This is much more pronounced in the case of Thallumaala, a story about young men who get into fights, and then fight some more, and then again, on their way to developing strong bonds with each other — and possibly acquiring some self-awareness along the way. In JJJJH, on the other hand, the action sequences are restricted to a couple of pivotal moments (with WWE-style commentary!) where a young woman retaliates, with unexpected swag, to a husband who randomly smacks her whenever he is in a bad mood.
Both films, again in very different ways, grapple with what viewers routinely describe as ‘toxic masculinity’. And yet both are light-hearted. This is more notable in the case of JJJJH because it is more explicitly an ‘issue’ film. I thought it dealt with domestic abuse – and the insidious ways in which a benevolent-seeming patriarchy can reveal its full colours – more interestingly than another, much-praised film from last year, The Great Indian Kitchen.
And this owes in part to JJJJH’s sense of humour. The narrative manages the tricky balancing act of being funny without diluting its depth of feeling for the protagonist Jaya (Darshana Rajendra). She is sharp and has a mind of her own. But she is also vulnerable, and has been ever since her childhood when her parents’ apparent love for her went alongside preferential treatment given to her brother. Meanwhile her husband Rajesh (Basil Joseph) is far from the stereotype of the aggressive alpha male, and is presented as a whiny mama’s boy at times. But this doesn’t take away from the very real damage he causes.
Where JJJJH is fairly straightforward in narrative terms, Thallumaala is an exuberantly showy, stylish work. Its opening words, by the protagonist Wazim (Tovino Thomas) – ‘Honestly I can’t remember where it all started. Let me try’ – almost suggest a form of brain damage, or at least a brain fog, brought on by too much fighting. And indeed, a non-linear narrative, packed with nervous energy, follows. The frenetic pace – including scene transitions from animation to live action, rapid-fire editing, crazy costumes and costume changes – conveys how important movement is to these young people’s lives.
There is a simple boy-girl love story at the centre of it all. But the film is equally about male friendships that can be as intense, and as violent, as a romantic relationship. (‘I found my friends while fighting,’ Wazim tells us.) Such is the circular narrative, at the end you may not be sure of what happened when, and who took revenge on whom after which fight. But that may be part of the point.
Among other things, Thallumaala is a celebration of the human body’s possibilities, whether in battle or in dance. It is full of ‘masala’ moments done with great conviction: Tovino, Kalyani Priyadarshan, Shine Tom Chacko and the other performers throw themselves wholeheartedly into the pulpy mode, from the glitzy musical scenes to brutally choreographed action. Does this film have a ‘message’? It’s hard to say. In the end, everything pivots around the lovers’ need to be united irrespective of the chaos surrounding them. On the other hand, maybe the film is simply a paean to fisticuffs, like Anurag Kashyap’s No Smoking was a celebration of something that destroys one’s health. Some viewers will always judge a film according to whether its politics is ‘correct’. But what if it simply chooses to be a matter-of-fact depiction of the less savoury but important impulses in human nature?
It’s hard to say what would happen if the universe inhabited by Wazim and his friends were to collide with the one that Jaya lives in. It would be nice to imagine that she’d kick their collective asses and send them wailing to their mamas. But it’s as likely that she’d get addicted to brawling herself, and become part of the gang.
