Ee.Ma.Yau

Life is absurd. So is death sometimes. And sometimes, when you are dealing with death in life, absurdism can take an even more….absurd turn. By showcasing how death is a better fate when compared to dealing with the predisposition of people to selfishness and petty ways, director Lijo Jose Pellisetty has created one of the best satires that I have come across in contemporary Indian cinema. The theme of absurdism in the context of a funeral is not exactly an oft-repeated theme in Indian movies - although whenever we have come across such movies, they just knock it out of the park. Thithi, the Kannada movie made in the recent past, is one such gem.

Ee.Ma.Yau or Eesu.Mariyam.Yauseppe (Jesus, Mary, Joseph or interchangeably R.I.P) starts on a quirky note, if the movie title is anything to go by. Set in Chellanam, up on the coast near Ernakulam, it's a movie about how a small family (in the conventional sense) and a larger family (in the unconventional sense) deal with the sudden death and ensuing funeral of Vavachan Mestri. In a coastal community, death is never only your own. And this is evidenced how the entire community starts handling the funeral arrangements like its clockwork, when it's actually anything but. In fact, it is just utter chaos. And herein does the filmmaker shines in demonstrating how ghastly life can be, when dealing with death.

Vavachan Mestri comes home to his village and is greeted by pettiness immediately - a fisherman accuses Vavachan's daughter of having pre-marital relationship and being pregnant. Angered by being greeted with such gossip, Vavachan strikes the guy who informs him, before scurrying along home. The touch of absurdity is everywhere in this movie - you see how Vavachan callously picks up his bag carrying a live duck that he is carrying home. He gets home to find a flickering tubelight by the door that he starts adjusting being being greeted by a bickering wife. His daughter and daughter-in-law get on with cooking the duck for dinner, but he cant shake off what he heard and hence sits remorsefully outside. His son, Eeshy comes home and is told by his family about his father sitting and sulking outside and he decides the best way to console his dad is just by offering him drinks. Soon, they drink together and Vavachan starts talking about his contribution to the local church, how lavish the funeral to his father was and starts talking about his own funeral. Guilt-striken, his broke son promises him an equally lavish funeral and the absurdism oozing out of these scenes are about how happy the thought of a grand death makes Vavachan feel.

And it comes as no surprise that Vavachan falls dead soon in the living room, after chiding his son about the absurdity of how he hides smokes but openly drinks with his father. The womenfolk find him lying lifeless on the ground and the banshee shrieks begin almost immediately. Eeshy rushes in and is completely gobsmacked- but almost on cue, his neighbour and friend, Ayyapan (also the "committee" worker) arrives and starts trying to put the unforeseen chaos into order. What follows is how chaos becomes the hero - be it in reactions of people or the situations themselves. And the characters that you are introduced to, all bring their own ingredients to throw into the chaotic pyre. Be it the boyfriend character trying to get stolen moments with Vavachan's daughter, the "customized" howls from his wife strewn with topical jibes about her husband depending on the audience, the son scampering around to find money to try to make good of his promise of a grand goodbye to his father or the no-nonsense nurse who needs to pronounce the man dead or the Vicar who is convinced that there is foulplay in the death - the characters infuse soul into this lively satire. I loved the absurdist scenes which make you chuckle discreetly or guffaw guiltily - how the doctor can't come to confirm the death because he is lying drunk, how the nurse won't ride pillion on a bike in the middle of the night because it's unsafe but will ride the bike herself, how the "negotiation" for the coffin with "imported wood and velvet finish" at the funeral home takes place, how there is that annoying broken clarinet playing in the funeral band, how the dog scratches itself lazily as the clergymen walk past and ask an existential question that begets a theological answer, how the gossip mongers drink alcohol in the vicinity of the bereaved house and spin yarns, how the grave digger ironically digs his own grave, literally. P.F.Mathews just kills it with the spot-on screenplay.

Then the thundering cloudburst ushers in the crescendo of the movie with the second wife and her family arriving and throwing a spade into the funeral set-up. As rains get more torrential, so does the chaos. Eeshy breaks down completely and acts like a raving lunatic, when all he is feeling is immense grief and tremendous remorse for not being able to turn his promise of "first class coffin, first class band set,18 men with ceremonial staff holding the silver cross, the blessings of the Bishop" into a reality. Chemban Vinod Jose delivers a stellar performance as the well-intentioned son, who is equal parts confused and equal parts convinced about how his father's remains need to be treated. The rest of the cast, however little screen time they get, make an indelible mark.

I must confess - as much as I watched this movie because the director made another recent favourite of mine - Angamaly Diaries, I also watched this movie for Shyju Khalid, the cinematographer. As if to perfectly complement the sombre subject of the movie, the lenses weave magic with a deeply blue filter outside the house and a dimly-lit setting contrasting the jarring colours of the wall, inside the house. And the rain scenes and claustrophobia-inducing crowd shots heighten the mood even more.

This movie is not only a treatise on people's petty reactions but also makes you question the absurdity of rituals and how seriously they are taken as well. Is a life truly lived only if it ends well on a "first-class" note? And yet, the world over, why are funeral traditions as important as any other custom associated with life. What's mankind's obsession with getting death right? Well, when we know, maybe it will be too late!

Kumbalangi Nights

Men in Movies. 

Seldom have I loved the men portrayed in movies as much as I have done in Kumbalangi Nights. Seldom have I felt as moved by the representation of masculinity as I felt watching this movie. Seldom have I questioned why women blindly or sometimes implicitly propagate ideas about ideal "manly" behaviour should be, as much as I did from the women in this movie. 

Seldom have I savoured the melancholy about disturbing tales of dysfunctional families accepting the innate societal prejudice towards them, as much as I did from the central family in this movie. Seldom has the "mood" perpetuated by awe-inspiring cinematography and melodic music in a movie left me with a kind of serenity that this movie inspired. 

Kumbalangi Nights gave me many such "seldom" moments to go through and think through. It felt like the crew of this movie somehow transformed into a single conductor who brings together this symphony of all your senses together in perfect harmony, mesmerizes you in unison and leaves you in trance. Idyllic scenes of Kumbalangi, a fishing village outside of Kochi evoked a nostalgia I never knew I could be capable of. Fishing nets, lush greenery, coconut trees, balmy weather and cheerfully painted boats fill your screen and your senses. The frame meanders across the backwaters, before stopping to focus on a dilapidated brick-exposed house, that is clearly past its glory years. You are introduced to the house from the vantage point of Franky, the youngest of 4 brothers, who is clearly embarrassed to admit to his teenage soccer buddies that this is his humble adode. Now the vantage point shifts to the 3rd brother, Bobby - carefree, unemployed but the embarrassment has taken the shape of deep-seated anger at their squalor. The frame then moves to the oldest brother, Saji - the de-facto head of the family, as he folds his lungi and stirs up the fish curry that he is making. Embarrassment of their situation is still a common theme, except that it has turned into muted acceptance of reality with him. Speaking of muted, there is the "other"/second brother, Bonny - who watches and feels all of this internally and more quietly, as he cannot speak. This is a tale woven together by the perspectives of these four brothers, inhabiting a broken home with no women or doors.

Cut to the other end of neighbourhood, there's another tale of a completely credible family - the patriarch has passed away but has been replaced by the son-in-law , "the complete man". And this conveyed to you, with an image in the mirror of a perfect moustache. The shot expands to focus on the face of this man - who doesn’t have a hair out of place. After all, he has the "respectable" job of being an owner of a barber shop. So what if he's moved into his wife's family home - that doesn’t make him any less of a man because he has a "respectable" job. He has assumed the role of being the "chetta" to his wife's sister, Baby as well as the saviour of the three women in the household including his mother-in-law. The women seem to be at ill-at-ease with him, although you are left to wonder if it's out of fear or reverence. 

The film is eternally in first-gear-mode but it's a ride that you feel that you ought to enjoy at that languid pace only. There are perhaps two turning points where the film threatens to shift gears, both metaphorically and otherwise. I don’t want to give out spoilers but what these events lead to, makes you sit up and think about what masculinity truly entails. Or if it should be definable at all. In the same breath, it also makes you question about the role of women and femininity. It also, very beautifully, addresses the mental anguish suffered by the common man. In most occasions, the concept of mental trauma is often not acknowledged or wilfuly ignored or blatantly scoffed at. Does crying belligerently so much that you drench your shrink's shirt with tears make you less of a man, especially when you have been doing the heavy lifting of a family including being a mother to step brothers? Does the fact that you wrestle physically with your younger brother make you less of a brother, even though you offer unwavering support to your brother when he wants to marry a girl, whose family thinks lowly of you? Does the fact that you unfairly exploit a co-worker to feed your family make you less of a father figure,  especially when you readily bring in his wife and newborn baby into your household upon his sudden demise? The character of the eldest brother, played adeptly by Soubin Shahir, is complex to say the very least. And only Fahaad Fasil can ensure a role oozing toxic masculinity is not turned into a caricature. Each of the characters bring their own neat edge to the tale. A myriad of themes are explored through these characters and one that got me thinking for a long time is what being "progressive" is all about too.

In the off chance that  the sharp screenplay and brilliant acting don’t  enthrall you, the vivid camera work and the  enthralling soundtrack would definitely enamour you. The "nights" of Kumbalangi are near magical. If backwaters during nighttime can be romanticized to this level, I wouldn’t have slept a wink when in Kerala. Reflections of serial lights and dark blue hues of dusk hug the waters as silhouettes dance around. There are very few cinematographers who make you feel like you are flipping through an album of picturesque postcards that yet somehow fluid. This sensory assault on your pupils is accompanied by the most mellifluous background score and songs.

No movie in the recent past has made me want to pull up my laptop and start penning down my thoughts about the film, just so that I can remember how I felt watching the movie and long after it. Easily, the best to come out of Indian cinema in 2019