'CHURULI' A REVIEW
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to watch
more movies for a number of reasons, including avoiding stress and the
availability of new movies on OTT platforms. If I were asked, I would say
Nayattu, Jai Bheem and now Churuli among Malayalam's most touching and
influential films. The superlative of these is undoubtedly the Churuli. It
makes you nervous, forces you to think about yourself and pushes you
unknowingly into the film's basic idea, Churuli. ‘Churuli’ is a situation,
sometimes a place where one gets lost in the state of inarticulability. The
more you try to escape, the more involved you become and ultimately lost
forever. The unsolvable predicament, whatever it may be a place, situation or
state leads you to the ‘Churuli’. It raises many questions to you such as
identity, territory, righteousness, justice, socio-political issues and many.
And they go unanswered often enough because you're really not interested, but
you want to be involved unevenly.
Story line of the film:
Two police officers are on the way to a place
known as Churuli to arrest a thief, thug, abuser and a fugitive criminal who is
in contrast called Joy, Happiness. The hamlet is located in the deep forest
where the only conveyance is an old topless Jeep. The territory of the place
Churuli begins, and the common world ends at an insecure wooden bridge. The
police are in disguise of ordinary daily wagers looking for employment to get
the easily accessible criminal and they suspect the most feared criminal can
escape forever. They are also fully in praise of their superior who deputed
them for the assignment. The officer himself has all the qualities of a good
criminal, who extorts, makes false files to appropriate the confiscated gold
and find the pleasure of being with women. The superior among the two feels
proud to be a disciple of the officer and to want to do what his superior has
done on a particular occasion.
These two, disguised as Shajivan and Antony,
enter the jeep, the only ferry to the destination Churuli. Once they crossed the
border, the bridge broken, seemed to be innocent people suddenly changed to
their true nature of vulgarity, criminality, and cruelty. As soon as they
became theirs, they established their hegemony over the disguised policemen who
accepted surrender accordingly. They reached Churuli where the epicentre is an
illicit bar with illicit alcohol and hunting meat served in abundance. The
leader of the team becomes the happiest because he is fond of the things that
exist there. The shop owner agrees to accommodate them till Thankachan returns
home. The policemen in disguise were pretending they came to work for
Thankachan whom they had no acquaintance with. They figured out by talking in
the jeep that Thankachan had to dig pits to plant new rubber trees.
Illicitness is the order of the place,
lawlessness is the law, all unallowed are allowed depending on will and grudge
that you have. But there is always an order to unite the inhabitants and it is
the anarchism that exists there. The head constable takes advantage of all
while the subordinate is always deluded of the situation. This is the paradise
of escaped criminals or themselves subject to the Churuli, the irrecoverable
situation. During the stay, they each committed nearly all types of crimes, including
murder. They could find the criminal after some dramatic turns, arrest him but
they had already become a part of Churuli from where they had no exit. They are
not in the Churuli anymore, but the part and the whole of it.
The problem of identity:
Each individual has a crisis of identity,
self-imposed or situational creation. Each creates one to show others, that is,
to expose oneself as another. The core self is so cleverly hidden that
sometimes the creator himself is delusional. The society, which is formed of
individuals also follows the same path so that the multiplied identity crises
widen to a range that becomes almost all unidentifiable. The created self and
the original are precariously balanced and maintained where a slight oversight
can turn everything upside down. But, never under any circumstances, you would
want others to see yourself or the part that you wanted to hide. Thus, everyone
is in a Churuli, a situation impossible to identify. The protagonist, if we can
call him so, who is a mediocre member of the Kerala police, approaches
multi-faceted identity crises in his own way. Unfortunately, he does not
understand that he could be smarter than his immediate superior who, in turn,
teaches him how to be a good criminal to be a good police officer. But when he
is cornered with his superior, remembers immediately that he is also the part
of the State becomes the true representative of the State. He does what the
state could do in a situation like this, fires a weapon and attacks people to
do his job. They eventually find out the only criminal among the other
criminals that they are not interested in at present. They arrest him for the
same crimes that they and the entire police force carry out daily. Their joy of
success does not last as long as the thin boundaries of differences between the
two types of criminality merge to become the Churuli. The inevitable and
unavoidable consequences place the audience in a similar situation which has no
option but to look at oneself.
Territorial issues
Every living creature has a territory to which
its true nature is attached and blended. That is sometimes true when it is even
called as a nationality in the case of humanity. Everyone is happy and content
in his territory although, for others, it can feel as vulgarity, nonsense and
obscurity. The state is also satisfied until the very moment its interests are
not violated. Once the war is started, it ends either with destruction on one
side or total annihilation. But for the director of the film, on the contrary,
they become the part of Churuli, the inescapable one. Here too, as elsewhere in
this new world, the unity of the people does not help them to protect their
territory from the powerful state.
Righteousness and justice.
Right and wrong, legality and illegality and
criminality and punishment are the very serious issues discussed in this movie.
All these have both social and individual aspects, and they are interwoven. The
stolen bread of Jean Val Jean, which still haunts the literary world, is an example
to say that it is a point of debate of ancient times. The director of the film
asks this question in several ways. Where there have been no credible criteria
for distinguishing between crime and justice because authority and criminals
are just two sides of the same coin. The situation worsens when the lawfulness
of the right to act and implement goes to one of the parties. This makes not
only the other party defenceless, but also the chances of being more mistaken
before the law. They become Churuli's prey, here a place or situation that
helps them to flee. At one point everyone is in search of a Churuli, a kind of
abyss that is useful to be sunk into oblivion. Our location of the drama,
Churuli, is such that criminals, defined by law, instinctively manage to escape
their own circumstances. Next comes the question of the purity of language,
which is severely criticized, decency of behaviour, etiquette and several other
issues. It is not my job to justify the so-called vulgarity of the language,
but I say that it would be more vulgar if they spoke the language that the
Puritans wanted.
The hegemony of the state
The two policemen are representatives of the
state. What makes the state hegemony possible is the weapons it possesses. It
has its own affiliations, commitments or interests or let's say it always works
for its invincible and invincible masters who never enter the scene. It enters
other territories by posing one among them and starts destroying from within. The
rest do not know until destruction is imminent and certain. All the efforts
hitherto are in vain. We witness it everywhere in the world. We see it in
Churuli too. I agree with the director so far by all means, but dissent with
the idea of Churuli as the point of escape.
How I see this film.
I didn't feel it as a movie but as a made-up
version of several camaras hidden in a place called Churuli. It can not be
otherwise, a perfect blend of art, thought and aesthetics. The director’s sense
of visuality is so apt that the viewers witness and experience each scene. This
provokes and agitates in the sense that you cannot watch it as a passive
witness. From time to time the characters synchronize with your basic identity
that makes you shudder. It never stops even when the movie ends but comes back
often enough to disturb you a lot. To make a long story short, you're in your
own Churuli after watching the movie.
My rating to this film is not less than
