For someone looking for strict adherence to the rules of linear narrative like a definite beginning, explanatory middle and a climactic end with a moral lesson pasted all over, Marubhagam (The Other Side) directed by S. Sunil, will be a disappointer. For such a viewer, it will look wayward, fragmented and tentative throughout. Although it does have someone that one could describe as the protagonist in the middle, ‘he’ (for he is nameless, so it can be anybody including you, the viewer) doesn’t take the mantle of agency to drive the narrative to certain moral solutions or egoistic indulgences. His is a world that is fluid, edgy, ever-evolving, always indecisive. Characters that teem around him come from ‘real’ life situations – family, relatives, work place, artistic activity – and they all do form and play parts in his life. But, the hamlet in him is unable to find or retrieve himself from any of them, all tending to constantly slip away, and he himself slipping away from them refusing to own up or take charge.
‘He’ is a drifter, someone who apparently floats through life, people, events and the surroundings. Although ‘he’ is never named, he is very much part of the everyday flux around him – he is a father, son and husband; a responsible government servant, an aspiring filmmaker, an intimate friend to creative women, a compassionate human being in his attitudes and also silences. The film unfolds in a span of days in his life, where a lot of official, domestic, social and personal things happen, evoking memories, reveries and dreams. The narrative weaves in his growing estrangement from his wife, death of his dear mother, a flashback into his ecstatic, carefree and creative days in Kolkata, a journey with his housemaid to the hilly, tribal regions of Wayanad, a drunken encounter with his poet friend, memories about his late father, his trials and tribulations at the office, and his encounters both with his women-friends and a ‘smart’ colleague.
His inner state of mind sometimes gets revealed in his silent, but muted, gestures of compassion, and reveries of poetry. The very leitmotif of the film is a poem by Niconarr Parra and C.V. Raman Pillai’s epic Marthandavarma . In one haunting scene in the film, we find the protagonist’s father-figure (played by Alencier Ley Lopez in the role of office watchman) sitting on the roof of the house, guzzling arrack, delivering the resonating speech of Chanthrakaran from the novel. So, ensconced in his own silences and ethical conflicts, rarely does ‘he’ react or respond to things; but his muted but turbulent inner life is constantly in conflict with the outside world, which constantly demands polemical stances, ready opinions, readymade answers and stereotypical behaviours. ‘He’ is the stranger of our times; times that do not let you go or in.
(A fortnightly column on cinema that veers away from the commercial format)
