Thoughts on Malikappuram and its mastery in manipulation
Malikappuram thoughts
Finally got around to watching Malikappuram. Despite the academic interest in watching, just to understand the reasons for the wholesome praise that the film has been getting, it was quite hard to sit through something so manipulative. At the centre of the story is a kid, who seems to be obsessed with Ayyappan and Sabarimala, so much so that she dreams about him, wakes up and talks to an idol placed in her room, puts aside a portion of her food to the favourite diety and draws him in her notebook during classes. In one of the unforgettable scenes from the movie, her friend asks whether she wants one from his collection of wwf playing cards. She asks him - "Do you have a card of Ayyappan?" She is scripted as a one-dimensional character without any other interest in her life.
At home, she keeps pestering her father, to take her to Sabarimala, while her mother and grandmother remind him that it is "already too late", because she is eight. Wondering what the movie's stance would have been if she were two or three years older, and expressed the same wish..Would the character and her wish be treated negatively or positively? Anyone who has doubts on the film's political stance on the Supreme Court verdict on women's entry, need only to pay attention to this and to Unni Mukundan's "punch" dialogue - "What happened after they tried to get some of them forcefully inside?" (In Malayalam the line is much more crass - "കുറെ എണ്ണത്തിനെ താങ്ങി പിടിച്ചു മുകളിലേക്ക് കേറ്റാൻ നോക്കീട്ട് എന്തായി"). All the claims of the film not taking any stance on the issue are wrong. The script has created a character just to satisfy those who fall for insincere, skin-deep displays of secularism.
Even after her father's suicide, after getting caught in a debt trap, the script ensures that the character's only thought would be about the trip to Sabarimala. Immediately after, she runs away from home with her friend to fulfill her wish. The audience is also not reminded of the death again, as it has already served its purpose of emotional manipulation. A television serial aesthetic permeates the film, but that is enough to sway very young impressionable minds, which is one of the target audiences of the film. An early lesson in blind faith. It could even be read as a reaction to the ideals held up in films like The Great Indian Kitchen. Despite a slow start, constant propaganda in social media and mainstream Malayalam channel social media pages ensured that it would draw in the crowds. Even Bookmyshow helped, by keeping it in top position for several weeks. But, there have been feeble voices of criticism too, which were wrongly cast as "intolerance" by some section of liberals.
Just hoping that the box office success of the film will not lead to a trend of more such films, just like how it happened in television.
