Puzhu movie review: Mammootty’s electrifying portrait of a bigot’s persecution complex eclipses a mishandled climax

Language: Malayalam 

In a memorable scene from Puzhu, Kuttan explains to his school-going son Kichu that he did not re-marry after being widowed so as to devote himself entirely to the boy. By then, considerable time has been spent establishing Kuttan as a despotic, casteist bigot who quietly terrorises Kichu. In that moment though, when he allows himself to be vulnerable before a child, I found my revulsion towards him wrestling with the tears welling up in my eyes.  

This is the brilliance of Puzhu with which Ratheena debuts as a director. 

Mammootty stars as Kuttan in the film, and Parvathy as his sister, Bharati. The megawattage of this team-up between a legend and a young superstar has been a talking point for months. Parvathy is not a co-lead but the primary supporting character in Puzhu, and frankly, deserves more space than the film gives her. That said, every iota of screen time she gets is a reminder of her calibre. When Bharati tells Kuttan she wishes to meet their mother, the actor infuses her character’s words with heartbreak and yearning without a physical gesture of supplication, without a beseeching tone or even an audible quiver in her voice. 

Their performances are the fulcrum of Puzhu even when the writing slips up in the finale. 

Kuttan is a former policeman who subjects his offspring to robotic, suffocating discipline and a morbid ritual of watching a home video featuring his dead mother every day. When Bharati moves into their urban apartment complex, we realise the siblings are estranged because she is deemed to have disgraced their Brahmin family by marrying a lower-caste man (Appunni Sasi).

Meanwhile, Kuttan feels his life is under threat. His suspicion shifts from one individual to the next to the next, each one from outside the circle of inherited social privilege he occupies.

Kuttan’s belief that they’re all capable of killing him comes from a sense of victimhood that is ironic since he is an upper-caste, male member of India’s religious majority. He does not see the advantages that consequently accrued to him at birth, nor does he see the cruelty he inflicts on women, lower castes, individuals from religious minorities and a minor in his care who shows signs of liberal thinking. His persecution complex typifies oppressors worldwide. He is a victimiser, but views himself as a victim – of Bharati, her husband KP and others – and is convinced that he is helpless in the face of provocation from them.

Puzhu is a compelling slow burn. Ratheena builds up tension and an air of intrigue that are as much a factor of Kuttan’s fears as of her storytelling style and pacing, the precision editing by Deepu Joseph (Ee.Ma.Yau, Jallikattu), Jakes Bejoy’s pensive music, Vishnu Govind and Sreesankar’s restrained sound design and near-perfect acting by every member of the cast including Vasudev Sajeesh Marar who is remarkably nuanced as Kichu.  

The gripping narrative is not matched by the climactic minutes that simultaneously manage to be over-explained and oblique. The title will mean nothing if you miss the theatrical work that runs parallel to Puzhu’s main plot and is repeatedly referenced in conversation, so here is an alert: watch KP’s play Thakshakan like a hawk each time it appears in the film, listen closely to the opening song and to KP narrating a part of the story at a party. 

Thakshakan is about the mythical King Parikshit, grandson of Arjun from the Mahabharat, who mistreats Nature, looks down on forest-dwellers and once insults a sage meditating in a forest. The man’s son curses him with death by a snakebite. A terrified Parikshit turns his home into a fortress where he meets almost no one, but is ultimately outwitted by his assassin, the half-human, half-serpent king Thakshakan who comes disguised as a worm (puzhu).

Parikshit’s tale is not common knowledge, so Puzhu demands attention, which is fair enough. But the specific mention of the play in the very last line spoken by a character makes the end appear esoteric although it is not. That line tries to force us to draw the film’s entire meaning from the myth of Parikshit and Thakshakan, which not only amounts to spoonfeeding, but is also unnecessary since the Kuttan-Bharati saga is poignant and stands on its own, and we should have been left to take what we wish from the mythological analogy drawn by the writers. 

Besides, Puzhu is a riveting character study until the climax, at which point it becomes a more literal thriller. The ending also inadvertently affirms the constant suspicion with which real-world fanatics like Kuttan view anyone who is not “one of us”. And the tone in that portion does not amount to just an observation about a reality or even a cautionary note, but what could be considered a warning that the film almost seems to exult in: a warning that revenge from the oppressed is inevitable – not a fight back, not self-defence, not rebellion, but revenge.  

This mindlessness is particularly frustrating because the lead-up to it is so beautiful.

The atmospherics, the scene that demonstrates the link between colourism and caste in Indian society, the camerawork that illustrates Kuttan’s feeling of isolation more than words are all extraordinary. If anyone knows how to shoot a megastar like a real person rather than a giant, it is Theni Eswar who was also the DoP of Ram’s Peranbu (2018, Tamil) starring Mammootty. 

Social conditioning is a sneaky creature. It rears its head even in otherwise progressive cinema, and in Puzhu, it spawned a couple of elements that gave me pause. 

One is a scene in which KP takes Bharati’s hand and leads her out of her family home. There are two components of inequality in their relationship: she is upper caste in a casteist society whereas we are told he falls within the umbrella grouping of SC/STs, and this seems to be the aspect that the director and camera counter through that shot; they have not taken her gender into consideration. The symbolism of the man leading the way and walking a step ahead of the woman to an elevated background score is unthinking since it prioritises caste concerns over objections to patriarchy. Imagine instead the implication and power of an image of both Bharati and KP side by side exiting that casteist, patriarchal home.

The decision to write Kuttan and Bharti as brother and sister is in itself telling. Mammootty is almost 40 years older than Parvathy, but at 70, he gets to play her sibling while another youngster, Athmeeya Rajan, acts as his wife in Puzhu. Because this industry considers women actors close to his age unworthy of playing his spouse and sister? Or because it is inconceivable to write him as, say, the father or uncle of a character played by a star of Parvathy’s generation?  

It hurts to point this out in a film that’s so realistic in its exposé of the manifestations of casteism in Kerala, a state more advanced than the rest of India on most human development indices.

The lynchpin of Puzhu is the portrayal of understated caste prejudice, the characterisation of Kuttan especially his skill in gaslighting both the audience and Kichu, and the way Mammootty makes it hard to hate this man without downplaying his despicable mindset for even a second. Any viewer who remains conflicted about him mirrors the characters in the film who too are conflicted. 

It is unfortunate that Mammootty’s filmography for decades has been dominated by loud, spiced-up, formulaic, misogynistic fare. Every once in a while though, he picks a film like Puzhu and remind us of the greatness he is capable of. He did it most recently with Khalidh Rahman’s Unda (2019, Malayalam), the screenplay of which was written by Harshad who has co-written Puzhu with Sharfu and Suhas (Varathan, Virus). Together, the thespian, the writers and the director have created a deeply disturbing portrait of a bigot’s persecution complex. 

Puzhu’s flaws cannot be taken lightly, yet the film is stunning for so many reasons, making Ratheena one of the most significant voices to emerge from Indian cinema in recent years. 

Rating: 4 (out of 5 stars) 

Puzhu is streaming SonyLIV

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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