No one in filmmaker Joe Baby’s Kaathal- The Core gets angry. They are lonely, ashamed, trapped and even annoyed. But never angry, an emotion that has otherwise dominated blockbusters of last year. In Mammootty’s latest Malayalam drama, people look out for people, and family comes together, even as the patriarch struggles to come out.
The enormously moving film–currently streaming on Prime Video–is a gentle call for sensitivity as it tries to understand the complexities of coming out. It is optimistic that relationships can be redeemed, even as it follows a marriage falling apart; it remains hopeful that one can continue to love, even if they nurse a broken heart. Featuring possibly one of the most effective performances of last year, Mammootty crafts Mathew Devassy as a man who must rescue himself from the trap that his loved ones and community set him up in. How do you break free, without breaking apart?
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A lot has been written about Kaathal’s brilliant portrayal of same-sex love and its devastating effects on people who never find acceptance, but beyond its obvious primary theme, the film is a glorious palate cleanser in the context of the cinema the country is watching. All the top grossing films of last year were mighty actioners which, in some ways, were fueled by a certain narrative angst.
A disgruntled soldier fights against his own country, a father-son duo unite to take revenge, another goes to the neighbouring country to get his son back, while a son in another film destroys himself–and the world around him–to win the love of his father. The films, each quite different in their tone, scale and politics, powered through with anger and violence. But not Kaathal, which examines how people, even when pushed to the extreme, might continue to dream of a gentler, more accepting world. They don’t slash and slay, they just hug, cry and whisper a sorry.
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In one sequence, when Mammootty visits his daughter in her school, masking the truth of his identity that has become a talking point in the village, the daughter asks him to stop. “I am not mad at you,” she says. “I didn’t speak to you not because I was angry, but because I was sad.” In another, after his life and choices are almost on the verge of coming out in a court full of people, Mammootty meets a volunteer of an LGBTQIA association. He is tensed, processing the fact that he openly denied being a homosexual, when the volunteer suggests they can offer him counselling and mental health support as coming out isn’t easy. In that moment, briefly, it feels Kaathal’s Mathew would lose his temper, shoot back at the unsolicited advice.
But he does the unthinkable: He opens the door of his car, and sits, pensive and broken, windows rolled up. The film’s violence–if one can call it that– isn’t in blood and gore, but the crushing realisation that the suffering is almost always lonely. But should it be?
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Kaathal is a masterclass in romance and heartbreak, as it plays out almost entirely through the eyes of its residents. It stages scene after scene of stolen glances between former lovers, the gaze of guilt from a community, the scanning of the nosy. The lovers here deal with heartache of gigantic proportions. Sometimes, they drown it at a bar with a friend who no longer finds it comfortable to be around them, or in silence, as the guilt is best kept in check. They don’t burn the world down in the name of love, they attempt to merely knit it together with the love that was promised, but never acknowledged.
Joe Baby’s Kaathal, then, is a landmark film and it couldn’t have come at a better time. It dials down the rhetoric and angst and quietly tries to tilt our heads in the direction of love in the times of violence. It isn’t asking lovers to lick the shoe, it is calling for tender urgency to heal the wounds.
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Justin Joseph RaoJustin Rao writes on all things Bollywood at Indian Express Online. An… read more
In times of hyper masculine angst, Mammootty’s Kaathal The Core is the tender heartache cinema needs – The Indian Express
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