Tell a thousand lies to make a wedding take place!

Ullozhukku (Undercurrent, Malayalam; 2024)

Written & Directed by: Christo Tomy

https://www.binged.com/streaming-premiere-dates/
ullozhukku-malayalam-movie-streaming-online-watch/

Urvashi was a regular in many Tamil movies in the 1980s. She used to appear in many of the blockbusters, including those acted and directed by the multitalented Bhagyaraj. She went on to win many regional and national accolades. Then her appearance declined as demand shifted toward younger faces. She became choosy about her roles as she took a breather with family life and childbearing. She shone in whatever roles she took. 

This movie is one such movie. It is a slow-moving but engaging one that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, wondering how the problem will be resolved in the end. 

Marriage plays a vital role in the Indian psyche. From a line in the Manu Smriti, often exaggerated by detractors, which equates an unmarried woman to the stones by the river being washed away. Many critical editions dismiss it as an improper translation. Modern Hindu laws do not follow this doctrine verbatim. 

A peculiar thing about Hindu funeral rituals is that some steps are omitted when the deceased is unmarried. He or she is considered to have not led a complete life. Since the deceased is not one who surrendered to a brahmachari way of life, he is assumed to have not completed his householder duties.

In Tamil, there is a saying that goes like this. 'Tell a thousand lies to make a wedding take place' because the blessings of a successful union of marriage supersede everything else. Because of this, many marriages are arranged through marriage brokers through half-truth or the convenient erasure of negativities.

Anju is married off to Thomas Kutty. Anju's mother gets her married because of her entanglement with a Hindu man. Thomas Kutty is a sickly person who had a brain injury. He has epilepsy and needs frequent hospital admissions. His mother, Leelamma, seeks the help of a broker, with a full declaration of his medical condition, to find a bride. Somehow, the truth is suppressed and the wedding proceeds.

https://english.mathrubhumi.com/movies-music/news/
ullozhukku-teaser-out-d676af5e

Anju is shocked to find herself in a meaningless marriage. There is no intimacy. She essentially ends up being a nurse for her husband. In that situation, during one of her numerous hospital trips, she bumps into her ex-boyfriend. Romance is rekindled on the sly, thanks to the privacy of the mobile phone. Anju gets pregnant.

Meanwhile, Thomas Kutty succumbs to a fall. Anju's pregnancy comes to light. Leelamma is overjoyed, thinking it is her son's progeny which was germinating.

The village they live in is perpetually underwater, even after a short spell of rain. Thomas' funeral and burial are chronically delayed. In the interim, the story of the boyfriend and the love child comes to light. The rest of the story deals with how she deals with a likeable mother-in-law whom she had wronged, her own family, who is ashamed by her action and the father of the child, who appears more like a rolling stone that collects no moss and has his eyes keenly on Leelamma's property that she had willed to pass to Anju.

A nicely done film, minus all the wailing and melodrama associated with most Indian movies.

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Who is the Master, really?

Ekõ (Malayalam; 2025)
Director: Dinjith Ayyathan

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36616410/

Just how much unquestioning loyalty is any good to anyone? 

Do you want your guard dogs to be consistently vigilant in the task you assigned them, or to be lured away by bone-throwing intruders? Do you want your Army to follow your orders blindly or have a mind of their own and do as they please? You want them to be obedient automatons, in the name of discipline, while showing their unquestionable loyalty to the piece of cloth that represents the Nation. After all, the Army is not your personal Army. It is owned by the Nation. Unless you are in Pakistan. Unlike other countries, which each own their respective Army, the Pakistan Army owns the country!

Once an equilibrium is disturbed, peace is shattered. You will find yourself trapped in a dog-eat-dog world. There will be a law-and-order issue. 

On the other hand, absolute control of a certain power, without checks and balances, can be equally damaging. Stories of generals taking over countries in the name of liberation are aplenty. Even the democratically elected leaders risk abusing their power for personal gain. 

Without a proper check and balance system, citizens may be gaslighted into thinking that they are under siege and the enemies of the State are crawling free within the country.

Under the cloak of protecting national secrecy and maintaining peace, indiscriminate punitive laws may be instituted to counter dissent.

This is quite an engaging thriller which has an unexpected twist at the end. The story starts in Malaya during World War II. It tells the story of dog breeding, guard dogs, and a missing criminal. There is a story behind the guard dogs who would do anything for their master. But who is the master, really?

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Papa, don’t preach?

Kappela (Chapel, Malayalam, 2020)
Written & Directed: Muhammad Musthafa

Another Malayalam movie that makes its viewers think.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kappela

Growing up, I often saw my mother hovering over my sisters. She would insist on having the final say on how they should dress, behave, and interact with others. My sisters believed that my mother was just a typical conservative mum, thinking her daughters were like beauty queens and that the world was an overly testosterone-charged place waiting to target them. Throughout their teenage years, they disliked my mother for that, but, being obedient girls, they simply complied and focused on their studies.

Later in life, they would tell me about the harassment they endured, as I had already left the house for further education. In hindsight, however, they thought she had to do what a mother must do to guide her children in the right direction. Perhaps they would not be so comfortably settled in life now if not for our mother's vigilance and, perhaps, paranoia. 

Again, when we, the children, became parents ourselves, we also had to balance giving freedom, being modern parents, and educating about predatory behaviours to our own. It became even more difficult with access to the outside world through social media and the spreading of anarchic values celebrated by the leftists as progressive. Whatever Eastern values were promoted are seen as outdated and discarded. 

People who have not been parents themselves might not understand the storyline. Scolding a young girl for sitting as a passenger on her male classmates' bicycle may seem old-fashioned, but her parent had his reasons. After hearing stories of children going astray, parents naturally become cautious. 

A misdialled call leads to romance between an older teenage girl who has failed her public school examinations and a random auto-rickshaw driver. The driver seems like a kind and well-meaning chap. After frequent exchanges of calls, the lovers decide to meet when her parents are away. 

At their rendezvous in another town, there is a frustrated and angry young graduate who is unable to find a job. This young man is seen as a violent individual who does not hesitate to fight for his cause. 

In the story's intriguing development, the audience is shown another side of the nice guy, who is not so nice after all, and the anti-hero is actually a saviour of the naive girl. The nice guy is a predator, and the angry man is a do-gooder. 

How many times have we witnessed these stories unfold repeatedly? The spring of youth, with its hormones impairing rational thought, may have lifelong consequences. Stalking is mistaken for care, and touching is seen as unrestrained passion and a way to express love. Sadly, only hindsight offers perfect clarity.

(P.S. Thanks, JM, for the recommendation.)

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Find love via stalking?

Annayum Rasoolum (Malayalam; 2013)

Story and Direction: Rajeev Ravi

https://madaboutmoviez.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/annayum-rasoolum-
movie-review-tender-love-story-ode-lovely-city/

This is one of those movies where stalking is portrayed as a legitimate way to try to win a girl's heart. The approach is to appear occasionally, put on a penitent expression, and hope that she will pity him and fall for him. The film also depicts a female character with no agency, swayed effortlessly like lallang in the wind, by her parents and the men in her life, without ever making a sound. This role suits Andrea Jeremiah perfectly as her debut in a Malayalam movie, portraying a naïve Catholic girl from a conservative family. 

The feminists among us would cringe that such a story is even allowed to be made, as it may steer society in that direction, since we, descendants of primates, follow the adage 'monkey see, monkey do'! Look around. People come in all forms, sizes, and ways of life. Increasingly, some among us believe that certain people should be just seen and not heard. They are also regressive in their thinking, claiming that all world problems are caused by women, the weaker sex and the ones who carry half the credibility of their male counterparts. Witnesses only carry half the weight. They are given second priority in the distribution of wealth and educational opportunities. And this trend is seen across societies. 

What fascinated me about this movie is the location. Shot in the remote and less developed areas of Kerala, in Kochi and Vichy, regions 'discovered' by the Portuguese in the late 15th century. These areas are also adjacent to the most familiar tourist spots, the backwaters of Kerala. The cinematography is simply stunning, and viewers would not mind the slow storytelling because of the visual gratification on offer. 

It is a story of love at first sight when Muslim taxi driver Rasool spots Anna, a saree shop assistant. She takes the ferry to work every day. Our hero believed the best way to win her over was to stalk her, to follow her to work. It worked. The problem mainly arose from Anna's family. They wanted Rasool to convert to Christianity, which Rasool refused. 

It swings like a yo-yo. Anna's family decide to marry her off to a random widower. In a scene almost reminiscent of the final scene from 'The Graduate', Rasool makes a dash to pull Anna away from a pre-wedding counselling course at a church. 

More trouble ensues, complicating matters further. As the ultimate solution for all life's crises, in the Indian movie style, there must be a death. 

Another crowd-pleaser in the film is the music. The songs resemble Sufi music with poetic lines about love, death, and divine forces, infused with Arabic words. It is refreshing to enjoy these Sufi melodies accompanied by electric guitars and drums.

 

The movie performed well at the box office and was nominated for many awards, winning a few on the technical side. 

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Psychological noir thriller!

Level Cross (Malayalam; 2024)
Director: Arfaz Ayub

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27328373/

Thanks, SD, again, for the recommendation. 

This time around, it is a mind-bending psychological noir thriller quite atypical of what is often seen in most Indian movies. Minus the psychedelic multiple eye-catching costumes, ornaments and landscape, we land ourselves in a monochromatic desert-like location. It is set in a God-forsaken train crossing quite far from human civilisation. The gate at the crossing is manned by a single individual who stays in his quarters just by its side. There is no human contact for miles and miles away. His only conversation with the outside world is the phone call announcing the passing of the next train. Conversations on the telephone can only be made one way. The only excitement around there was the sound of the speeding train.

One day, he finds a pretty unconscious woman in the form of Amala Paul stranded near the crossing, apparently after falling off a moving train. So starts a human interaction for this gatekeeper in years. He carries the lady to his quarters. She comes around to narrate her sob story. She used to be a psychiatrist who fell in love with her patient. After marriage, she found him to be a cocaine-snorting abusive husband who had killed his first wife. According to her, she jumped off the train to escape her husband's tyranny.

The sympathetic guard promises to protect her. When a call announces the next train, the lady forbids him from asking someone to help her reach civilisation.

The lady then discovers, while cleaning the quarters, some newspaper clippings of a mass murderer and another railway ID card with the guard's name but a different face. The lady puts two and two together and concludes that the guard is the mass murderer and has assumed the name of the real guard that he must have killed. She suddenly starts seeing him from the angle that she could be his next victim.  

femme fatale in red hue?

The following day, as the lady sets off to fetch water from a distant well, the husband appears at the doorstep, inquiring about his missing wife. He provides a contradictory account of the earlier story. The wife is the one suffering from mental illness, exhibiting violent behaviour and battling drug addiction. He is simply taking her to another town for treatment. 

The guard tries to get rid of the husband but fails. The husband sees his wife's garment.

Next is a three-way showdown to determine who will come out on top. It was 'game theory' on full display. Who is telling the truth, and who are the mad killer(s)?

This tense, high-strung thriller is reminiscent of a western film where life is cheap, or a scene in 'The Deer Hunter’ where American prisoners are forced to play Russian roulette. A good film, sans masala, draws the audience to the edge of their seats.

P.S. The movie was shot in Tunisia, hence the desert-like background in the movie, not Rajasthan.

Best film quote:  "God doesn't care about us anymore!"

Yet we talk about the film!

Kasaba (Circle, കസബ, 2016, Malayalam)
Screenplay, Director: Nithin Renji Panicker

It was probably after the release of this movie that many ardent Malayalam viewers and actors started voicing their concerns about the presence of misogyny in Mollywood. Despite the loud opposition and charges filed against the moviemakers, with the Malayalam Movie Association getting involved, it broke the record for the most widely viewed Malayalam movie teaser. Talk about the Streisand effect!

The seed of dissatisfaction was sowed against the senior actor Mammotty by many actors, especially Parvathy Thiruvadu, who was cyberbullied by trolls and Mammotty fans. Police reports flew, but she stood her ground. She went on to be the voice against misogyny in the Kerala film industry. A collective known as Women in Cinema Collective came to the forefront, opposing misogynistic dialogues for the betterment of society. They questioned why a highly respected actor like Mammotty should be so low as to partake in movies that denigrate women and their presence in society. 

This is a masala movie, much like a spaghetti western, and does not need many grey cells to follow. Rajan Zachariah is a police officer handpicked by the IGP to investigate the death of an inspector, the IGP's son and his fiancée. Even though the deaths were reported as Maoist killings, the IGP suspects foul play. 

Rajan can be labelled as a rogue cop. He walks around with a chip on his shoulder and cares two hoots about following rules. He makes his own rules and thinks he is an honest cop because he brings in the bad guys. His flirting and sexist jokes are part of his remuneration for getting his job well done.

One scene of this nature sparked controversy. As Rajan is walking haughtily, puffing his cigarette without a care in the world across a non-smoking corridor, he is rebuked by a more senior female officer. Rajan is told off for not saluting her and for lighting up in a non-smoking area. What he did afterwards was utterly out of order! He apologised unconditionally for not saluting a higher officer, extinguished his cigarette, and placed the cigarette bud in her hand, asking her to dispose of it. She retaliated by uttering, "f@#k you!" to which Rajan lifted up by her belt at her hip, saying, "Sure, and you'll be running around me for a week!" (paraphrasing from subtitles).

Soon after that film, a case appeared of an actress sexually assaulted. The rebel yell reached a disturbing pitch that compelled the government the other day to set up the Hema Commission to look into this issue. After many delays, with Covid and other political pressures, its report is out, and it is pretty damning, at least to the doyens of the industry.

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The twists of life

Manorathangal (Minescapes, Malayalam; 2024)

An anthology based on stories by MT Vasudevan Nair

After the release of the Hema committee report, the murmur, which started in 2019, is heard once again. More new victims of the Malayalam film industry are voicing their bad experiences out in the open. The report results from the Government's investigations into the alleged rise of sexual misconduct, exploitation and #MeToo complaints against big players of Mollywood.

The report's contents paint badly for the safety and working environment for the fairer sex. The report paints a picture of Mollywood as run by a mafia of senior directors, producers, and male actors who call the shots and decide which actress gets chosen and who gets the boot. To make it to the cast, the new actresses would have to endure much humiliation, denigration, and assault. The report prompted many Malayalam Movie Association chief members to resign to clear their names.

On one hand, civil societies assert that India is still not a safe place for ladies to work. This becomes more relevant now after the gruesome rape and murder of the Calcutta on-call doctor. Others are quick to add all these are not specific to Kerala or India alone. Patriarchy and power play are spread worldwide. Sudden retaliation by the public is politically motivated, ignited by self-interested parties out to create mayhem in India. Now that Malayalam movies are becoming more popular than other regional productions, people are bound to be jealous.

This collection of stories was written by Kerala's most influential storyteller, MT Vasudevan Nair. Most of the narration talks about nostalgia and how the test of time changes one's perception of reality. The picture of truth fed to us as children is a smokescreen. Time and tide change everything; hence, it is no use being haughty about what we have or being frustrated with things we do not.

The nine snippets in this collection are acted by many brilliant who's who in Malayalam cinema—Mohanlal, Mammooty, Siddique, Fahad Fazil, and more. This offering also sees the return of two famous actresses, Madhu and Nadia, after a hiatus. It talks about loneliness in a foreign country, loneliness in marriage, secret lives that adults have, love in the countryside, the hassle of having a family heirloom and how the family members vulture over it, how our values change with time and education and many more.  

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I need informed consent!

Golam (Sphere, Malayalam, 2024)

Director: Shamjad.

This is an exciting whodunnit that fans of Agatha Christie would love. The only thing is that the story is not told in an investigative manner. True, it starts off as a perplexing case where a high-flying entrepreneur is found dead in the office washroom. When the inspector tries to write it up as an unfortunate accidental death, the young investigating just-out police-college ASP, Sandeep Krishna, is cocksure that he smells homicide.  

The ASP finds it difficult to understand how the victim could slip and fall to get a fatal head injury on a dry floor. Forensics do not discover any toxins or foul play. 

The initial interview with the office staff, CCTV, and good old police work failed to go anywhere. The only thing unusual is a box of tranquilisers in one of the staff's handbags. She claims she has insomnia.

An interview with the doctor who prescribed the tranquillisers shows that all the workers in the office suffer from some kind of ailment one way or another - miscarriage, alopecia, deteriorating eyesight, memory loss and others. After looking at their cases, the doctor proposed they could be guinea pigs for the Pharma company they work for. In collaboration with their US partner, the Pharma company developed a virus. At the same time, they were creating an antidote. The good doctor suspects that the workers were fed with vaccine-laced drinks. Skin sampling is done to gauge their response to the vaccine when they fingerprint themselves and report to work. The fingerprint has an adequate DNA sample for the scientists to analyse their response to teh virus, codenamed Red Virus.

The ASP came up with a complicated plan how all the ~14 workers could have devised a devious plan to kill off their boss for vengeance, dodging the CCTV camera, locking the boss in the washroom, fuming the washroom with CO₂ gas, drowning his COPD-diseased lung, falling and succumbing to hypoxia. A clever plot! 

What happens next is the clincher. The protractor is apprehended, but instead, the ASP goes on a witch hunt against the Pharmaceutical company. He goes solo, in commando gear, to infiltrate their high-security plant in the interior to expose the company's shenanigans. The filmmakers decide to end the movie, paving the way for a sequel.

The building where yellow fever experiments were

conducted to prove that it is not transmitted using 

infected clothing (fomites). Camp Lazear.

The story of avoiding infections is the story of mankind. As in HG Wells 'The War of the Worlds', the only thing that protects the human species from total annihilation is their protection against common pathogens, not modern weapons. In the process of developing this immunity, many have to sacrifice. The story of Yellow Fever in the 1900s comes to mind.

Yellow Fever was a pressing problem in southern tropical areas of the USA. Although it was common in Cuba, periodically, epidemics broke out in the US. It was thought it was brought by bad air, poor sanitation or infected bodily fluids. It is said that a Confederate Officer tried to assassinate Lincoln by sending him old, dirty garments of patients who died of Yellow Fever, hoping that he would die of Yellow Fever. He obviously did not.

Dr Carlos Finlay of Cuba toyed with the idea that Yellow Fever was spread by mosquitoes, but he was laughed at. In 1900, Dr Walter Reed of the US Army introduced the idea of controlled studies. By using human volunteers who were willing to endure being bitten by mosquitoes for science, he proved that Yellow Fever was transmitted by certain mosquitoes. An army personnel, Jesse Lazear, died from Yellow Fever after contracting the hemorrhagic form of the disease. 

Now, would anybody make such a sacrifice in this age and time? Is it even legal? The Pharma is more than willing to conduct these experiments for us, all in the name of saving mankind. The reason, however, which is not even printed in the fine print, is that of monetary gains. Sure, they would pay off their guinea pigs handsomely. This is, however, just a drop in the ocean for these conglomerates. It would hardly jolt them.

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