Churuli : A properly prejudiced analysis

Lijo Jose Pellissery(LJP) is the messiah Pooh Bear of the new new-wave Malayalam cinema with his growing ranks of proselytizing followers of the male kind. He had started amassing this cult following since he had Fr. Vincent Vattoli perform miracles in his 2013 film, Amen. In my books, Amen was the last amazing film Pellissery directed. 

Amen painted a Gabriel Garcia Marquez-esque story on the vibrant and verdant canvas of Kuttanad. If the audience had missed his previous film - the raw and experimental City of Joy (had a lot of Amores Perros in it) Amen established LJP with a bang. He almost missed the mark with his audience in the next one, Double Barrel, although I had liked it. But I am not his audience. Then came Angamaly Diaries, Ee.Ma.Yau, Jallikattu and this latest film I watched a few days ago – Churuli.  

Every one of these later films are darker and progressively masculine. I must have made half-way through Angamaly Diaries, got quarter way in to Ee.Ma.Yau before giving up and didn’t attempt Jallikattu at all – India’s official entry for Oscars (Feb 2021.)  

Churuli is his 2021 release, the first movie in Malayalam that explores the possibilities of watching a movie using a VR headset. The interpretation of Churuli is best left to film critics who name drop Kurasawa to Kubrick and Tarantino to Tarkovsky to Truffaut with a side of Lijo over a cup of coffee and not someone like me, who has a biased view of LJP films. These eminent film critics might have already reviewed Churuli on hundreds of review sites and reaction videos. LJP fans, please head on over there, there is nothing for you here. But if you are here for a properly prejudiced and completely kosher (unlike the film Churuli, my review will be 100% expletive free) review, continue reading. 

Churuli means a spiral or a circular maze in Malayalam. According to Maze Building 101, some mazes have bridges, obstacles and other interesting features like boot-leg liquor stores, fire-balls and surreal characters which add to the character and mystery of the maze. Our neighborhood Halloween corn maze has Freddy Krugers and other similar boogeymen jumping out with torches or fake chainsaws. It is pretty impressive on a dark Fall night, even when you know it is all fake. Churuli also has that dark atmospheric effect (better viewed on VR headsets than wide screen TV), reinforced by its story, dialogs and cinematography, taunting the audience to discern between the real and the unreal or just enjoy the ride.

It also has an ominous bridge. Yes, the same bridge we all put off crossing till we come to it. The two main characters in Churuli are afforded no such choice - they have to cross the bridge after which the mood of the movie changes abruptly. These two undercover cops cross the bridge to reach the high range settlement called Churuli. They are in pursuit of a criminal named 'Joy' who is supposedly hiding in this settlement.

In addition to the bridge, the maze @ Churuli has a liquor store turned makeshift church and a handful of frontier roughnecks - an authentic wild West setting. The lingua franca of this mountainous labyrinth is Malayalam laden with un-adulterated 100% pure profanity, most referring to female genitalia. The film is also notable in the absence of any significant female characters. A couple who are there could have been the products of hallucinatory maze, if you ask me. 

I appreciate the presence of a director like Lijo Jose Pellissery in Malayalam cinema, the one who bravely explores different story telling configurations in his films. From the hyperlinked format (City of God, 2011) to magical realism (Amen, 2013) to alternate world building while exploring the animalistic tendencies in humans (Churuli, 2021) LJP has presented engagingly unusual cinematic compositions to Malayalam audience. 

But somewhere during that journey, LJP lost me and I stopped putting any effort to appreciate or understand the innovation he has been putting forth. Totally my loss, I guess.