  In the end, though, he ends up being just one more disappointment in a series of disappointments and losses for them. [00:55:55]  The mother and son are in their own little bubble, and you see people knocking at the bubble, trying to through them a lifeline to pick up.  The principal, the girlfriend, the friend, the neighbour, there are all these caring people around them, but they won’t let them break through their trauma bubble.  It’s very realistic, too. [00:57:15]  Asha finds this interest annoying, because she’s not able to judge the response from people.  There’s a lot of shame that they are both going through this.  Asha’s response is to keep everyone out.  [00:58: 15]  Katherine suggests that the film has a happier resolution, maybe.  They move out of the house, and the scene then is much brighter after all the dark interiors of the house.  Harsha doesn’t find it happy because she was left with the thought about what would happen to the people who move into the house next. [00:59:10]  Harsha keeps thinking about The Haunting of Hill House, based on a Shirley Jackson novel.  There’s a room in the house which becomes whatever the person wants or needs at that time.  The house is slowly digesting the people who live in it:  they kill themselves, they kill others.  But it’s also not clear if it’s the house, or if it’s the family.  Each member of the family has trauma, and the trauma is manifested in different ways. [01:00:25]  The scene near the end of the film where we see shadowy figures made Harsha think of Hereditary, where there is definitely a supernatural explanation rather than “it could be either”. [01:00:40]  The film is very unlike most Indian supernatural movies.  It felt very Western in the way in which it conceived of the supernatural.  [01:01:05]  Katherine confesses she was wary of a supernatural topic for the podcast, because she’s not a big horror fan.  But she does like films in this genre that are more psychological, or are more about folk tales, folklore and psychology.  Jump scares are fine, but not violent films.   [01:01:40]  Katherine doesn’t care for very violent, slasher type films with lots of blood and gore.  Harsha suggests not a lot of those films are made in India  — there is no Texas Chain Saw Massacre. [01:01:55]  There is violence, or at least the hint of violence in some of the films we’ve looked at, but for the most part things are unsettling.  Something like Bhoothakaalam is a very good film, but still remains a very hard watch, despite its lack of overt violence. [01:02:40]  We start to sum up with Katherine suggesting that it’s interesting to think about what the ideas in these films represent, and particularly what they represent in Kerala. [01:03:00]  For Harsha, what is important to think about is the emotion of fear.  She often comes back to The Haunting of Hill House and The Turn of the Screw and other Western canon stories, and what makes them so scary for her is not, in fact, the supernatural, but the supernatural manifestation of our disturbed minds.  Something like ghosts isn’t scary for her, it’s sad, because there’s something that has unsettled someone for so long that they keep coming back.  And that’s what’s frightening in Bhoothakaalam. [01:03:55]  In Ennu Swantham Janakikutty, we’re dealing with a poltergeist, so there will come a time in her life when this will be in the past, and the events are not something she will continue to keep revisiting.  [01:05:00]  When Katherine reflects on the whole series of films, what stands out for her is the contrast between traditional stories and modernity, or of faith versus science.  [01:06:15]  Katherine can’t choose one film that stands out because each of the ones we’ve explored have been very different.  Harsha notes that even the yakshi films we looked at are also very different from each other.  The films approached the supernatural in very different ways.   It was fun to see how these movies approached that which cannot be explained. [01:06:55]  Harsha would like to see what a modern yakshi movie would look like.  There was an attempt with Akam, but it wasn’t very satisfactory.  Maybe Aashiq Abu and his vibes in Neelavelicham will give us that satisfying modern yakshi movie? [01:07:40]  Our next set of episodes will focus on The Sea, and Malayalam cinema’s relationship to the sea. Harsha’s List of Yakshi Movies: Oru Murai Vanthu Paarthaya [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oru_Murai_Vanthu_Parthaya_(film)] Lisa [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_(1978_film)] (and sequel Veendum Lisa [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veendum_Lisa]) Aakasha Ganga [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aakasha_Ganga] Vellinakshatram [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellinakshatram_(2004_film)] Indriyam [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indriyam] Meghasandesham [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megasandesam] Bhadra Bhargavi Nilayam [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhargavi_Nilayam] Raktharakshassu 3D [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raktharakshassu_3D] Kalliyankattu Neeli [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalliyankattu_Neeli] Yakshagaanam [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakshagaanam] Pakalppooram [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakalppooram] Yakshiyum Njaanum [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakshiyum_Njanum] Noorie (music video) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovcde9PvY20] Yakshi short film [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8phLqwdnrjU] Subscribe to our feed here [http://feeds.feedburner.com/totallyfilmipresentspolandinepatti]. You can connect with us on Twitter: @PolandinePatti [https://twitter.com/PolandinePatti] Mail your queries and comments to polandinepatti@gmail.com [polandinepatti@gmail.com]

Polandine Patti Episode 17

Episode 17 sees us continue our journey with Malayalam supernatural films — in this episode, we look at Anandabhadram and Akam. Download Episode 17 [https://polandinepatti.toutes-directions.com/PP_Episode_17-2022-01-09_Supernatural_3.mp3] (Right-click and ‘Copy Link’, then paste into your podcast app’s ‘Subscribe to feed’ field) Episode 17 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! [00:00:15] A discussion about Prithviraj’s comedy skills leads into our first film for the episode, Anandabhadram. [00:00:44] SPOILER ALERT! [00:01:7] Anandabhadram is a Santhosh Sivan-directed supernatural film from 2005 [00:01:41] Prithviraj plays a young man whose mother elopes from her ancestral village to marry the man she loves. [00:02:04] She tells her son before she dies that she wants her ashes scattered in her village. [00:02:29] He meets his mother’s family who practice snake worship and their enemies who practice black magic. [00:03:00] Katherine points out the black magician wants to gain immortality. [00:03:30] There’s an ayurvedic cryopreservation chamber. [00:04:01] Harsha is very confused about the plot and Katherine tries to make it make sense. [00:04:48] Manoj K. Jayan has a magic toe! [00:05:35] It’s very obvious this is a Santosh Sivan film with beautiful cinematography, songs and production design [00:06:19] The actors in Pinakkamano were made up to evoke oil paint. [00:06:45] Santhosh Sivan cinematography is known for using reflective surfaces like mirrors and water, which if found throughout Anandabhadram [00:07:07] The film draws from both Raja Ravi Varma painting and the Kalari martial art, which takes center stage in Santhosh Sivan’s 2011 film Urumi. [00:07:50] Harsha found the tharavadu setting and the NRI who falls in love with his cousin antiquated even for 2005. [00:08:32] Prithviraj plays the same character as he does in Nandanam and Harsha found him awkward. [00:09:21] He does a better job when he has to depict being possessed because he is better at menacing roles. [00:10:35] The filmmakers didn’t want to commit to the darkness of its subject. [00:11:27] Riya Sen is only in the film to be objectified and it makes us uncomfortable. [00:12:40] Katherine appreciates that Anandabhadram made her look up a lot of Kerala supernatural folklore. [00:13:02] Revathy plays Prithviraj’s mother and she looks beautiful in her cameo. [00:13:38] A lot of supernatural elements get brought up in different parts of the film and then dropped, making the rules of the magical world seem incoherent. [00:14:05] Other films in this series had consistent parameters to the supernatural, which this does not. [00:14:55] Biju Menon shows up as a seemingly important character and is unceremoniously killed. [00:15:45] Is Digambaran’s (Manoj K. Jayan) kryptonite sex or the magic toe? [00:16:37] There’s a seed of a great story here that never comes to fruition. [00:16:50] Could Riya Sen’s Bhama and Kavya Madhavan’s Bhadra have at some point been one role? [00:17:09] Meera Jasmine was set to play the Bhadra role at one point and she might have been more comfortable with the risqué scenes Bhama ended up in. [00:17:55] We don’t understand! [00:18:18] We don’t like Kavya Madhavan for reasons on this podcast but she looks beautiful in the film. [00:18:53] The importance of traditional stories passed down through generations are once again highlighted in the film, like in Manichitrathazhu. [00:19:30] The tension between and coexistence of modern science and traditional practices is another theme, like in Sarppakavu. [00:21:21] Next, we talk about Akam, directed by Shalini Usha Nair, based on the novel Yakshi by Malayattoor Ramakrishnan. [00:21:52] The film was shot circa 2011 and stars Fahad Fazil and Anumol. This is very early in his career. [00:22:14] FaFa plays a young urban man disabled by an accident. His partner leaves him and he becomes depressed. He meets a young woman and marries her but begins to suspect she is trying to kill him because she’s a yakshi. [00:23:51] Yakshis are something between a female ghost and a vampire and are said to lure men to murder them. [00:25:38] Many cultures have stories about the danger of alluring women and their sexuality like the nine-tailed fox. [00:26:24] Katherine wonders where she can find more yakshi stories. We will discuss some in upcoming episodes. [00:28:02] Katherine didn’t realize Manichitrathazhu is a yakshi movie. [00:29:11] Bulbbul is another yakshi/chudail film. [00:32:30] We found Akam quite impenetrable because of its minimalism and limited characterization. [00:33:21] Malayalam movies are strongest when characters are placed in the context of their larger society. [00:33:37] We understand the isolation of the characters is intentional as it adds to the feeling of paranoia experienced by Fahad’s character, Srini. [00:34:30] The main characters’ marriage seem to come out of nowhere in the story. [00:35:24] Srini’s paranoia is partly a result of the rushed marriage and the things he does not know about his wife. [00:35:49] Harsha thinks Anumol is a great fit for a yakshi because of her frostiness on screen. [00:36:22] The plot has a lot of gaps and leaps, and while it may be intentional, you still have to give your audience something to grab onto so they get through the film. [00:36:42] We love the John Everett Millais’ Ophelia-inspired ending and it makes the message of the film explicit. [00:37:55] Because of the dreamlike quality of the film, it’s never clear what is in Srini’s disturbed imagination and what was real. [00:38:32] The director’s intentional choices, like the use of yellow to represent deception, make us wish she kept a firmer grip on the rest of the film. [00:39:18] The novel itself is surprisingly urban and is ripe for another adaptation from a less minimalist director. [00:40:30] Harsha really did not like the facial scarring make up on Fahad and thinks it did nothing to show his physical pain. [00:40:49] The casting on this film was done by Geethu Mohandas. [00:41:20] Harsha thinks Anumol is very underappreciated. She’s been doing a lot of work but most of them fly under-the-radar. [00:43:33] Aashiq Abu’s upcoming Neelavelicham is a yakshi film. [00:43:59] Bally Sagoo’s music video Noorie also centers a yakshi. [00:45:17] We are here to learn (about yakshis and other stuff). [00:45:30] Next episode, we will talk about Ennu Swantham Janakikutty, Mayilpeelikkavu and Bhoothakaalam. Subscribe to our feed here [http://feeds.feedburner.com/totallyfilmipresentspolandinepatti]. You can also listen to the podcast on YouTube! [https://www.youtube.com/@polandinepattipodcast] You can connect with us on Twitter: @PolandinePatti [https://twitter.com/PolandinePatti] Mail your queries and comments to polandinepatti@gmail.com [polandinepatti@gmail.com]