Perhaps it takes a woman to know a boy —a lad tender as a flower, gentler than a feather, full of love and care. Anjali Menon’s Joshua true to her film’s title Koode stays with you long after it has been seen.
Even though many viewers fret at the flagging pace of the film, once the initial surprise wears off, there is something about this tale and its telling that does not just let you off its hook. And the film has been hitting us deeply on many personal levels. It leaves us disturbed, sad and choking on a strange emptiness. It is moreover connecting with the psychic needs of a male world forced to be aggressive, violent and demanding.
Lost, lonely and vulnerable, Joshua throbs with the unspoken pains of boyhood. A boyhood soaked in hurt and confusion. A childhood trauma snowballing into an emotional shutdown. He has grown into a wall — tough, blank, numb.
The heavy silence that shrouds him bursts open through the surreal chatter of a wraith-like Jenny. We have a new man here—a man who needs to soften his heart, laugh a little, weep a bit and crack a joke. And it is heartening to see how quiet spaces,darkness and shadows weave a new visual language to express our fragile inner lives.
Come to think of it, Anjali, who is just a few films old, has all along been speaking of an uneasy boyhood and a conflicted manhood. With a difference, though. Anjali’s screenplays resonate with agonised silences, mute anger and solemn grief. Shiva, Aju and Kuttan in BangaloreDays light up different forms of this inner torment, too complex to be captured by the thunderous dialogues booming through the familiar male heroic figures.
Anjali discreetly flicks the veil away from the macho male persona and reveals the shivering, scared, insecure kid behind. A child afraid to be himself — doting, nurturing. Remember, Ustad Hotel too is woven around a Faizi who shies away from the norms of maleness the society expects from him. She is restoring the joy of sibling bonds in a world that accepts men and women,boys and girls equally. Faizi needs his ithatha ’s company, Aju and Kuttan find an anchor in Kunju, and only Jenny can heal Joshua. Romantic love is only a small strand of our larger web of emotional networks.
Behind the familiar façade of our regular family lives are the irregular impulses, different yearnings and unusual connections. There is the sordid world of abuse which the film suggests with the barest of hints — a flicker of a touch, a casual word, a slight inflection in a relative’s voice.
A tautly drawn script suggests the beauty of restraint. The film does queer the pitch urging Joshua to accept the Jenny within him: the feminine nuances, intuitive energies, his emotional self. Joshua, like many of us, is finding a way out of a toxic masculinity. It is also the journey of a brother to know his sister, after her death. To know her desires, her romantic fancies, her secrets, her pet peeves. Joshua’s is a messed-up childhood. Jenny might have vanished at the end of the film. But there are badly messed up girlhoods too waiting to be written about.
Jenny’s room is literally his space of liberation. A brave move, I feel, in a culture where brothers are expected to raise Cain at the slightest hint of sisters taking charge of their lives. Such boys are teeming around us — suppressed, surly, bitter and resentful. Anjali uncorks the deadly vials of masculinities with sensitivity, compassion and empathy. She bends the genders, softly but surely.
Next time I see a grouchy, sullen boy I will think of the uncomfortable spaces within him. A withdrawn girl will remind me how emotionally damaged we all are. But there is hope in a smile, promise in a hug, faith in a hand reaching out.
