Joji : A movie review

Joji is an operatic movie about a dysfunctional family, set in Erumely. The director Dileesh Pothan is on his way to becoming the Bard of Kerala's malanadu (the foothills of Western Ghats) - the Kottayam-Idukki border lands.

I was on a K. J. George rediscovery trip during 2020 and Irakal, one of K.G.G's path breaking movies I watched a few months ago is still fresh in my mind. Joji is very similar in setup and composition to Irakal than Macbeth which Dileesh Pothan acknowledged he was inspired by, in his movie announcement poster.

Joji is a 21st century version of the K. G. George's 20th century masterpiece.  Then again, I have not read Macbeth, except as an abridged comic book, thirty some years ago. Pardon my Shakespeare.

If Joji reminded me anything Shakespearean, and it does with its operatically wailing violin BGM, it is King Lear. I had to sit through repeated screenings of Grigoriy Kozintsev's Russian B&W classic Karol Lir from 1970 at an impressionable young age of 8 or 9. All I remember of that King Lear movie is that the King had 3 adult children and they were all plotting/waiting for him to die, much like in this Dileesh Pothan classic half a century later. 

Joji is a socially detached loner, the youngest son of a rubber estate owner. His American equivalent will be the 30 year old son living in his parents' basement, surviving on Cheetos and video-games, without a job in sight. While the youngest no-good son of a rich plantation owner living in a joint family is the common theme in Joji and Irakal (there are more similarities which I am not going to explore as I don't feel like going into thesis mode today), their greatest contrast is in the treatment and exploration of this theme. 

Irakal in 1985 presents you a Gen X-er dealing with his powerless position, taking matters into his own hands and exerting his independence. Ganeshan in his debut role as Baby, the youngest son - engineering college drop-out and black sheep of the family, is very much a product of the turbulent 70s (ref: declaration of emergency in India in the late 70s) when he came of age and is a seething angry young man with some psycho-social tendencies thrown in for good measure.

Joji meanwhile is a millennial and he inhabits a movie reflective of our current times. He is laid-back and lacks focus, but acts too cool to care. The writer, Syam Pushkaran, the master of minutiae, reveals every one of his characters and their psyches through layered yet succinct dialogue. Shyju Khalid's camera is instrumental in capturing the fine nuances of the characters and the location in a film that relies very much on subtlety. 

There are only a handful of characters in the film, and the story and camera are tightly focused on them. There is the iron-fisted patriarch Panachel Kuttappan (V. P. Sunny), who is in better shape than his three sons and does several push-ups, too many to count, every day. He is served by his two older sons - the divorced elder son Jomon (Baburaj) who loves the bottle and the meek second son Jaison (Joji Mundakayam) who manages the family businesses with the trickle of money released each day by the patriarch. Between them is Jaison's wife and the daughter in law of the family, Bincy (Unnimaya Prasad), and finally there is the title character - the lazy dreamer with half-assed plans - Joji (an almost emaciated Fahadh Fazil.) Other significant characters are essayed by Shammi Thilakan as Dr. Felix - Panachel family's friend and physician, Basil Joseph as Father Kevin and Alister Alex as Poppy, Jomon's teenage son.

Joji's transformation from a detached sleep loving loafer who spends endless afternoons with a fishing rod that catches no fish (the fishing rod or the fishless pond might be the problem here) to the person he ultimately becomes is a bit incomprehensible for my Gen X brain. Unlike Baby in Irakal who had all the makings of a psychopath from scene one and whose character arc was predictable, Joji's metamorphosis has shades of implausibility. Despite this flaw, the technical harmonization of all the elements of the film - script, camera, acting and background score makes it a treat to watch.