‘Kishkindha Kaandam’ Review: A Haunting Father-Son Mystery

Director: Dinjith Ayyathan
Writers: Bahul Ramesh
Cast: Asif Ali, Vijayaraghavan, Aparna Balamurali, Ashokan
Language: Malayalam

In what feels like a strange scene at the start of Kishkindha Kaandam, Ajayan (Asif Ali) points to an old radio that hangs precariously from the top of a tree, and explains how it got there to his new bride, Aparna (Aparna Balamurali). She’s the newest resident in Ajayan’s old bungalow, an island located at the centre of a sea of trees. He tells her that this radio was stolen by a group of monkeys, and how this was their method of returning it. At crucial junctures of this puzzling drama, the film’s cinematographer Bahul Ramesh (who is also the writer), sneaks in a shot or two of broken toys returned by these primates years after they were first borrowed.

But who did these toys belong to, you think, as you stare at striking images of a muddy red toy-truck or a broken plastic monkey. Did these belong to Ajayan’s son Chachu, who went missing years ago? Or did they belong to Ajayan, a man burdened with the duties of a son, even as he grapples with the pain of lost fatherhood? What if the broken radio or the toys represent something more? They no longer hold any value, but they’re glimpses into the past, which makes them precious gifts that are worth more as memories than what they were worth when they were new.

In a film that deals with dementia, these images do not feel like an afterthought. Appu Pillai (Vijayaraghavan) is the seventy-something patriarch who insists that these relics remain where they are. The photographs on the wall, shelves filled with defunct devices, piles of old newspaper clippings and more occupy important places in the bungalow because they are markers of a life that’s slowly slipping away from him. Ajayan, his son, feels like one more prop living inside Appu’s mind, already having given up a lot just to be with his father. But what if a door lock suddenly breaks open, potentially letting in people from the outside?

This outsider is Aparna (among Aparna’s best roles yet), an adventurer who gets married to Ajayan after the death of his first wife and the mother of his son Chachu. There is a suddenness in the way we learn more about Ajayan and his father, the same manner in which Aparna dives straight into the mechanics of this strange family. At an important point, Aparna reassures her husband that she’s not a fair-weather friend; she wants in on all the details, no matter how murky. In a sense, Kishkindha Kaandam is Aparna’s journey to becoming an insider, as she goes through a trial by fire to win their trust.

On this journey, there are multiple elements that play out deceptively like a thriller. It begins when we’re told that Appu is the only person who hasn’t deposited their licensed pistol with the police during election season. With his gun said to have gone missing, there is confusion about who took the pistol; one plausibility is that the monkeys might be behind it. But when we think about the first sequence, we remember how Ajayan and Aparna’s wedding ceremony gets interrupted when Ajayan has to attend to a phone call related to Appu. There’s a matter-of-fact attitude in the manner in which Ajayan prioritises his father, almost as though his marriage can wait if there’s a matter concerning him.

Written with carefully placed deceptions, it’s not easy, at least on first viewing, to really understand what’s going on in Ajayan’s mind. He is the sole custodian of many family secrets, and his tired eyes convey the weight of this baggage. As an outsider like Aparna, can we even trust Ajayan to be a reliable narrator, or is he buying time to test Aparna during her initiation? Or is he just a struggling son who wants a partner when he begins to realise that he’s slowly losing the only person he has lived for? Several such questions keep popping up in one’s mind as Ajayan, Appu and Aparna inhabit complex identities in an even more complex terrain.

All this adds up to a film that operates a lot like an ambigram. If at first you read the film like a thriller, you’re more tempted to read it again — from the last scene backwards to the first. It then becomes a totally new film and a story of two brooding fathers trying to hold their family together. In an earlier scene set in a mortuary, one might read Ajayan’s expression as that of a father who is overcome with grief and sorrow. But when you think about it again after the movie, the meaning of his micro-expression changes. Was it a performance, or was he stealing just one second to himself to remember his son?

Moments like these make this one of the best performances by any actor in Malayalam cinema this year. In some scenes, Ali feels like he’s doing little, but you feel the full heft of a man who has to wear a mask even when he’s inside his own home. He has to wear this mask as a dutiful son, but you also feel for him when you realise that he’s probably wearing this mask to hide truths from himself.

A lot of this also goes for Vijayaraghavan’s Appu Pillai, a former army man who is so strict and tough that he’s forgotten how to be soft and loving. Maybe what he did for the family was all he could do for years of neglect, or maybe love is perhaps a form of protection to him.

Backed by composer Mujeeb Majeed’s haunting use of church organs, when one exits the theatre, they might be leaving behind a small part of themselves, dangling from one of the trees outside Ajayan, Aparna and Appu’s bungalow. Director Dinjith Ayyathan succeeds in making an incredible film about a father who wants to remember and a son who wants to forget.