Churuli - Malayalam Movie Review

 Lijo Jose Pellissery became a household name in Kerala, after this cult-hit movie - Angamaly Diaries. And then the oscar-nominated Jallikattu made him famous across the country. Ee Ma Yu, his second outing ( streaming on Netflix India, by the way) was also a stellar movie that dealt with the themes of death, grief and afterlife. And then he made this movie - Churuli (means a Loop, in malayalam) 

Frankly, when I saw the trailer last year, I was extremely excited for the possibilities, but now that I have seen the movie, to say am equal parts awe-struck and frustrated would be the least of it. LJP offers no explanation for this exercise in absurd-art-bizzare-cinematic extravaganza. The critics are divided in their verdicts, some of them laud the dazzling vision and the cinematic treatment of this narrative and the others are quick to trash it as exceedingly absurd, a exercise in  That it's a loop - a never ending one, set across time/space/other dimensions is very clear but nothing else is clear and there are quite a number of interesting theories going on about the multi-fold and multi-layered mysteries unraveled in the movie. More on that later. 

But first the good things. 

On a script penned by V Hareesh based on a short story by Vinoy Menon (named 'Kaligeminnarile Kuttavalikal' or the criminals of Kaligeminnar) cult-favourite director LJP and the DOP Madhu Neelakantan bring alive the misty forests and the snaking mountainous roads of the Kerala High Range, like a magical being. In fact, the forest is a breathing, unpredictably transient character in the whole narrative. Fabulous job in fully immersing us into this trapped world, cut off from the rest of humanity, a village where all the residents have some or the other connections to a crime committed in the real world. 

The whole movie unspools like a visually stunning magnum opus, structured like a puzzle-box where the key to the puzzle is given to the viewer right in the beginning but the pieces never seem to fit together. It's a scifi, horror and mystery thriller - all rolled into one and never quite stacks up cleanly into any of these genres either. We start the movie with a fable, narrated by a woman - a story of a Brahmin (higher caste) who comes into the forest to nab this trickster called Perumadan ( a phantom who leads people astray) only to be duped by the very same phantom. Who takes on the shape of an anteater, gets picked up by the Brahmin and then proceeds to lead the man in a never ending loop around the forest, in search of the very same trickster. That is the whole premise of the movie. No, seriously, it is and we viewers never quite catch that drift. 

Coming down to the main narrative - we follow two cops, Antony and Shajivan ( this is the alias they use for themselves on this mission) who are coming into the village of ‘churuli’ to nab a criminal named Joy. The predicament of course, is that none of them have seen this Joy in person and so, have to tread carefully to actually first find out who this joy is. Taking on the guise of rubber plantation workers, they realise the man who owns that plantation, has gone out of town and so, settle to wait for his return and take up jobs as cleaning up and serving the customers in the local toddy-shop. While Shajivan, the younger man is innately curious, Anthony is treating this as a chance vacation, drinking and going on hunting trips. Shajivan soon realises there is something wrong with the village. He encounters strange beings in the night, who wear lit up masks, witnesses comets crashing into the forest at night and has old women chase him with an axe. And to top it all, everybody seems to think that Shajivan is a familiar face. Time becomes immaterial as they both lose track of what day it is. 

Do the two of them actually find out who that criminal ‘joy’ is and do they manage to nab him and get out of this village, is the mystery that we want to go deeper into. Instead, the script takes a wide detour and gives us glimpses into the strange sightings around the village, a frequently occurring glimpse of a labyrinth and the weird transformations of the villagers themselves. The bridge from the outside world to churuli is a rotting wooden slat across a running stream and rocks. As soon as the Jeep crosses over, we see that the entire load of passengers, residents of Churuli, have changed from taciturn, smiling co-passengers into foul mouthed  angry and irate men, ready to fly into an argument and on brink of violence. 

The performances of course, are the highlight of the movie. Vinay Fort, who is one of the finest young actors today in Malayalam Cinema, bites down into this juicy role - of Shajivan, the younger cop who is naive and foolish in the beginning, but inside the village, comes into his own. His counterfoil, is Chemban Vinod Jose, who plays the role of the senior policeman, a bumbling goon-cop act that is endearing and goofy. There are several others playing small but crucial roles in the movie that lend depth to the intrigue of the narrative. Jaffer Idukki, plays the role of the toddy-shop owner and is a treat to watch, especially the scenes of his transformation from a friendly shop-keeper into a ratty mean old bastard. Soubin Shahir and Joju George have short but very interesting cameos as well. 

Perhaps it is in the air. This 'thing' that transforms the people. In the forest around them that seems to pulsate and breathe, witness to the alien abductions and strange healing techniques. It’s an exacting film, in that, we need to watch every single frame. A blink and perhaps, you miss the connecting links between two events transpiring on screen. LJP consciously doesn’t spoon feed his audience and maybe there is a lot that he wants to tell, but all of it is so oblique and dense that we lose the plot midway. The chase and the mission fall by the wayside. 

It’s a complex winding journey, a wild ride that thrills your senses, titillates you, but ultimately, leaves you scratching your head and tearing your hair out. It’s visually arresting, technically brilliant but as a piece of cinema, it fails to make any sense. There are no answers, no resolutions. It’s a heady fantastical trip inside of a cynic’s dreamscape that perhaps attempts to correlate back to his older movies that dealt with more serious and well explored themes, like masculinity, greed, animalistic nature, death and spirituality etc. But ultimately it’s all a hell of a loop, that just doesn’t disentangle. Perhaps, I need to watch it again.