The Malayalam movie Ozhivu Divasathe
Kali, Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s adaptation of an Unni R. short story, is a
classic buddy film on surface, given how it’s largely about a booze-fuelled day
trip by five middle-aged Kerala friends. Yet, three facets established very
early on its brutally savage political commentary – cacophonous pre-election
rallies by political parties that it started with; a sequence where four of the
friends, taking a break from the election hullabaloo, are joined in their
drinking binge by a fifth guy who’s wary of being seen consuming alcohol, on
account of his higher caste (who’re typically associated with abstention and
vegetarianism); and their getaway takes place on the day of the voting. The five
men symbolically represented different social strata – the aggressive Dharman
(Nishthar Sait) who works in the Gulf, the sexist Ashokan (Arun Nair), the
afore-mentioned Brahmin man Thirumeni (Girish Nair), the comparatively progressive
and liberal-minded Vinayan (Pradeep Kumar), and Dasan (Baiju Netto), who
possibly belongs to the historically oppressed Dalit community and which is
regularly insinuated by highlighting the colour of his skin. As they get increasingly
sloshed, they start openly leching after the local woman (Abhija Sivakala) who’s
there to cook for them, certain old grievances start coming to the fore, and some
of them start revealing their true colours, eventually leading to a shockingly
horrific climax. While subtlety probably wasn’t a strength here, Sasidharan’s confrontational
approach – he neither softballed nor minced words – made for a ferocious indictment
on how casteism, misogyny, patriarchy, bigotry and glibly reactionary attitudes
have been normalized among large swathes of India’s middle and upper
middle-class social milieu. The film’s improvisational style further heightened
its stark naturalism.
Director: Sanal Kumar Sasidharan
Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Buddy Film
Language: Malayalam
Country: India