Bhoothakalam

Shane Nigam knows his strengths and chose the right story, location and director for his production house - Shane Nigam Film's maiden(?) venture. - Bhoothakalam. The angst ridden, depressed, down on his luck, angry and scared young man from Kochi is a role tailor-made for Shane. He is not going to lose his Kochi accent anytime, why even take a risk when he has a stake in production?

Bhoothakalam (transl. The Past,) Rahul Sadasivan's second directorial outing after Red Rain (2013) is a slow burn psychological horror/ghost story.  Shane and veteran actor Revathy play the leads as a depressed mother and an equally depressed son who got handed a load of generational trauma on top of his helplessness. They both have outdid themselves in the acting department, although when it comes to Shane I felt that he just had to act as himself on a bad hair day. For her role in Bhoothakalam Revathy won the Kerala state award for the best actor (female) in a lead role for the first time in her career, which has spanned almost four decades. 

Bhoothakalam (2022) is one of the serious ghost stories I have watched in Malayalam after long, along the lines of Sixth Sense or The Others, but on a much lighter budget. There are no cheap tricks like jump scares or odd camera angles as it moves steadfastly towards a satisfying climax.

Just like Rahul Sadasivan's next film, BramaYugam (2024), Bhoothakalam too is plenty open to interpretation. Armchair psychoanalysts and hidden meaning seekers have the opportunity for the metaphorical peeling of a few psychological onions. This is considering both the lead characters have issues which need intervention by mental health professionals. Under those circumstances it is easy to explain away the supernatural as tricks of the mind, shared psychotic disorder, drug induced hallucinations and the like. 

But I would rather watch Bhoothakalam as a ghost story it is. We have not had a good one for long and Bhoothakalam builds up slowly but surely towards a flash-freeze spine-chilling end.

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Ishq, Malayalam movie review 2019

Ishq is unsettling. The fine print of its subtitle – ‘not a love story’ warns the audience to get rid of their preconceptions about the title – Ishq (means love or passion), at the opening credits. Even with that ominous heads-up the movie starts off pretty tame with two young lovers – Sachi (Shane Nigam) and Vasudha (Ann Sheetal) sneaking texts and phone calls as they carry on their semi-long distance relationship.

The film makers have boldly attempted to address the issue of moral policing prevalent in every-town, India. In a society and culture still squirming and yearning to be free from under years of traditions, patriarchy and conventions, Ishq is a young couple’s encounter with this formidable wall and its aftershocks.

Shane Nigam has been getting a lot of tortured young hero roles – from Kismath and Eeda, to Kumbalangi Nights and Ishq. He is inching closer to being typecast with every new movie. Maybe it is his vulnerable, barely legal looks with a hint of rebellion, that leads to these type of roles land on his plate. This is wishing him he choose wisely as he goes forward.

Ann Sheetal, Shine Tom Chacko and Leona Lishoy have essayed their roles brilliantly. It was harrowing to watch the incident which became the crux of the movie without reaching for the remote. The torture the lead couple was undergoing was palpable. Good work director - Anuraj Manohar, script writer (Ratheesh Ravi) and editor (Kiran Das)! These central moments along with the ending left me a bit disturbed. The creeps-in-the-car scenes unsettled me with their sheer terror that was so subtly executed. The climax was upsetting because this was not the triumph of feminism I had wished to see. But then again had the hero turned into a feminist instead of the heroine, where is the shock factor, right?

BTW Anuraj Manohar, why the name Ishq? This is the third movie by the name of Ishq that I have seen in the last 25 years albeit they were all in different languages. Love/Ishq transcends languages, eh?

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Kannur : Inside India's Bloodiest Revenge Politics by Ullekh NP and a companion movie Eeda

Red - Kannur breathes and radiates red. From the laterite hills to the communist party flags and from its blood killing fields to its iconic Theyyams, red is the go-to color of this west coast city at the northern tip of the southern Indian state, Kerala.

With my personal connection to the place, it would have taken some significant amount of restraint to stay away from the red-jacketed book titled Kannur : Inside India's Bloodiest Revenge Politics by Ullekh N.P. The author is a native of Kannur and a journalist with Open Magazine.

The book tracks the history of violence and blood-letting that has become synonymous with the Kannur as the political killing capital of Kerala. Many faces and names of people appearing in these pages reminded me of people we might have ran into at an afternoon political discussion, at a panchayath function or at the neighborhood AKG vayanshala, all those years ago in the eighties.

My impression of the eighties Kannur, where Congress party and CPI(M) as the de-facto rivals contradicts the murders painted by numbers in this book. It is true that post-1990s, after the Babri Masjid demolition, religious fundamentalist organizations like RSS made considerable inroads into Kerala, one of the last bastions of the liberal left in India and thus replacing Congress as the main enemy for CPI(M) in Kannur. The passing of the mantle of the main CPI(M) enemy from Congress to RSS (BJP) is not evident from the narrative. At present almost all (if not all) the political killing victims are either Marxists or Hindu nationalists, Congress party members are nowhere in the picture.

The book also explores the question, why? Why did Kannur become the hot-bed, by exploring some unusual theories about the social, historical, genetic and geographic composition of the district and its inhabitants. From Chekavars to Assyrians to Portuguese it is fascinating to see various interpretations of history in an investigation to make sense of the mess.

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Eeda (translated as Here)is an excellent fictional companion piece for Ullekh N.P's book. It is a contemporary look at the political rivalries of Kannur through a Romeo-Juliet angle. Communists and Hindu nationalists stand in for Montagues and Capulets, while a young couple tries to escape the tentacles of their inherited political legacies.

Shane Nigam (Kismath) and Nimisha Sajayan (Thondimuthalum Drikthasakshiyum), the protagonists come from similar families in Kannur except their political affiliations - one with strong Marxist connections and other with Hindu nationalist leaning, which is the other side of the tracks as far as the other is concerned.

It is a smooth, natural flowing movie, the directorial debut of editor turned director B. Ajithkumar and Collective Phase One. Although other than the lead couple's accent, most of the other characters do not sound like locals, it is not because they didn't try. There is an impressive lineup of supporting characters essayed by Alencier Ley Lopez, Surabhi Lakshmi, Manikandan Achari, Sudhi Koppa and others.

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