Kaathal- The Core Movie Review: Mammootty and Jeo Baby deliver an emotional juggernaut

One of the most striking images in Kaathal is so brief -- of a random couple outside a courthouse: the woman feeding her baby, with a considerable gap between her disinterested husband facing away, his phone getting more attention than her. It would have been an ordinary image had we not seen, earlier, the proceedings in the courthouse behind them, where another couple -- Mathew (Mammootty) and Omana (Jyothika) -- is struggling with a divorce case. This parallel takes on a more impactful significance owing to its placement in such a pivotal situation. In the courtroom, one lawyer brings up the painful reality of many homosexuals trapped in unwilling marriages of convenience. Is Mathew a homosexual or not? The film's closing moments provide an answer, and while that in and of itself is an intriguing idea, let's not see that as the film's primary intention because Kaathal is much more than a 'suspense' drama.


Director: Jeo Baby
Cast: Mammootty, Jyothika, Muthumani, Chinnu Chandni

Jeo Baby, who created waves with his dissection of a loveless marriage in The Great Indian Kitchen, dissects a different kind of loveless marriage in Kaathal. A perceptible sense of heaviness weighs on some of the film's crucial characters as the film opens. A vague conversation between a mother and daughter hints at an undercurrent of tension. 

But Kaathal is largely characterised by a fairly sedate quality, owing to how Mathew, Omana, and a couple of other integral characters carry themselves. The drama is mostly internal. Jeo doesn't visit any of the characters' painful memories. Showing only the couple's present state of mind instead of how they may have dealt with their predicament in the past -- or, to be more specific, through their 20-year-old marriage -- is an interesting approach. 

The mother, Omana, is a picture of grace, dignity, and reservedness. (I assume an expectation of unpredictability and broader appeal is the impetus behind this casting choice.) We sense something amiss between Omana and Mathew despite them being on talking terms. We learn that he is a leftist candidate contesting for a by-election. This, too, is an interesting situation because it brings up, among others, the discussion about the degrees of progressiveness and walking the talk. A few members are worried about losing votes in the light of, in their eyes, a "scandal". But is it a scandal, though?

A story like this would've been incomplete if not for the involvement of church, state, courts, and, of course, the court of public opinion.  A lesser filmmaker would've probably opted for louder drama, but the filmmaker in Jeo Baby has proved previously that his strengths lie in presenting heavy dilemmas in an understated manner. And he couldn't have found a better actor than Mammootty for his material, written by Adarsh Sukumaran and Paulson Skaria. 

Kaathal is yet another testament to the fact that Mammootty still carries the ability to stun you in the most unexpected ways. It takes only one minute for him to conjure an acting choice that remains impactful right through the end credits. A piece of dialogue, a gesture, a hitherto unseen voice modulation... all to convey the burden of a clandestine love affair, the burden of a misguiding lie told decades ago, and the burden of denying freedom to someone and oneself. At least two moments in the film got me choked up.  

This is a film more focussed on performances, with Salu K Thomas's camera taking care to be not intrusive. There's a lot of thought put into positioning the characters in a frame, with the emotional distance factoring into the composition and proximity. Mathews Pulickan's score, underscored by a sense of melancholy in the opening stretches, takes on a more hopeful and empowering mood once the characters enter a liberated phase.

Kaathal is arguably the most daring attempt from Malayalam cinema so far, mainly owing to one of its biggest superstars spearheading a film that asks some much-needed questions about a complex topic that doesn't have to be so. Why is a particular relationship preference that's supposed to be normal still considered taboo? Why do some treat it like a 'defect'? Why did it take a megastar this long to tackle a character like this? Well, better late than never, I guess. It's good to see Mammootty challenging himself with script choices like this instead of being that severely image-conscious star who dances around with women half their age or seeks out the next desi equivalent of Walter White.

One could argue that the society the film portrays is a largely aspirational one. Still, if a filmmaker intends to show that this is how a society should behave with certain individuals, that narrative choice begins to make more sense. And shall we also applaud the most beautifully lyrical closing shot in recent memory?