'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  and I recommend this film to all sections in the society.