Polandine Patti Episode 18
Totally Filmi presents Polandine Patti
English - June 06, 2023 23:53 - 93.7 MBTV & Film malayalam movies cinema Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
We conclude our series of Malayalam supernatural films — in this episode, we look at Ennu Swantham Janakikutty, Mayilpeelikkavu, and Bhoothakaalam. Download Episode 18 Episode 18 Highlights: Spoiler Alert! We try to remember to alert listeners to spoilers, but just in case, know that we talk about the films in-depth,…
We conclude our series of Malayalam supernatural films — in this episode, we look at Ennu Swantham Janakikutty, Mayilpeelikkavu, and Bhoothakaalam.
Episode 18 Highlights:
Spoiler Alert! We try to remember to alert listeners to spoilers, but just in case, know that we talk about the films in-depth, so be sure to watch them first if you’re concerned about spoilers!
[00:00:20] We’re back with a final episode about supernatural films in Malayalam cinema.
[00:00:25] We started off planning this episode around two Jomol films, Ennu Swantham Janakikutty, Mayilpeelikkavu, but also decided to add in a more recent film, Bhoothakaalam.
[00:00:44] Katherine has learned more about yakshis through this series looking at supernatural films.
[00:00:48] As an outsider to a culture, it’s sometimes a challenge to understand things that are so ingrained in a culture that everyone who is part of that culture would immediately pick up on the cues.
[00:01:03] Katherine was searching for “movies with yakshis”, and feels that the movies that have “yakshi” in the title are often not great films.
[00:01:21] Katherine and Harsha realized that Katherine was missing out on yakshi films when it wasn’t expressly stated that this was a yakshi – like in Manichitrathazhu. But now that Harsha has helped clarify what to look for, Katherine is seeing yakshis everywhere.
[00:02:02] Harsha sent Katherine a list of yakshi movies, and a music video that has a yakshi theme. Check the end of these show notes for the list of films and a link to the music video. Without Harsha’s guidance, Katherine wouldn’t have had a clue that Ennu Swantham Janakikutty was a yakshi film.
[00:02:25] Harsha notes that Mayilpeelikkavu is a reincarnation film, and not a yakshi film.
[00:02:40] Harsha watched the short film called Yakshi on YouTube, and made the connection that yakshis and chudails are pretty much the same thing.
[00:02:50] “Chudail” in Hindi films is always translated as “witch”, but you realize they both pretty much have the same characteristics, except for the feet, which are backwards in chudails. Both terms, yakshi and chudail, have been used to curse women. Previously, Harsha only thought of yakshi’s as a Kerala – and specifically a southern Kerala – thing.
[00:03:23] The figure of the vengeful woman is common in supernatural stories across the world.
[00:03:45] Katherine realized that she was looking at things through a very narrow lens, and recognizes she was missing details because horror and supernatural are not genres she watches a lot of, nor knows a lot about. It’s also a good lesson in how we, as outsiders, can miss things in another culture.
[00:04:25] We decide to start our discussion with Ennu Swantham Janakikutty in order to keep going with our yakshi theme.
[00:04:29] The film is from 1998, and stars Jomol along with a number of marquis names, plus a script by M.T. Vasudevan Nair. It’s directed by Hariharan and produced by P.V. Gangadharan, names associated with classic films such as Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha and Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja, especially if you’re thinking about very literary, dense Malayalam films.
[00:04:58] Katherine notes, as an aside, that this is another example of Scube having the rights to a lot of really excellent films, and again she begs for them to add subtitles. But you can find the films on their YouTube channel.
[00:05:30] The film is about a young woman who is living with her extended family in the trope many viewers will recognize as the traditional tharavadu (ancestral home in a joint family system). In this case, it’s very a much a matrilineal tharavadu,
[00:06:38] What were the clues to this that Katherine picked up on? A household full of a lot of women. There are age clusters of the women, so she figured some of these would be mothers, some would be aunts, some would be daughters and nieces and cousins. So she was looking at the group of women and the cluster of ages to come to this conclusion.
[00:07:25] What Katherine did not pick up on is the fact that the grandmother in the film is not Janaki’s actual grandmother, she’s her grandmother’s older sister who has fallen out with her own children, so she comes to stay with her niece.
[00:07:45] Janaki calls her “muthassi”, because all of the sisters’ kids basically look on the mothers’ sisters as interchangeable mothers.
[00:08:23] It’s very matrilineal, though there is one male figure who is there and complains about the fact that there’s the old woman who fought with her kids. He’s the son-in-law who would have married into the family.
[00:08:43] Their matrilineal traditions are the reason why they take care of her.
[00:08:48] Jannakikutty is going through adolescence. She’s developing her first crush, but she’s very awkward and doesn’t seem to have a lot in common with the other young females around her. She really bonds with her great aunt and comes to hear the stories we’ve come to expect from Malayalam movies about yakshis that get passed on from generation to generation.
[00:09:23] Janakikutty starts meeting this woman in the woods who we’re led to believe is some sort of supernatural entity, because she comes only when Janakikutty is alone.
[00:09:40] Janakikutty has a crush on a young man who is around the family, and the woman she meets, Kunjathol, played by Chanchal, schemes to help Janakikutty to get what she wants.
[00:09:58] The young man Janakikutty has a crush on is secretly in a relationship with one of Janakikutty’s cousins. Part of Janakikutty’s stress/distress is because she discovers the guy she has a crush on is interested in her cousin, and not her.
[00:10:50] Janakikutty’s muthassi tells her yakshi stories and has a book of yakshi stories that she gives her.
[00:10:55] As a young woman, growing up in this part of the world, you would assume that it’s the stress of adolescence that is triggering this mental breakdown (or whatever you want to call it).
[00:11:15] Katherine saw a description of the film, when she was trying to find out more information about it, that said it was the first Malayalam film dealing with schizophrenia, but Katherine didn’t feel that was really what was going on in the film.
[00:11:30] Harsha feels it’s more like Janakikutty’s manifestation of a poltergeist. Poltergeists always show up in homes with adolescents, especially young women. They tend to cause a lot of chaos, which is resolved once the kid is past a certain age, and are mentally more stable. So you can think of Kunjathol as a poltergeist instead of a vampire in this context, even though she has some vampiric features.
[00:12:20] This is not a scary film, it’s more psychological, but there is a moment in particular where Kunjathol is very frightening.
[00:12:30] At least two of the films we’re looking at in this episode deal with how a person’s psychological stress affects them, and how that gets manifested as some kind of supernatural vision.
[00:12:50] There are points in this film where other members of the film kind of catch Janakikutty apparently talking to herself, or laughing to herself, when what she’s imagining is that she’s talking to Kunjathol.
[00:13:06] Harsha is not perfectly sure whether this is all just supposed to be in Janakikutty’s head, or if only she can see the yakshi. Harsha doesn’t necessarily believe in ghosts, but she likes the idea of the poltergeist as an external manifestation of somebody’s distress. She’s very open to that interpretation in movies, that something can both be in someone’s head, and can be supernatural at the same time.
[00:13:43] Katherine notes that a lot of the yakshi films she turned up were more about vengeful women preying on men (sometimes with a sexual undertone), so what she liked about this film was that Kunjathol doesn’t fit into this pattern. Yes, she is a vengeful woman (as the film reveals), but what she does is show up when Janakikutty needs her (like the idea of the poltergeist). Janakikutty needs the support.
[00:14:33] For Harsha, this is why, as a yakshi film, this film really stands out. The romance element is only given weight because of how Janakikutty feels about her crush and her cousin’s relationship with him. He doesn’t have a lot of personality, he is just the object of her desires.
[00:15:00] Katherine notes that’s often what it’s like for an adolescent girl having her first crush. It’s an overwhelming emotion, and at times you might be projecting things on the object of your affection that don’t exist at all. She gives a lot of meaning to things like the Cadbury chocolate bar he gives her.
[00:15:43] He overlooks her, and gives her the chocolate bar because he sees her as a kid, but it becomes this overblown thing in her mind. Janakikutty’s isolation is emphasized. She doesn’t really have anyone to tell her that he’s not really into her, and to point out the really obvious things that are going on around her.
[00:16:15] She’s very isolated, and her central relationship is with her elderly great aunt as well as her vampire friend, and her vampire friend’s friend. There is such a strong female central relationship in this film, and the movie stands out because of this.
[00:16:55] Jomol won a Special Mention at the National Awards for this film. Katherine is frustrated that this film isn’t subtitled so she could share with people. It ends up being overlooked except by people who understand the language.
[00:18:09] Harsha feels that this film and Nandanam are very similar movies because of their connections to a supernatural entity, the relative loneliness of the main character, they can only turn to the supernatural entity for solace.
[00:18:41] Karineeli, the friend/aide to Kunjathol, is a very popular and identifiable yakshi character in Malayalam folklore, so anyone encountering her in this movie would be very familiar with her as a yakshi figure. Janakikutty, as someone familiar with this lore, is pulling in all these details to create this very vibrant inner life.
[00:19:25] Kunjathol is a glowing, beautiful figure. Her hair, her sari is luminescent — she’s a very vibrant part of Janakikutty’s imagination in what is an otherwise dull life.
[00:20:05] Katherine feels this interpretation of a lonely, isolated adolescent reaching for a very vibrant inner life to help her navigate what’s she’s going through, makes more sense than any schizophrenia interpretation.
[00:20:45] Harsha compares it to her experience at the age of twelve, emigrating and being very lonely as a teenager, and internet hyperfixations were a way to cope with it. This is Janakikutty’s hyperfixation, and it seems very natural and beautiful and organic — it’s not scary or threatening. She feels that it’s not threatening because this is not M.T. Vasudevan Nair framing this as a story of “what do women get up to in their minds?”. Contrast the way we see Ganga’s connection to Nagavalli in Manichitrathazhu – because she’s an adult, her hyperfixation is more worrisome.
[00:21:45] This very strong connection is not depicted as a negative for Janakikutty, and that’s probably why it’s not threatening. Yakshi’s are not only representative of female sexuality, they’re also representative of female bonding, which is threatening to a patriarchal culture. This movie, though, portrays it as not threatening.
[00:22:24] If you want to see a happy yakshi movie, this would be the one to watch. There is a thread of sadness in the film, because Kunjathol has this tragic story, but you can also see why this kind of tragic figure would also appeal to a teenager.
[00:22:40] Teenagers act like this today (in terms of parasocial relationships and hyperfixation), but they’re accessing different stories.
[00:23:05] Harsha always thought of the movie as pleasant to watch, and extremely relatable. But talking about it on the podcast, she realized the reason was that it was a teenage hyperfixation. Janakikutty is telling her problems to this extremely empathetic figure who just wants to help her figure out her teenaged life’s problems. If she were an actual ghost with a real agenda, she’d be out there murdering people.
[00:23:44] Katherine notes there’s a moment where the sister gets married, and that’s the moment where we see the yakshi get very intense, and her incisors come out. Nothing serious really ends up happening in that moment, but we can see that for the yakshi, it relates to her own incident and how her life ended up being so tragic.
[00:24:10] We don’t realize it at first, but the grandmother figure/great-aunt has died while they are all at the wedding. She doesn’t attend because she’s had some kind of incident, but they also don’t want Janakikutty at the wedding. Janakikutty tries to wake her, but we as an audience perceive she has died. However, suddenly her eyes fly open, and she runs to the wedding, which she couldn’t have done. Janakikutty follows her, and they arrive to find the yakshi at the wedding.
[00:25:35] Harsha always assumed that the family didn’t want Janakikutty at the wedding because of her erratic behaviour (in their eyes). The other thing is that with Kunjathol being the vessel for providing empathy for Janakikutty, this allows her to see that her cousin is being put through something really unfair, even though it clears the way for Janakikutty with her crush. But the cousin’s wedding is really tragic in its own way.
[00:26:08] At one point, Janaki realizes that the object of her crush isn’t interested in her, and she tries to help her cousin, but it doesn’t work. It’s a huge step in her growing up – through the move, we see her learn to accept things. It might be a little cinematic at the end when the crush likes her back, but Harsha puts this down to film needing a kind of “bow-tie” at the end. Has Janaki learned that as an adult, you don’t always get the things you want?
[00:27:23] We turn to the next Jomol film we’re going to talk about in this episode, Mayilpeelikkavu. This is a much more mainstream film. It came out in 1998 as well.
[00:27:50] Harsha has always assumed they cast her in Mayilpeelikkavu because she started out in a supernatural film, and they liked her for that kind of role. Except, she plays a very different character here: it’s a typical kind of mainstream heroine role, with a gaggle of young kids around her constantly. But for Harsha, she doesn’t care for Jomol in those kinds of roles. Jomol is amazing in movies where she has to be a little awkward, like in Niram. For Mayilpeelikkavu, it feels like they wrote a role for Shalini and not Jomol.
[00:28:50] The set up is very reminiscent of Aniyathipravu.
[00:29:05] The film sees Kunchacko Boban and Jomol playing characters staying in the same house for vacation, and they’re both have dreams about a person coming to kill them. Or are these memories of a past life? They slowly discover that they were lovers in a past life. She was murdered, and he was framed for the murder. The same person from their past life is now out to get them in their present life.
[00:29:45] It’s a reincarnation story, and the other people involved in this story are still alive and in the household. There are some deceptions around who the killer really is, that set us up for a twist at the end.
[00:30:05] Thilakan plays a character that is similar to the one he played in Manichitrathazhu. Katherine felt this film was like a cousin to that in some ways: it’s a traditional household with lots of people in the house, and things are happening. There’s a mystery and some kind of supernatural things going on. She sees parallels between the two films.
[00:31:35] Katherine found herself surprised by Thilakan’s character, expecting him to be very much like the one in Manichitrathazhu. SPOILER: Thilakan’s character is the murderer.
[00:32:05] Harsha notes that in these kinds of films, a lot of the same actors get cast in similar types of roles. We’re supposed to pull from our historical film knowledge to understand the type of character they’re playing, so it’s logical to make an assumption about Thilakan’s character. Katherine thought the plot twist around his character was great, though.
[00:35:00] Harsha is amused by the fact that even after many years, someone will have the same hairstyle, and no one seems to recognize them. And why do movies that are otherwise complex assume we won’t recognize a character if they don’t give them the same haircut?
[00:035:45] Katherine generously argues that perhaps because the haircut has us make an assumption about the culprit, the twist becomes more impactful.
[00:35:55] Harsha enjoyed the twist at the end, but she also enjoyed the songs and the background track, which gives spookiness to the movie.
[00:36:07] The flashbacks are made to look visually distinctive either through black and white or sepia colouring.
[00:36:28] The film is otherwise quite colourful – it’s constantly popping with colour, perhaps because it’s a more mainstream movie than Ennu Swantham Janakikutty. It’s a very accessible mainstream movie, much less scary than films like Manichitrithazhu.
[00:37:15] Except in a film like Ennu Swantham Janakikutty, Jomol is not great as a lead heroine. But the fact that she’s paired opposite Kunchacko Boban and surrounded by a big cast allows her to be more integrated into this film despite all of that. Katherine also felt she was better in the flashbacks to the past, though Harsha notes that both actors are wearing brownface in the flashbacks and it is very distracting. It also makes no sense in the context of the story: why did they have to be darker skinned? And why did they have to have completely different hair texture?
[00:38:20] Possibly the only reason for this is to differentiate them from their present day incarnations, which is maybe not a great excuse, but could be an explanation. However, the guy we’re supposed to think is the murderer gets to keep his same haircut after fifty years.
[00:39:02] It really is an interesting film to watch and compare with Manichitrathazhu. Harsha wonders if there were any of the same kind of yakshi bits as there were in Manichitrathazhu? Katherine says no, but instead there’s a serpent shrine. The film’s title also reminds us that this shrine is also covered with peacock feathers. But no yakshis. It’s fully a reincarnation/revenge movie.
[00:40:50] We turn to the final film in our discussion, Bhoothakaalam, with Revathi and Shane Nigam.
[00:42:15] Bhothakaalam is the story of a mother and son who are taking care of her ailing mother/his grandmother at home. The mother/grandmother passes away, and strange things start happening in the house. Asha is a schoolteacher and her son, Vinu, is trained as a pharmacist. He had to pass up on a job because it would have had him move away from home, and his mother needed him to help with her ailing mother.
[00:42:58] Asha suffers from depression, and in the course of the film we see her seeking treatment for that. Vinu suffers from the stresses of being unemployed and living in this household with his mother. As well, he has insomnia and he drinks. Is he drinking and not sleeping because he’s stressed, or is he stressed because he’s drinking and not sleeping? In either case, he begins seeing hallucinations or visions.
[00:44:00] A friend of the family calls in a counsellor named George (Saiju Kurup) who comes to talk to Vinu and try to get him some help. Vinu is very resistent to this, because he really believes he’s seeing something in the house and that nobody believes him.
[00:44:20] Katherine wonders if this is related to “folie à deux”, the French term for a kind of madness shared by two people. There’s a question about whether they are both stressed and manifesting it in different ways.
[00:45:00] George comes by their house one day, and when they’re not at home, he speaks with a neighbour, who reveals that something terrible happened in the house, and suggests that now the house is troubled. Katherine has a wee bit of trouble with this character because what he discovers about the house scares him, and he no longer wants to counsel Vinu.
[00:45:30] However, his wife suggests finding out the truth behind the house, and he begins to investigate and discovers that the original owners were a man and his wife and child. The man killed his wife and child and then killed himself, too. The house has since been rented out to a series of people who have things happen to them, including more suicide attempts. So there is something going on in relation to this house, but what that might be isn’t really clear.
[00:46:03] One of the things Katherine noted and liked about the film was the scenes with Vinu’s girlfriend and her family. Everything is well-lit and bright. He goes to her sister’s birthday party and the house is brimming with people, and it’s bright with sunshine. Contrast this to the house where he lives with his mother which is very dark and oppressive. The cinematography is being used to emphasize that the relationship between these two people is very claustrophobic.
[00:46:00] Harsha wanted to talk about the house. The timeline the movie gives is that the man who first owned it killed his wife and child six or seven years earlier, and we learn he built the house when they got married. But the house looks *very* old – it looks like it was built in the 1970s or 1980s. Even the style of it is very dated. It also looks like it’s not being maintained at all. The house was very out of fashion, and Harsha wondered if that were intentional, or because they couldn’t find a new house that was poorly kept up. This house is meant to evoke something older.
[00:48:00] The house is like a manifestation of someone’s depression with it’s grime and neglect and peeling paint. The house itself is a character in the film.
[00:48:30] There’s a strong enmeshment between the mother and son. They can’t really stand each other, but they also can’t stand to be apart. He’s trying to pull away, but his mother keeps reeling him back in because she’s widowed and somewhat isolated, because she lost her mother whom she seemed to be close to.
[00:48:55] The grandmother was played by Valsala Menon, who played the great aunt in Ennu Swantham Janakikutty.
[00:49:15] Of course, we wonder at first if it’s the grandmother who is haunting the house after she dies, and everything starts up after that happens. It’s connected to the fact that Asha was very connected to her mother and had a hard time letting her go.
[00:49:40] Asha is up every night crying, and Vinu is unable to sleep because of this. Asha is taking medication for her depression, but Vinu is self-medicating, so it makes sense that he’s the first person to manifest these hallucinations.
[00:50:15] Revathi won an award for this performance, which we feel is very well deserved. It’s so well acted. In the scenes where mother and son are together, they’re just playing off each other. This could be a play with just the two of them in that house.
[00:50:42] Katherine wanted to make sure to comment on Shane Nigam in this role, because the film is very much a two-hander between the two of them. She could connect with both characters and their distress equally.
[00:51:00] The film is genuinely painful to watch (because the actors are just so good). The relationship just felt so lived in with its pain and disappointments, and his desire to be away from her, and her desire to keep him close. She’s so afraid of being alone.
[00:51:40] The film is painful because you can understand both of these people and the pain they’re going through, and the pain of the cycles they both keep going through. He wants out, he wants to find a good job, but he can’t do that if he stays. She’s adamant that he needs to stay, but finds the hotel job he plans to take unacceptable because of his education. They are endlessly dancing around the things that hurt them.
[00:52:50] Harsha notes the film made her think about so many people at the stage of Asha’s life, where parents are aging and passing away, but children are no longer children but adults and they don’t really need you as much. They might not have flown the nest yet, and there’s a temptation to try to hold them back at this point.
[0053:20] Because this is a contemporary film, there were a lot of things to potentially dig into, like caring for aging parents, which is time-consuming and exhausting. Asha ends up having to take a leave from her teaching job because she’s unable to function appropriately as a teacher, which isolates her even more.
[00:54:55] Asha is barely keeping things together, and when one domino falls, everything goes down.
[00:55:20] The counsellor also disappoints her because he’s scared of the house. Harsha thought they might be going to pull a Doctor Sunny moment with the counsellor, which she wouldn’t have been able to cope with because there was so much tension in the household. In the end, though, he ends up being just one more disappointment in a series of disappointments and losses for them.
[00:55:55] The mother and son are in their own little bubble, and you see people knocking at the bubble, trying to through them a lifeline to pick up. The principal, the girlfriend, the friend, the neighbour, there are all these caring people around them, but they won’t let them break through their trauma bubble. It’s very realistic, too.
[00:57:15] Asha finds this interest annoying, because she’s not able to judge the response from people. There’s a lot of shame that they are both going through this. Asha’s response is to keep everyone out.
[00:58: 15] Katherine suggests that the film has a happier resolution, maybe. They move out of the house, and the scene then is much brighter after all the dark interiors of the house. Harsha doesn’t find it happy because she was left with the thought about what would happen to the people who move into the house next.
[00:59:10] Harsha keeps thinking about The Haunting of Hill House, based on a Shirley Jackson novel. There’s a room in the house which becomes whatever the person wants or needs at that time. The house is slowly digesting the people who live in it: they kill themselves, they kill others. But it’s also not clear if it’s the house, or if it’s the family. Each member of the family has trauma, and the trauma is manifested in different ways.
[01:00:25] The scene near the end of the film where we see shadowy figures made Harsha think of Hereditary, where there is definitely a supernatural explanation rather than “it could be either”.
[01:00:40] The film is very unlike most Indian supernatural movies. It felt very Western in the way in which it conceived of the supernatural.
[01:01:05] Katherine confesses she was wary of a supernatural topic for the podcast, because she’s not a big horror fan. But she does like films in this genre that are more psychological, or are more about folk tales, folklore and psychology. Jump scares are fine, but not violent films.
[01:01:40] Katherine doesn’t care for very violent, slasher type films with lots of blood and gore. Harsha suggests not a lot of those films are made in India — there is no Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
[01:01:55] There is violence, or at least the hint of violence in some of the films we’ve looked at, but for the most part things are unsettling. Something like Bhoothakaalam is a very good film, but still remains a very hard watch, despite its lack of overt violence.
[01:02:40] We start to sum up with Katherine suggesting that it’s interesting to think about what the ideas in these films represent, and particularly what they represent in Kerala.
[01:03:00] For Harsha, what is important to think about is the emotion of fear. She often comes back to The Haunting of Hill House and The Turn of the Screw and other Western canon stories, and what makes them so scary for her is not, in fact, the supernatural, but the supernatural manifestation of our disturbed minds. Something like ghosts isn’t scary for her, it’s sad, because there’s something that has unsettled someone for so long that they keep coming back. And that’s what’s frightening in Bhoothakaalam.
[01:03:55] In Ennu Swantham Janakikutty, we’re dealing with a poltergeist, so there will come a time in her life when this will be in the past, and the events are not something she will continue to keep revisiting.
[01:05:00] When Katherine reflects on the whole series of films, what stands out for her is the contrast between traditional stories and modernity, or of faith versus science.
[01:06:15] Katherine can’t choose one film that stands out because each of the ones we’ve explored have been very different. Harsha notes that even the yakshi films we looked at are also very different from each other. The films approached the supernatural in very different ways. It was fun to see how these movies approached that which cannot be explained.
[01:06:55] Harsha would like to see what a modern yakshi movie would look like. There was an attempt with Akam, but it wasn’t very satisfactory. Maybe Aashiq Abu and his vibes in Neelavelicham will give us that satisfying modern yakshi movie?
[01:07:40] Our next set of episodes will focus on The Sea, and Malayalam cinema’s relationship to the sea.
Harsha’s List of Yakshi Movies:
Lisa (and sequel Veendum Lisa)
Bhadra
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