Oru Durooha Saahacharyathil (under mysterious circumstances) is an eccentric film even by the mad standards of Ratheesh Balakrishnan Poduval, arguably Malayalam cinema’s most idiosyncratic director. You may or may not love all his films, but Poduval, even when he’s not fully in form, has an unlimited subscription to his unique brain and the powers that result from looking at the world differently. His latest film has everything from a Maoist in love to the concept of a man who dreams up real-life events, even before they take place. It also has room for a bedridden fanboy of Kamal Haasan and a self-referential joke, which includes a review of Oru Durooha Saahacharyathil as you are watching Oru Durooha Saahacharyathil.
The setting for this comedy may be a village in Wayanad, which may look a lot like it does in reality, but the events and the people here are almost otherworldly. The film opens with a group of Maoists as they attempt to take over a luxury resort in its forest-like terrain. As foreign tourists from all over the world try to escape this onslaught, the camera stops at the visual of a little barebodied Asian girl running towards us. It’s an image we’ve surely seen before, and as we rummage through the many JPEG files from memory, the attempt is to recreate the exact imagery of the “Napalm Girl”. It sets the stage for a film that may have something to say about Imperialism, but when you connect the dots about the film’s wider themes to see the bigger picture, you begin to ask yourself if Poduval is something of an auteur.
This includes the tiniest of decisions, including cutaway shots revealing the masthead of the two local newspapers—Cowpeenam Times (Underwear Times) or Mala Vartha (shitty news). In a scene stolen right out of our absurd realities, we see a man setting fire to a showroom selling electric scooters. Not only is this scooter company named after a major toilet brand, but the salespersons here have all adorned Uma Thurman’s yellow-and-black jumpsuits from Kill Bill. Maoists in the film are called Ma-Pras, a term used repeatedly to deride the corrupt media of Kerala and one of the film’s characters is named Rajendra Prasad, just because…
The reason for most of these inclusions is the result of how Poduval makes this world his own, but when one digs a little deeper, these eccentricities have their own layers and logic. Like the character named Armiyas, who is being played by Chidambaram. Not only is he the film’s most antagonising character, but he’s also the one deputed to bring an end to the Maoist menace of the region, once and for all. The reason why this police officer is seen sporting a variety of military greens instead of his uniform could be because of a suspension, but those close to him refer to Armiyas by calling him “Armi”, you realise how this is more than just another Poduval quirk.
The same goes for the film’s lead character, Madhu (played by the excellent Kunchacko Boban). He seems to be the stand-in for the common man, constantly stuck between headstrong people from various ideological camps. He appears to be apolitical, happy to not take a side. So when we see him ride his bike all across this village, it’s not by accident that we’re shown that this bike does not have a side-stand. His bike, like Madhu himself, does not appear to have a stand in any matter. But the film doesn’t underscore any of these elements to make us notice its cleverness. It wants to make larger points, but never at the cost of comedy.
In one of the film’s many flashbacks, we see Madhu recalling an incident he believes is the best time of his life. This trip included a young Madhu, his brother and his uncle trekking across the forest when they decided to take a break. This break involves a lot of booze, a lot of meat and a party that lasted three whole days, by the end of which they forget the purpose of this trip. As Madhu switches back to the present after reminiscing, he says, “That trip we undertook to murder my father is still the best time I’ve ever had.”
Not since the mighty Sreenivasan have I heard a dialogue that’s as dark as it is dangerous. Loaded with sarcasm and an assured political position, the Oru Durooha Saahacharyathil in the film’s title also refers to the mysterious circumstances under which Madhu is forced to become political. In other words, Madhu’s biography may also be titled “Ningalenne Maoistakki” (you made me a Maoist, a play on the title of the 1970 classic Ningalenne Communistakki, made by Kunchacko Boban’s grandfather).
But like some of Poduval’s older films, it’s the excess of ideas that becomes the issue instead of the lack of them. The joy and the dynamism of the first hour become too much for the film’s latter portions to sustain. The film also needed to take a more serious detour in narration, a shift in tone that feels too sudden and erratic. The Poduvalisms begin to dry up, and you feel the film shifting towards political posturing. Perhaps a more sinister villain may have added more to the final act, helping to make what’s political feel personal again. Or perhaps the dramatic elements of this act needed more rewrites to make us feel more.
Either way, the feeling of having watched Oru Durooha Saahacharyathil is that of watching an expert at work as he juggles a loaded theme with a group of the most likeable people we will never see in our films again. It falls short of greatness, but Oru Durooha Saahacharyathil remains an entertaining mix of highbrow satire at war with the coolest brand of crass comedy our cinema has to offer.