Directed by: Dijo Jose Antony
Starring: Prithviraj Sukumaran, Suraj Venjaramoodu
Streaming on Netflix. Spoilers ahead.
It's a brilliant film. Malayalam cinema nails the idea of subversion. In the first half, it presents ACP Sajjan (read Sajjanar) as this hero who takes the law into his hands. In a land where the law isn’t doing its job and when the hero takes it into his hands and does – it works wonders from a dramatic standpoint. And they present him as the hero with absolute conviction. The film gives him a proper mass moment and makes us believe that he's the hero. And then the second half happens, where they introduce Aravind Swamithanan (Prithviraj). He initially plays this opposing lawyer, just like Amitabh Bachchan in Pink where you keep wondering what’s happening, and your sense of character is questioned. A star is cast in this part and he’s supposed to be the good guy, but why is he being the bad guy? This mystery works really well in this film too and by the ending, he becomes the hero and Sajjan the villain. I remember feeling the same when I watched Kapella too – with the mindbending subversion in the film.
One of the reason the subversion works very well is the film presents every scene with absolute conviction. When we think Saba was raped and murdered, the drama caters to that emotion. When the students protest Saba’s incident not finding justice, the revolution – which by the end of the film seems pointless – but at the moment, they present it with complete conviction. I should mention that the background score in the film is terrific and it added to how all these scenes were presented with that conviction. Even the ending was mind blowing, with the way the film was being presented, I could’ve never imagined it to have scope for a sequel and I love how the film keeps unfolding layer by layer and becomes so big that what we’d have imagined it to be.
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