Lockdown Musings: Jallikattu
Lockdown Pop culture Musings
Day1
Since in India, the govt has announced a 21-day lockdown to combat COVID -19 all of us have got some extra time in hand. For me, the time saved from commuting in Banglore traffic.
I am planning to use this extra time to jot down my reflections on a movie\book\tv show or a personal incident that stayed with me and made me introspect. I would try to refrain from sounding like a review as I don't think I am qualified enough to review any of these great works. Nevertheless, it may have spoilers(unintentionally) So here we go.
Pop culture Element: Movie
Name: Jallikattu(2019)
Language; Malayalam
This is a fairly new movie and it has got a lot of rave reviews from critics. The plot is a simple one-liner - "A buffalo escapes from a butcher hold and runs amock in a village."
Yeah, it's just a buffalo who is the protagonist of this movie ( not even taming a ferocious bull which is a sport in certain Tamilnadu villages). The opening shot of the movie establishes the tone. Not a single character is introduced but all we see is a butcher cutting beef and Sunday church goers collecting it on the way back to their homes. There are no conversation or meaningful exchanges in the first 5-10 mins of the movie and the only character is the haunting background score of the butchers' knife hitting the log as he cuts the meat to tiny pieces. Here the director does what a good movie is supposed to do. Not preach but rather make the audience a part of the story.
All hell breaks loose one morning when one of the buffaloes breaks away and starts running around the village causing havoc. There is not even a scene where they show the actual butchering. It's all implied from the cry after the animal escapes.
Now the rest of the plot is about how the villagers capture the buffalo. Initially, the scenes were hilarious as the mighty butcher(effortlessly played by Chemban Vinod) looks helpless and foolish when the buffalo gores him and runs off from attempts to capture. The butcher doesn't play to the stereotype of being macho and scary. There are other characters introduced to tackle the situation and by the second half the tone of the movie changes. As the day proceeds into the night, the buffalo chasing has ceased to be a time pass for the villagers and characters start getting vindictive. As the efforts go on to capture the buffalo from a well I started getting the point of the movie which was till then a mad frenzy with paper-thin characters. People camp around the well and celebrate it like a mela (was reminded of some imbeciles celebrating corona festival a few days back) when one village elder tells how these lands were once owned by the animals and human was the hunted then. There were fewer families who were inhabiting the place and never used to step out of the fear of bears. But slowly they started agriculture and now this has become the civilized village. This short monologue just described years of evolution which resulted in humanity as we know it. Also, who becomes the hunter and the hunted is just a matter of numbers on either side.
The beauty of the film making is it never preaches anything. For the first time, I was glad there was no character development. The messaging is all about hive minds and collective mentality. Man, how civilized he may get he will go to his primitive nature of being the hunter. He can be hunting a buffalo, a woman or a fellow human being. That is his nature. The last scene of the movie left me with goosebumps and gasping. Recently when I saw this news of people fighting like savages over toilet paper in America I was vaguely reminded of this last scene.
Jallikatu is a testament to cinematography and background score. If these 2 done right the actors just blend into the universe that gets built. The scenes in the night are absolutely raw and the background score with human noises is eerily reminiscent of a timeline when language didn't exist.
I wished I had watched this in a theatre for the full experience. It is still available in Amazon Prime so give a watch and let me know your thoughts.
Day1
Since in India, the govt has announced a 21-day lockdown to combat COVID -19 all of us have got some extra time in hand. For me, the time saved from commuting in Banglore traffic.
I am planning to use this extra time to jot down my reflections on a movie\book\tv show or a personal incident that stayed with me and made me introspect. I would try to refrain from sounding like a review as I don't think I am qualified enough to review any of these great works. Nevertheless, it may have spoilers(unintentionally) So here we go.
Pop culture Element: Movie
Name: Jallikattu(2019)
Language; Malayalam
This is a fairly new movie and it has got a lot of rave reviews from critics. The plot is a simple one-liner - "A buffalo escapes from a butcher hold and runs amock in a village."
Yeah, it's just a buffalo who is the protagonist of this movie ( not even taming a ferocious bull which is a sport in certain Tamilnadu villages). The opening shot of the movie establishes the tone. Not a single character is introduced but all we see is a butcher cutting beef and Sunday church goers collecting it on the way back to their homes. There are no conversation or meaningful exchanges in the first 5-10 mins of the movie and the only character is the haunting background score of the butchers' knife hitting the log as he cuts the meat to tiny pieces. Here the director does what a good movie is supposed to do. Not preach but rather make the audience a part of the story.
All hell breaks loose one morning when one of the buffaloes breaks away and starts running around the village causing havoc. There is not even a scene where they show the actual butchering. It's all implied from the cry after the animal escapes.
Now the rest of the plot is about how the villagers capture the buffalo. Initially, the scenes were hilarious as the mighty butcher(effortlessly played by Chemban Vinod) looks helpless and foolish when the buffalo gores him and runs off from attempts to capture. The butcher doesn't play to the stereotype of being macho and scary. There are other characters introduced to tackle the situation and by the second half the tone of the movie changes. As the day proceeds into the night, the buffalo chasing has ceased to be a time pass for the villagers and characters start getting vindictive. As the efforts go on to capture the buffalo from a well I started getting the point of the movie which was till then a mad frenzy with paper-thin characters. People camp around the well and celebrate it like a mela (was reminded of some imbeciles celebrating corona festival a few days back) when one village elder tells how these lands were once owned by the animals and human was the hunted then. There were fewer families who were inhabiting the place and never used to step out of the fear of bears. But slowly they started agriculture and now this has become the civilized village. This short monologue just described years of evolution which resulted in humanity as we know it. Also, who becomes the hunter and the hunted is just a matter of numbers on either side.
The beauty of the film making is it never preaches anything. For the first time, I was glad there was no character development. The messaging is all about hive minds and collective mentality. Man, how civilized he may get he will go to his primitive nature of being the hunter. He can be hunting a buffalo, a woman or a fellow human being. That is his nature. The last scene of the movie left me with goosebumps and gasping. Recently when I saw this news of people fighting like savages over toilet paper in America I was vaguely reminded of this last scene.
Jallikatu is a testament to cinematography and background score. If these 2 done right the actors just blend into the universe that gets built. The scenes in the night are absolutely raw and the background score with human noises is eerily reminiscent of a timeline when language didn't exist.
I wished I had watched this in a theatre for the full experience. It is still available in Amazon Prime so give a watch and let me know your thoughts.
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