Kireedam

KIREEDAM (1989)

I don't think I've seen a film so precisely chart how quickly a good man can be dismantled once violence enters his life as a supposed solution.

Sethumadhavan is a mild, well-liked young man in his village, the pride of his retired police-officer father, engaged to be married and hoping for a stable government job. When circumstances force him into a single act of violence to protect someone he loves, it opens a door he can never close again — local gangsters exploit his new reputation, dragging him deeper into the underworld until the man his father once admired is unrecognizable, and the tragedy that follows feels less like a twist than an inevitability.

Mohanlal's performance here is towering — I mean that literally, in how much he lets Sethu shrink and coarsen across the film without ever losing our sympathy. It's frequently cited as among his finest work, and watching it, I understand exactly why: he plays the corrosion of decency in real time rather than skipping to the aftermath. Thilakan, as the father, gives the film its moral spine and its most heartbreaking moments — his disappointment lands harder than any of the film's violence.

Sibi Malayil directs with a clear-eyed, almost social-realist restraint, refusing to glamorize the violence Sethu is pulled into. Johnson's score threads grief through even the film's tenser sequences, and the editing paces Sethu's decline with a patience that makes his fall feel earned rather than melodramatic. Lohithadas's dialogue, unsurprisingly given his pedigree, never overstates the tragedy — it lets silences and simple sentences carry devastating weight.

Sibi Malayil and writer A.K. Lohithadas were building a reputation as one of the strongest director-writer pairings in Malayalam cinema at this point, and Kireedam stands as arguably the finest expression of their shared instinct for grounded, working-class tragedy.

The film was both a critical and commercial triumph, frequently cited among the greatest Malayalam films ever made, and it cemented Mohanlal's reputation as an actor capable of true dramatic depth rather than just commercial charisma.

At its core, I think this film is asking how much of our identity is actually chosen versus imposed on us by a single moment we didn't fully choose. 

My biggest takeaway, goodness is not a fixed trait, it's a fragile daily practice, and Kireedam shows with devastating clarity how quickly circumstance can hollow it out from a genuinely decent man.

Namukku Paarkkan Munthiri Thopukkal

NAMUKKU PARKKAN MUNTHIRI THOPPUKAL (1986)

This is one of those rare films that made me cry not from tragedy exactly, but from how gently it insists that beauty and grief can occupy the same room without cancelling each other out.

Based on a Bengali novel, it tells the story of Solomon, a piano tuner, and his romance with the much younger Sofia, set against a Kerala Christian community. Their love story is tender and unusual for its portrayal of an age-gap relationship treated with dignity rather than scandal, but the film's real subject is mortality — Solomon knows time is against him, and the story becomes as much about accepting a finite happiness as it is about romance itself.

Mohanlal plays Solomon with a gentleness I don't associate with his more commanding roles — there's real vulnerability here, a man aware of his own diminishing time and choosing joy anyway. Shari, as Sofia, brings an unforced warmth that makes the central relationship feel earned rather than provocative, which could easily have gone wrong in less careful hands.

Padmarajan directs with real tenderness toward his community and setting — the Kerala Christian milieu is rendered with specificity and affection rather than exoticism. Johnson's music is aching and lyrical, and the title song has a wistfulness that lingers well past the film's runtime. The editing lets scenes of ordinary domestic happiness breathe, understanding that the emotional stakes here live in small gestures, not big events.

Padmarajan was already regarded as one of Malayalam cinema's most humane, literary voices, unafraid of unconventional romantic pairings, and this film is often held up as one of his most delicate and fully realized works.

It was both a critical and commercial success, still fondly remembered and frequently revisited, and it remains a touchstone for how Malayalam cinema handled unconventional love stories with sensitivity rather than sensationalism.

Underneath the romance, I think the film is really exploring how we choose to love fully even when we know the clock is already running against us. 

My biggest takeaway: joy doesn't need permission from time to be real — Solomon and Sofia's happiness isn't diminished by its brevity, it's actually defined by how consciously they choose it anyway.

Yavanika

YAVANIKA (1982)

I love films that pretend to be one genre and are quietly something else entirely, and Yavanika is the best kind of trick — a murder mystery that's actually an anatomy of a group of people who've spent so long performing for an audience that they've forgotten how to be honest with each other, even in private.

A troupe of musicians is on tour when their tabla player, Ayyappan — brilliant, arrogant, cruel — goes missing, presumed murdered. A police inspector investigates, and through his questioning we get the whole troupe's buried resentments, humiliations, and complicities laid bare one by one. The "whodunit" becomes almost incidental to the real reveal — how much damage one talented, toxic man can do to an entire ecosystem of people who need him and despise him in equal measure.

Bharath Gopy as the inspector is astonishing in his patience — he interrogates like he's peeling fruit, never rushing the bruise to the surface. Mammootty, as Ayyappan, is magnetic even in absence; the film builds him almost entirely through other people's fear and resentment of him, and by the time we understand him fully, we understand why almost everyone in that troupe had a reason to want him gone.

K.G. George shoots this with a theatrical, claustrophobic intimacy — the backstage world of the orchestra becomes its own pressure cooker, and the camera rarely lets you breathe outside it.

The editing has a novelistic patience, letting each character's testimony recontextualize the last. And the use of live performance and music within the narrative isn't decoration — it's structurally part of the mystery, since the troupe's art and their cruelty run on the same stage.

George was already known by this point for unflinching, morally complex portraits of Kerala's middle class, and Yavanika is arguably his most disciplined marriage of genre mechanics with real psychological depth — I'd call it the film where his ambition and his control finally met each other fully.

It was both a critical and commercial success in its time, and has only grown in stature since — regularly cited among the finest Malayalam films ever made, and a clear influence on the psychological-mystery strain of Indian cinema that followed it.

What the film is really asking, underneath the murder plot, is what we owe each other when talent and cruelty live in the same body — and whether an audience's applause makes everyone backstage complicit in what that talent gets away with. 

My biggest takeaway: the curtain — the yavanika — doesn't just separate performer from audience. It separates who we perform as from who we actually are, and George is far more interested in what happens once it falls.

Chidambaram

Chidamaram (1985)

This is a film I find myself returning to less for what happens in it and more for what it refuses to explain, which I've come to think is its entire philosophy.

Set on a remote cattle farm, it follows Muniyandi, a caretaker, and Shankaran, a supervisor who begins an affair with Muniyandi's wife Shivakami. When Muniyandi discovers the betrayal and takes his own life, guilt doesn't just haunt Shankaran and Shivakami — it seems to physically warp the landscape they inhabit, and years later, both are drawn back to the site of what they did, unable to outrun it.

Gopi's Shankaran carries guilt the way some men carry a limp — visible in the smallest gestures, never spoken aloud. Smita Patil, in one of her final performances, plays Shivakami with an almost unbearable interiority; she says so little and communicates everything, and I think it's one of the great tragedies of Indian cinema that we lost her so soon after. Srinivasan, as Muniyandi, makes his eventual despair feel inevitable rather than melodramatic, which is a very hard needle to thread.

Aravindan shoots the natural world — mist, cattle, hills — not as backdrop but as a kind of silent moral witness, and Shaji N. Karun's cinematography (his first as a full cinematographer) is extraordinary, all natural light and unhurried framing that makes guilt feel geological rather than psychological. The editing is patient to the point of demanding real surrender from the viewer — this is not a film that will meet you halfway. Dialogue is sparse almost to the point of absence, which I initially found frustrating and eventually realized was the entire point.

Aravindan was already established as one of Malayalam cinema's most poetic, least conventional voices, and Chidambaram feels like the culmination of everything he'd been building toward — trusting image and silence over exposition more completely than in any of his earlier work.

It won the National Film Award for Best Film and cemented Aravindan's reputation on the international festival circuit, even as it remained a difficult, non-commercial work for general audiences — the kind of acclaim that lives in cinephile memory more than box office records.

What I think the film is really exploring is how guilt doesn't get resolved by time or distance — it just gets absorbed into the landscape of a life, quietly reshaping everything after it, without ever fully surfacing into words. My biggest takeaway: some sins are never spoken because language would make them smaller than what they actually did to the people who carry them.

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam: The Strange Dream of Being Someone Else

There are films that tell us a story, and then there are films that leave us wondering whether the story was ever real at all. Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam, directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery, belongs firmly to the latter category. It is an enigmatic, deeply philosophical film about identity, grief, memory and the strange borders between one human life and another.

James, played by Mammootty, is travelling with a group of Malayali pilgrims returning from Velankanni. He is irritable, practical and dismissive, particularly towards the Tamil world around him. Then, during a lazy afternoon nap, something inexplicable happens. He wakes up, stops the bus in a Tamil village and suddenly becomes Sundaram, a man who disappeared from that village years earlier.

What follows is not a conventional explanation of whether James has been possessed, hypnotised, hallucinated or somehow entered another man's identity. Lijo deliberately refuses to solve the mystery. Instead, he asks us to accept the impossible and observe what happens when the boundaries of identity begin to dissolve.

Mammootty's performance is extraordinary precisely because he does not appear to be acting like Sundaram. His voice, posture, expressions, Tamil diction and entire physical presence change. James seems to disappear and another man occupies his body. The transformation is so complete that the question gradually shifts from “Who is this man?” to “What exactly makes us who we are?”

That is where the film becomes fascinating.

James begins the journey with prejudices about Tamil food, music, language and culture. Yet by becoming Sundaram, he is forced to inhabit precisely the world he had dismissed. The boundary between Malayali and Tamil, outsider and insider, suddenly becomes meaningless. Beneath language, customs and geography are the same human emotions: love, loneliness, fear, longing and grief.

Lijo reinforces this idea through his remarkable visual style. Many scenes are composed as wide, static frames, almost like a theatre stage. People enter, perform their roles, speak their lines and leave. It creates the strange sensation that life itself is a performance and that our identities are costumes we wear for a while.

And then there is Sundaram's family.

For them, James is not simply an intruder behaving strangely. For one extraordinary day, the man they lost seems to have returned. They know something is wrong, yet they allow the illusion to continue. Perhaps because grief sometimes needs something that reason cannot provide.

James becomes Sundaram, and Sundaram becomes a temporary possibility of closure.

The title itself, Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam, meaning “A Midday Slumber,” becomes the film's deepest metaphor. James falls asleep in the middle of the day and wakes up as another man. But perhaps Lijo is suggesting something larger: that what we call our fixed identity, our language, our prejudices, our memories and even our sense of self may itself be a kind of temporary dream.

We spend a lifetime saying I am this person, from this place, belonging to these people.

Then one afternoon, metaphorically or literally, the boundaries blur. Perhaps the film's final mystery is not whether James was Sundaram. It is whether any of us is ever entirely certain who we really are.

2018

2018: When Humanity Rose Above the Waters

Some films tell us about disasters. Some make us witness them. 2018: Everyone Is a Hero makes us remember what we are capable of when disaster strips away everything that normally separates us.

Jude Anthany Joseph's 2023 Malayalam film recreates the devastating Kerala floods of 2018 through a collection of ordinary lives. There is no single superhero at its centre. Instead, there is Anoop, a former soldier carrying the burden of his past; Shaji, an apparently timid man who discovers courage when circumstances demand it; Nixon, dreaming of a life abroad while struggling to understand his fisherman father; Ramesh and many others whose lives begin in the familiar landscape of ordinary Kerala concerns. They argue, fall in love, worry about money, carry resentments and pursue small dreams. They are simply living.

And then the water comes.

The brilliance of 2018 is that the disaster does not arrive merely as spectacle. It arrives as a great equaliser.

The distinctions that seemed important yesterday suddenly become meaningless. The rich and poor need the same boat. The educated and uneducated need the same helping hand. Religion, caste, occupation, political differences and personal grudges lose their importance when the water rises to the roof.

The film captures the terrifying psychology of a disaster particularly well. At first there is disbelief. Then inconvenience. Then fear. Then the awful realisation that the familiar world is disappearing beneath the water.

And when institutions and infrastructure are overwhelmed, something remarkable happens.

Ordinary people become extraordinary.

Fishermen take their boats into currents that could kill them. Neighbours rescue strangers. Young men risk their lives for people they have never met. People who were quarrelling yesterday suddenly stand shoulder to shoulder. The fisherman who once seemed insignificant becomes a lifeline. The reluctant man discovers courage. The frightened man acts despite his fear.

That is why the film's title is so meaningful.

Everyone is a hero.

Not because everyone performs some spectacular act, but because heroism becomes a possibility available to ordinary human beings when somebody else needs them.

There are moments when 2018 comes close to becoming conventional disaster cinema, particularly in its emotional manipulation and large-scale spectacle. But its emotional centre remains powerful because the disaster actually happened. Kerala remembers those waters. The boats, helicopters, rescue operations, flooded homes and desperate families are not imaginary cinematic inventions. They are part of a collective memory.

And perhaps that is what makes the film deeply moving. Disasters reveal something uncomfortable about civilisation. We spend our lives building boundaries around ourselves: my house, my family, my community, my money, my status, my religion, my problems.

Then nature arrives and reminds us how fragile all those boundaries are.

But 2018 also offers a more hopeful lesson. A disaster can destroy infrastructure, homes and lives. Yet it can also awaken something buried within human beings: courage, compassion, sacrifice, cooperation and an instinctive refusal to leave another person behind.

The floodwaters rose beyond anything people imagined. And in response, the human spirit rose too.

Perhaps that is the final lesson of 2018. Sometimes humanity discovers its greatest strength only when everything else has been taken away.

A catastrophe can bring out the worst in people. But sometimes, when circumstances demand the impossible, ordinary men and women reach somewhere beyond their known limits and do things they never believed they were capable of doing. And that is strangely inspiring.

Because perhaps the greatest human achievement is not surviving the storm. It is discovering, in the middle of the storm, how much humanity we still possess.

Kumbalangi Nights

Kumbalangi Nights: When a Broken House Learns to Become a Home

Few Malayalam films have understood the difference between a house and a home as beautifully as Kumbalangi Nights. Set against the quiet beauty of a Kerala fishing village, Madhu C. Narayanan's 2019 film appears at first to be a story about four dysfunctional brothers sharing a dilapidated house. But underneath its humour, romance and gentle chaos lies a much deeper examination of masculinity, family, class, loneliness and the human need to belong.

Saji, Bobby, Boney and Franky are brothers by blood but strangers in many ways. Their father is dead, their mother has disappeared from their lives, and nobody has really taught them how to care for one another. Their house is unfinished because, in a sense, so are they. Each brother carries his own wound, and they have learnt to survive by keeping their distance.

Then comes love. Bobby falls for Baby, but her brother-in-law Shammi becomes the film's most disturbing presence. Played brilliantly by Fahadh Faasil, Shammi presents himself as the perfect husband, brother-in-law and "complete man". His immaculate grooming, polite smile and exaggerated confidence conceal something deeply insecure and controlling. He represents a masculinity that believes the household must revolve around the man's authority.

And this is where Kumbalangi Nights becomes much more than a family drama.

Shammi wants to control a family. The brothers have to learn how to become one. The film quietly dismantles the conventional idea that men must be strong, silent and emotionally invulnerable. Saji cries. The brothers embrace. They admit their fears. Saji eventually seeks professional psychological help. Nobody becomes weaker because they express pain. They become capable of healing.

That is perhaps the film's most radical idea: vulnerability is not the opposite of masculinity. It may be the beginning of maturity.

The film also challenges the idea that family is determined only by blood. This household begins as four men barely able to tolerate one another. Gradually, women, children, friends and outsiders enter their lives, and the cold, chaotic structure begins to acquire warmth. The house changes because the people inside it change.

There is also a sharp class dimension. The unfinished house becomes a social label. The brothers are judged before they are understood. Bobby's love becomes unacceptable not simply because of family dynamics, but because Shammi sees the brothers as socially inferior. Respectability becomes a weapon.

Yet Kumbalangi Nights never delivers its message through lectures. It allows us to discover it through laughter, awkwardness, tears, silence and small acts of kindness.

By the end, the transformation is not really about repairing a building. It is about repairing the idea of family.

The four brothers begin as damaged men occupying the same address. They end by understanding that family is not merely the people who share your blood or your roof. It is the people who stay when you are broken, listen when you cannot speak, hold you when you fall and help you become whole again.

Perhaps that is what Kumbalangi Nights leaves us with: A home is not built with bricks, walls and a roof. It is built when people finally feel safe enough to be vulnerable with one another. And sometimes, the most beautiful families are the ones we slowly choose to create.

Drishyam 3

Drishyam 3: The Price of Protecting a Family

There was a time when Georgekutty believed he could outsmart everyone. In Drishyam, he was the ordinary man who discovered that intelligence, observation and an extraordinary instinct for his family could defeat an entire police machinery. In Drishyam 2, he became the architect of a perfect cover-up, but the price was a family condemned to live with a secret. In Drishyam 3, Jeethu Joseph asks the question that perhaps matters most: what happens to a man after living with that secret for thirteen years?

Georgekutty is now a successful film producer, having turned the story of his own past into cinema. Yet prosperity has not brought peace. Anju remains psychologically scarred, Rani tries to hold the family together, and Georgekutty himself has become increasingly paranoid and emotionally exhausted. His old enemies return when Prabhakaran, Varun's grieving father, joins forces with the unstable former constable Sahadevan and others to construct an elaborate trap around Anju and the family. Georgekutty once again sees through the conspiracy and dismantles it piece by piece.

But this time something is different.

Georgekutty is no longer merely fighting to escape the law. He is fighting to escape the life he has created.

The three films therefore form a fascinating progression. The first was about protecting a family. The second was about protecting the secret. The third becomes about the psychological and moral price of having done both. The brilliant family man who once seemed almost invincible has aged into someone carrying an enormous invisible weight. Mohanlal understands this beautifully. His Georgekutty is quieter, more vulnerable and more haunted, and the actor's greatest achievement is allowing us to see the cracks beneath the familiar composure.

The climax is consequently not another victory of cleverness. Georgekutty finally surrenders, accepting imprisonment for Varun's death in exchange for the safety of his family. Yet even in surrender, he remains Georgekutty: he has calculated the move, protected his daughter and ensured that the evidence he possesses remains a final warning to Prabhakar.

Is this really the end?

Jeethu Joseph has described Drishyam 3 as the concluding chapter, yet the final moments deliberately refuse complete closure. Geetha's grief and demand for justice remain alive, leaving a faint but unmistakable door open.

And perhaps that ambiguity is appropriate.

Because Drishyam was never merely about a murder and a cover-up. It was about how far a parent will go to protect a child, and what happens when love, fear, morality and survival occupy the same room.

Across three films, Mohanlal has transformed Georgekutty from an ordinary cable operator into one of Malayalam cinema's most fascinating morally wounded characters. Jeethu Joseph's real achievement is making us repeatedly ask whether Georgekutty is a hero, a criminal, a loving father, or simply a man who crossed one line to protect his family and then spent thirteen years discovering that there are no easy lines left.

Perhaps that is what Drishyam ultimately wanted us to understand:

You may escape the law. You may defeat your enemies. You may even bury the truth. But you cannot always escape yourself.

Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra

 Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra: A New World Rises from Kerala's Folklore

Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra is an audacious attempt to give Malayalam cinema its own superhero mythology, and its greatest achievement is that it does not begin with superheroes. It begins with Kerala's folklore and asks a fascinating question: what if the Yakshis, Chathans and other supernatural beings of our stories actually existed, quietly inhabiting the modern world?

Directed by Dominic Arun, the film places Chandra, played with striking restraint by Kalyani Priyadarshan, in neon-lit Bengaluru. She is mysterious, immensely powerful and carrying a secret that gradually unfolds. Her ordinary neighbour Sunny, played wonderfully by Naslen, and his friends provide the film's warmth and humour, while Sandy's menacing Inspector Nachiyappa represents something more frightening than the supernatural: ordinary human cruelty, corruption and misogyny.

The film works best when it trusts mystery. The flashbacks revealing the origins of Kalliyankattu Neeli give the familiar Yakshi legend a fresh interpretation, transforming a figure traditionally associated with fear and vengeance into a powerful survivor. The mythology is not fully explained, and that is both the film's strength and its occasional weakness. By the end, we have more questions than answers about Chandra, Moothon and the larger supernatural order.

Technically, Lokah is exceptional. Nimish Ravi's cinematography, Chaman Chakko's editing and Jakes Bejoy's music create a striking visual and sonic world, while the action choreography gives Chandra genuine physical power. The film does occasionally borrow familiar superhero and vampire tropes, and the narrative becomes somewhat stretched in places, but its ambition remains infectious.

Its extraordinary success can, in my view, be attributed to four things. First, it takes a globally familiar genre and gives it a distinctly Kerala soul. Second, it places a woman at the centre without making her identity as a female superhero the entire point of the film. Third, it combines spectacle with humour and believable human characters. And finally, it understands the power of curiosity. Every revelation opens another door.

The post-credit appearances of Tovino Thomas as Michael/Chathan and Dulquer Salmaan's Charlie/Odiyan connection make it clear that Chandra is only the beginning. The planned subsequent chapters promise a much larger Wayfarer Cinematic Universe, with Lokah Chapter 2 already announced.

And that is ultimately why Lokah promises so much.

It is not merely creating another superhero. It is attempting something more exciting: to turn the mythology we inherited into a mythology for the generation we are becoming.

For centuries, Kerala's supernatural stories lived in books, oral traditions and collective memory. Lokah has opened the door and invited them into the modern world.

Chapter One has not told us everything. It has done something more important: it has made us want to know what comes next. And in the age of cinematic universes, that may be the most powerful superpower of all.

Bramayugam

Bramayugam – Time, Terror, and the Illusion of Freedom

Bramayugam (2024), directed by Rahul Sadasivan, is a haunting black-and-white folk horror set in 17th-century Malabar, a time where feudal power, oral traditions, and supernatural belief systems coexist without clear boundaries. At its core, the film follows Thevan, a folk singer from a marginalized community who escapes slavery, only to find himself trapped in a decaying ancestral mansion ruled by the enigmatic Kodumon Potti and his silent cook. What begins as a story of escape slowly transforms into a philosophical nightmare about power, identity, and the cyclical nature of oppression.

The Journey into Darkness

Thevan’s journey begins in desperation. Fleeing slave catchers with a companion, he enters a dense, almost mythic forest that feels less like geography and more like a threshold between worlds. When his friend is brutally killed by an unseen supernatural force in the night, Thevan is left utterly alone—stripped of companionship, direction, and certainty.

By morning, he stumbles upon a traditional mana—grand, isolated, and decaying. It is here that survival first masquerades as salvation.

The House of Kodumon Potti

Inside the mansion, Thevan is welcomed by Kodumon Potti, a feudal patriarch who initially appears generous, even progressive in his disregard for caste boundaries. He feeds Thevan, shelters him, and speaks with a calm authority that feels almost divine. Alongside him is the cook—silent, observant, and deeply unsettling—who becomes a constant, unreadable presence in the house.

But this hospitality is the first layer of a carefully constructed trap.

Thevan soon realizes that the mansion is not a refuge but a prison, and Potti is not merely a man but a Chathan—a malevolent shape-shifting entity rooted in Kerala folklore. The house itself becomes an extension of his will, bending time, perception, and human psychology to sustain his dominance.

Power, Fear, and Psychological Warfare

What unfolds is not a conventional horror narrative but a slow psychological disintegration. Thevan and the cook become unwilling participants in a silent war of endurance against Potti. The mansion operates like a closed system of control—where food, language, and even silence are weaponized.

Potti’s power is not just supernatural; it is ideological. He embodies the feudal logic of eternal ownership—of land, bodies, and time itself. The cook, though seemingly subordinate, becomes a mirror to Thevan’s fate, suggesting that survival in this house always comes at the cost of identity.

The Ending and the Final Twist

The climax of Bramayugam is both shocking and deeply cyclical. Thevan eventually discovers the truth: Kodumon Potti is not a singular being but a recurring manifestation of the Chathan, sustained through ritual, deception, and the continuous replacement of victims.

In a desperate act of resistance, Thevan kills Potti, believing he has broken free from the cycle. But freedom in Bramayugam is an illusion.

The final revelation is devastating—Thevan himself becomes the new Kodumon Potti. The mansion does not die; it simply changes its master. The cook remains, silent as ever, now witnessing the transformation of yet another victim into the next embodiment of the same eternal force. The cycle of oppression continues, unbroken and indifferent.

Performances and the Power of Minimalism

With only three central characters, the film relies entirely on performance and presence. Mammootty delivers a towering, almost spectral performance as Kodumon Potti, shifting effortlessly between warmth, menace, and metaphysical detachment. It is a role that demands restraint and intensity in equal measure, and he inhabits it with unsettling precision.

Arjun Ashokan, as Thevan, anchors the film emotionally. His transformation from desperate escapee to broken survivor—and finally to something far more ambiguous—is rendered with quiet devastation. Sidharth Bharathan, as the cook, adds a layer of silent tension, embodying the fear of permanence within oppression.

Mammootty’s performance, in particular, stands as one of the most commanding in recent Malayalam cinema, and a fitting recognition through national acclaim feels not just deserved but inevitable.

Folklore, Mythology, and the Chathan

At the heart of Bramayugam lies the folklore of the Chathan—a trickster spirit in Kerala mythology often associated with illusion, bondage, and moral ambiguity. The film reinterprets this entity not as a distant myth but as a living system of power. The Chathan is not just a creature; it is a structure that perpetuates itself through human weakness, fear, and complicity.

The mansion becomes its temple, and time itself becomes its weapon.

The Language of Black and White

One of the most striking artistic choices in Bramayugam is its monochrome cinematography. The black-and-white palette is not merely aesthetic—it is narrative. It strips the world of distraction, forcing the viewer to confront texture, shadow, and silence with heightened awareness.

Light becomes authority. Darkness becomes uncertainty. Together, they create a visual grammar that mirrors the moral ambiguity of the story. The absence of color also collapses time, making the 17th-century setting feel both historical and eternal, as if the events are not confined to a period but to a condition of existence.

The Power of Three

The decision to center the entire film around just three actors intensifies its claustrophobic power. There is no escape into subplots or external worlds. The mansion is the world. The characters are the system. Every interaction carries the weight of survival, domination, or submission.

This minimalism transforms the film into something closer to a philosophical chamber piece than a traditional horror narrative.

Final Reflection

Bramayugam is ultimately not a story about escape, but about the impossibility of escaping systems of power that regenerate themselves through time and belief. It suggests that oppression is not always external—it can be inherited, absorbed, and even unconsciously continued by those who once suffered under it.

In its final, unsettling turn, the film leaves us with a profound question: if every victim eventually becomes the oppressor, where does the cycle truly end?

Perhaps it does not.

And perhaps that is the point.

In daring to tell such a radical, unsettling story with uncompromising vision, Bramayugam reminds us that cinema is not just entertainment—it is memory, myth, and warning. And sometimes, the courage to tell such radical stories is what quietly reshapes history itself.

Jallikattu

Jallikattu – Chaos as Cinema, Cinema as Chaos

Jallikattu (2019), directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery, is a visceral, anarchic action-thriller set in a remote high-range village where a buffalo escapes just before it is meant to be slaughtered for a local feast. What begins as a practical problem of recapturing a runaway animal quickly mutates into an uncontrollable descent into collective madness. The film is driven by a simple but potent motivation: the villagers’ desire to capture the buffalo before it disrupts their ritual, their economy, and their sense of control. But as the animal runs deeper into the forested terrain, it drags the entire community into a spiraling confrontation with their own primal instincts.

The Inciting Incident and the Spark of Disorder

The story is set in motion when Varkey, a butcher, prepares a buffalo for slaughter as part of a village feast. In a sudden act of resistance, the animal breaks free from its tether and escapes into the dense, rugged landscape. This single moment of rupture becomes the catalyst for everything that follows. What should have been a straightforward retrieval turns into an obsession, as the villagers interpret the escape not just as a loss of meat, but as a challenge to their authority, pride, and collective identity.

The Escalation of Chaos

As the buffalo continues to evade capture, the situation escalates beyond control. What begins as a small group effort soon swells into a massive, frenzied mob hunt involving hundreds of men. The terrain becomes a battleground, and the pursuit transforms into something far more volatile than a search operation. Personal rivalries surface, long-standing ego clashes erupt, and buried social tensions begin to dictate behavior. The hunt ceases to be about the animal and becomes instead a spectacle of dominance, masculinity, and unchecked aggression.

Lijo Jose Pellissery orchestrates this chaos with deliberate intensity, refusing to offer the audience a stable point of view. The camera moves restlessly through bodies, firelight, mud, and noise, immersing the viewer in a sensory overload that mirrors the psychological breakdown of the crowd itself.

Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Evolving Language of Cinema

Lijo Jose Pellissery has consistently shown a fascination with human behavior under pressure, often placing his characters in tightly contained or socially charged environments where order begins to collapse. From the controlled chaos of Angamaly Diaries to the existential unease of Ee.Ma.Yau., his films have steadily moved toward a cinema of experience rather than linear storytelling.

Jallikattu represents a further progression in this trajectory. Here, narrative clarity is deliberately sacrificed in favor of sensory immersion. The story is not simply told—it is unleashed. The film becomes less about what happens and more about what it feels like when civilization begins to fracture in real time. In this sense, Lijo pushes his style to its most extreme form, testing the limits of audience endurance and interpretation.

Man vs Beast – The Metaphor Beneath the Hunt

At its core, Jallikattu is not about a buffalo. It is about what the buffalo reveals. The animal becomes a living metaphor for resistance, chaos, and the untamed force that exposes the fragility of human order. As the chase intensifies, the distinction between man and beast begins to blur. The villagers, driven by rage, pride, and collective hysteria, gradually shed their civility and descend into a state that mirrors the very animal they are pursuing.

The film constructs a powerful allegory: the buffalo is not the enemy of man, but his reflection. The more violently the villagers attempt to assert control over the animal, the more they reveal their own inability to control themselves. Mob mentality takes over, and individual identity dissolves into collective instinct.

The Metaphorical Ending

The film’s ending resists conventional resolution. The buffalo, after enduring relentless pursuit, is ultimately killed—but the victory feels hollow, almost irrelevant. The final moments suggest that nothing has truly been resolved. The chaos has not been contained; it has merely been momentarily paused. The villagers are left not with triumph, but with exhaustion and a lingering sense of unease, as if they have witnessed something about themselves they cannot unsee.

The ending functions less as closure and more as an echo. It implies that the real beast was never the buffalo, but the collective human impulse toward destruction when order collapses. The hunt ends, but the revelation remains.

A Divided Reception – Genius or Confusion?

Jallikattu is one of those rare films that refuses to offer interpretive comfort, and as a result, it divides audiences sharply. Some viewers hail it as a masterpiece of experimental cinema, praising its audacity, technical brilliance, and thematic depth. Others find it overwhelming, disorienting, and ultimately inaccessible, struggling to extract a clear message from its controlled chaos. There are also those who simply walk away unable to make sense of what they have witnessed.

This division is perhaps inevitable. By choosing chaos as both form and content, the film risks losing narrative clarity in favor of experiential intensity. In doing so, it raises a larger question about cinema itself: how far can storytelling stretch before meaning becomes secondary to sensation?

Final Reflection

Jallikattu stands as a bold cinematic experiment that pushes Malayalam cinema into uncharted territory. It is a film that does not merely depict chaos—it constructs it, immerses the viewer in it, and forces them to confront its implications. Whether one sees it as a triumph or a misfire often depends on how much chaos one is willing to accept as storytelling.

In the end, Jallikattu is less a film to be understood and more a film to be experienced—and debated long after the noise has faded.

Kaathal: The Core

Kaathal: The Core – A Quiet Revolution in Malayalam Cinema

Kaathal: The Core (2023), directed by Jeo Baby, stands as one of the most courageous and emotionally restrained films in contemporary Malayalam cinema. At its heart, the film dares to explore a deeply taboo subject within a conservative social fabric—the hidden sexuality of a man who has lived an entire life within the accepted boundaries of marriage, family, and public respectability. In doing so, it transforms what could have been a sensational premise into a profoundly humane study of dignity, silence, and emotional truth.

A Taboo Subject Told with Rare Sensitivity

The very foundation of Kaathal deserves recognition for its bravery. In a society where discussions around sexuality—especially queer identity within heterosexual marriage—are often suppressed or avoided, the film chooses to confront the subject with extraordinary restraint and empathy. It does not sensationalize, nor does it reduce its characters to symbols. Instead, it allows the truth to emerge slowly, painfully, and inevitably, as it would in real life.

Mathew Devassy – A Life Built on Silence

Mathew Devassy, played by Mammootty, is a retired bank manager and a respected local political figure whose life appears stable, disciplined, and socially validated. Yet beneath this constructed normalcy lies a lifetime of emotional suppression. His marriage to Omana is not portrayed as fraudulent, but as a shared existence shaped by silence, compromise, and unspoken understanding.

Mammootty’s portrayal of Mathew is nothing short of masterful. He does not perform the character’s sexuality as an external trait, but as an internal weight—something that exists in pauses, in avoided eye contact, in the careful control of breath and expression. One of the most devastatingly subtle moments is the breakdown where he rests his head on his father’s shoulder—a gesture that collapses decades of repression into a single human need for comfort. It is in such restrained physicality that Mammootty reveals his perfection as an actor, proving that the quietest moments often carry the greatest emotional force.

Omana – The Strength of Truth

Omana, portrayed with remarkable depth and dignity, is not written as a victim or antagonist. Her arc is one of awakening and assertion. After two decades of marriage, she chooses truth over comfort, filing for divorce not out of anger, but out of a need to reclaim her own emotional reality. Her decision disrupts not only Mathew’s life but also the fragile social equilibrium they have maintained.

Her strength lies in her clarity. She does not seek revenge or validation; she seeks honesty. In doing so, she becomes the moral anchor of the film, representing the courage it takes to name what has long been unspoken.

Jeo Baby’s Mature and Compassionate Direction

Jeo Baby deserves immense credit for his mature and sensitive handling of such a delicate subject. There is no attempt to dramatize pain for effect, no reliance on courtroom theatrics or exaggerated emotional outbursts. Instead, the film breathes in silence, discomfort, and realism. The director trusts his audience to sit with ambiguity, to understand suffering that is not always loudly expressed.

His conviction to tell this story—without compromise or dilution—reflects a rare artistic courage. In a cinematic landscape often driven by spectacle, Jeo Baby chooses empathy as his primary language.

Mammootty’s Courage in Embracing the Role

Equally significant is Mammootty’s decision to take on such a role without concern for image or convention. For an actor of his stature, portraying a closeted gay man in a conservative social setting is not just a performance choice—it is a statement of artistic integrity. He embraces the emotional complexity of Mathew Devassy with complete surrender, allowing vulnerability to replace heroism.

This willingness to step beyond established screen identity elevates both the performance and the film itself, proving that true stardom lies in risk-taking rather than repetition.

A Philosophical Reflection on Bold Cinema

Ultimately, Kaathal: The Core stands as a reminder that bold explorations of taboo subjects are not just cinematic risks—they are cultural necessities. When actors step into uncharted emotional territory, they expand the language of performance. When filmmakers choose empathy over spectacle, they expand the boundaries of storytelling.

In this exchange, everyone wins: actors discover new dimensions of their craft, cinema finds new meanings, and audiences are offered experiences that challenge, move, and transform them.

Creativity, in such moments, is not just expressed—it is elevated to a new benchmark.

Empuraan

L2: Empuraan – A Cinematic Expansion of Power, Politics and Myth

L2: Empuraan builds upon the universe introduced in Lucifer, expanding it into a far more ambitious, global, and politically charged narrative. At its core, the film follows Stephen Nedumpally (Mohanlal), who lives a double existence as Khureshi Ab’raam, the enigmatic head of an international crime syndicate operating across continents. Set five years after the events of Lucifer, the story finds Kerala’s political landscape destabilised as Chief Minister Jathin Ramdas succumbs to ideological pressure and aligns with communal forces, inadvertently setting the stage for Ab’raam’s return to a world he had once distanced himself from.

A Story of Global Crime and Expanding Power

The narrative of Empuraan is not confined to Kerala alone. It stretches across international borders, tracking arms deals, narcotics networks, and gold smuggling operations that reveal the vast reach of Ab’raam’s empire. The film positions him not merely as a criminal mastermind but as a shadow power operating within the cracks of global systems. This scale is one of the film’s most striking achievements, giving it a truly international cinematic identity.

Trauma, Memory and the Fire of Vengeance

At the emotional heart of the film lies Zayed Masood (Prithviraj Sukumaran), whose past is deeply scarred by the 2002 communal violence. His journey is one of unresolved trauma and calculated vengeance, adding emotional gravity to the otherwise expansive political thriller. Murali Gopy’s bold writing choice to anchor part of the narrative in such a sensitive historical backdrop demonstrates both courage and conviction, even as it invited significant backlash and political controversy.

Prithviraj’s Cinematic Vision and Scale

As a filmmaker, Prithviraj Sukumaran’s ambition is unmistakable. Empuraan is staged across multiple countries, with hundreds of artists, large-scale action sequences, and meticulously designed production blocks that reflect a rare confidence in scale. His ability to orchestrate such a vast narrative canvas while maintaining coherence is a testament to his evolving cinematic sensibility. Equally impressive is his marketing genius, which ensured massive anticipation and one of the strongest openings in contemporary Indian cinema.

Controversy, Conviction and Backlash

The film’s bold engagement with politically sensitive material inevitably led to criticism and organised backlash. Murali Gopy’s decision to weave the Gujarat riots backdrop into the emotional and ideological fabric of the story sparked debate, resistance, and attempts at narrative suppression. Yet, the film stands firm in its conviction, refusing to dilute its voice under external pressure. This tension between art and politics becomes an inseparable part of the film’s identity.

Visual Grandeur by Sujith Vaasudev

Cinematographer Sujith Vaasudev elevates Empuraan into a visual spectacle. His use of advanced camera systems, experimental angles, and dynamic lighting creates a world that feels both grounded and mythic. From sprawling international landscapes to intimate emotional frames, his visual language constantly shifts, reinforcing the film’s duality of scale and soul. Every frame feels deliberately constructed, yet fluid in motion, adding immense depth to the storytelling.

Box Office Triumph Amid Challenges

Despite controversies and polarized reception, Empuraan emerged as a significant box office success. The film’s opening numbers reflected the power of anticipation, while its sustained performance demonstrated audience engagement with its scale and narrative ambition. It proved that bold storytelling, even when contested, can find its audience when executed with conviction.

Bridging L1 and L2 – The Evolution of Characters

One of the film’s strongest achievements is how seamlessly it merges the world of Lucifer with its expanded sequel. The evolution of its four central characters—Stephen Nedumpally/Khureshi Ab’raam (Mohanlal), Zayed Masood (Prithviraj), Priyadarshini Ramdas (Manju Warrier), and Jathin Ramdas (Tovino Thomas)—forms the emotional and political backbone of the saga. Each character is transformed by power, ideology, loss, and ambition, making their arcs feel both personal and mythic in scale.

Equally remarkable is Mohanlal’s performance, which demonstrates a rare sensitivity in how he modulates Stephen Nedumpally/Khureshi Ab’raam across different ages, emotional states, and ideological phases. His ability to subtly shift body language, restraint, and intensity allows the character’s evolution to feel organic and deeply lived-in, making the arc one of the most compelling aspects of the saga.

The Setup for L3 and the Dragon’s Shadow

In its final moments, Empuraan teases the next chapter of the trilogy with the reveal of a mysterious dragon-shirted antagonist, setting the stage for L3. This symbolic introduction hints at an even larger confrontation, suggesting that the true architect of chaos is yet to fully emerge. It is a masterstroke in franchise storytelling, ensuring anticipation reaches a fever pitch.

A Victory for Cinema and Creative Conviction

Ultimately, Empuraan stands as more than a film—it is a statement. It reaffirms that a filmmaker’s conviction, when rooted in storytelling truth, cannot be easily subdued by political pressure or external intimidation. The film becomes a testament to the power of cinema as an expressive, defiant, and imaginative force.

In the end, Empuraan is a victory—not just for its makers, but for art itself. It celebrates the idea that cinema, when driven by courage and creativity, transcends controversy and becomes something larger: a living expression of truth, imagination, and artistic freedom.