*1956 Central Travancore* (Director, Don Palathara, 2019)
Don Palathara’s *1956 Central Travancore* is a beautiful, quiet, and tight film that treats a particular subculture of Kerala with a refreshing difference from its cinematic predecessors. The Kerala Christian community and its sociocultural singularities have been endlessly mined in Malayalam cinema for several decades now, with the volume and spectacle effect of this representation incrementally increasing from *Aranazhikaneram* to *Appan. * Malayalam cinema has done its part to mystify the Kerala Christian community as the poster culture for its fascination with the excessive human drama of Kama-Krodha-Lobha-Moha-Mada-Matsaryam. For instance, *1956 Central Travancore* was released the same year as *Jallikattu* a film which reveled in the kind of excess that appears to have become the (stereo)typical portrait of the Christian community as represented in Malayalam cinema.
Standing solidly against these types of yelling and shouting men bursting with testosterone who hack animals and women to pieces are the characters of *1956 Central Travancore,* a group of struggling, one might even say, failed men who try to make a hapless life for themselves in the high ranges of Central Travancore, with their little bigotries, their minor moral lapses, their petty quarrels, but also unexpected insights into brief moments of self-awareness, clarity, and, one might even say, grace, in the midst of their lowly perfidies. It is understandable if the scene with Thommi at the mountain creek and the apparition of the mother and child on top of the cliff looking down at him reminds us of the clown Jof in *The Seventh Seal* who sees the Virgin and the Infant in the meadow. It is not so much a quote or an homage to the earlier film, but an empathetic worldview that if the devil is around us, can god be far behind?
The film is shot in gorgeous, crisp, mostly low-key lighting in black and white that coats the film with a simultaneously sensuous but mysterious tone that approaches the allegorical at times. The lingering long takes of the two brothers, Kora (Assif Yogi) and Onan (Jain Andrews), picking peppercorn from the pepper vines, the lengthy trek through the forest both during the daytime and the night after the accident reveal the essential character of these men: an adventurous fraternity that has not congealed into immutable definitions of themselves. They only have hand-me-down stories of bygone, dearly departed, pompous ancestors that they tell themselves seemingly to pass time, seemingly for entertainment or gossip, but it could very well be to see if those stories fit them as well, much like trying on clothes or shoes. The stories do not fit them. That is not their identity. They are not the ruthless hunters and killers and the macho men that their fathers and grandfathers were. They are made of softer metal. I am seeing these actors – Assif Yogi and Jain Andrews – for the first time and they are exceptional actors. The screenplay plumbs their characters deeply to develop their fraternal dynamics with great care, distinction, and precision. These men are their brother’s keepers, a point made clear in the scene at the police station where the police inspector asks Onan how can I punish only one man when all of you committed the crime together?
The screenplay and the dialogue are beautifully written, concise, and full of echoes and vibrations of things unsaid. Indeed, another title for this film could be *Men Without Women* as evidenced by the lengthy drama inside the film where a bereft wife waits for a letter from the husband who has left her to fend for himself. The forest where the brothers and their team go to hunt the wild buffalo is a homosocial space, a space of no women; the exception being Karadikkelan and his unnamed wife, unapproachable, untouchable to other men, literally living amongst the treetops. Kani Kusruthi plays Kelan’s wife, and we hear her more than we see her, but that is enough; she is terrific.
Into this homosocial space of the forest the women in the lives of these men appear as characters in their stories, their dreams, and their visions. The scene with the family photo of Kora’s new bride with his family – minus himself – is unlike anything I have seen on Malayalam screen. This is a new visual language to portray men in Malayalam cinema.
Like the cinematography and the editing, which are both intentional and self-aware, the music in this film is also perfect and beautiful, again, minimalistic but tight and evocative. The sound design is also fabulous; such crisp sounds of a house burning down.
I look forward to seeing more of Don Palathara’s films. I am thankful that this film was made, and that too in 2019, and that the wild buffalo did to the man what it had to do.
The Red Earth 