Veeravanakkam Movie Review: Noble intentions undone by weak craft and ideological conveniences

Early this year, Sankagiri Rajkumar's Bioscope was released. The film is the behind-the-scenes or origin story, if you may, of the director's 2009 social awareness film Vengayam. The film, made over a decade ago, questions mindless rituals and superstitions. Bioscope was interesting, as Vengayam wasn't widely watched except for a popular scene, and the origin story increased expectations of what could have led the director to make the film. It was also commercially well-packaged in its own right, with humorous sections about how the villagers viewed film equipment. Similarly, filmmaker Anil V Nagendran's Veeravanakkam, a sequel to his 2014 Malayalam film Vasanthathinte Kanal Vazhikalil, reminds us why the story of the Communist leader P Krishna Pillai needs to be retold. Although the conditions that leaders like Krishna Pillai fought against still exist and have taken various new forms, the film fails to present a compelling argument.

Veeravanakkam begins with the introduction of Raja Mahendran (Bharath), the scion of an affluent family of Kanniyakumari. Rather than showing him engaging in activities that connect him more with common people, we are presented with a tedious exposition from a local MLA who praises Mahendran, claiming that Communism is ingrained in his blood due to his father's influence by the teachings of P Krishna Pillai. Minutes later, we learn that Mahendran's daughter is in love with a PhD student of an oppressed community, and soon it snowballs into a caste crisis. A progressive Mahendran supports his daughter's romantic relationship and takes her lover's villagers to the memorial of P Krishna Pillai. He aims to teach them how to positively oppose caste oppression rather than resorting to violence, despite the Communist leader himself taking up arms for a just cause. The film fails to establish a strong reason why Krishna Pillai should be admired and what lessons his life offers to this particular village facing peculiar challenges. 

Before getting to the ideologically dicey spaces the film ventures into, the Krishna Pillai portions and Raja Mahendran portions were visually jarring. The 2014 film's visuals weren't enhanced. Other than the Tamil dubbing, there wasn't much added value to the project. The minimality of the screentime in present-day scenes did not make it any better. No character speaks like how we do, even the everyday conversation sounds like a Communist party conference speech. This aspect runs counter to the goal of taking Krishna Pillai to the masses.

The film gets somewhat engaging when the scene shifts to the pre-Independent Kerala, a not-so God's own country for many who were oppressed under the oligarchic regime of Namboodiris with the blessings of the British. Samuthirakani fits the bill of Krishna Pillai, the messiah-like figure to the downtrodden. Veeravanakkam gains from not using up much time on how Krishna Pillai turns into a Communist. Unfortunately, the film's screenplay doesn't use that saved time any better either. A couple of scenes were enough to send home the point that the zamindar (Siddique) is a pervert who constantly leers at the oppressed caste women who work in their farms and sexually assaults them as and when he pleases. But the screenplay doesn't maintain the economy of such scenes, thereby diluting the effect they were supposed to evoke. But this flaw doesn't come in the way of the makers' intention to lay bare the rigid and inhuman social structure of Kerala as recently as less than a century ago. The exploitation overwhelmed me at one point and made me think and take a sigh of relief that no one I knew and cared for had to go through this traumatic experience, and I also felt sorry for those who had to go through this.

Director: Anil V Nagendran

Cast: Samuthirakani, Bharath, Siddique, KPAC Lalitha

As a Communist propaganda film should be, this British India-era story offers a strong rebuttal to the right-wing alarmists who voice concern over the demographic change in Kerala as a threat posed to Indian sovereignty, without meaning to do so. Veeravanakkam does not hit out against any religion per se. But it is no mystery what religion the Namboodiri zamindars adhered to. You cannot blame people for converting to other faiths en masse due to unspeakable oppression faced in their current religion that either did not offer them hope or an oppressive system that is powerful enough to baulk at any help it offers. Either way, people will have a negative opinion about such a religion. Likewise, if a foreign ideology of Communism, and not the movements of the local saint-leader Narayana Guru and Mahatma Gandhi, proves to be effective against an oppressive system, cribbing about 'breaking India' conspiracy is futile. A religion or a native movement that remains a mute spectator to acts that bleed humanity dry are equally culpable, even if they do not enable oppression.

Where Veeravanakkam walks a slippery slope ideologically is when it is forcing Periyar EV Ramasamy and Dravidianism to make it palatable to Tamil audiences. This decision proves costly to the film's intentions. Though the film doesn't sufficiently tell how the zamindar is robbing the labourers of their wages, it is implied that this too was a major part of several exploitative practices. It is not common knowledge that Communists decried Periyar's profit-sharing model, where the labourer is a business partner of the landowner. The Communists argued that the landowners may not give the actual report of the profit, thereby lining their pockets. They also believed that the labourers should get their due irrespective of profit or loss, as they had already invested their labour. Nothing does a disservice to a Communist film than to have a person as an icon who differed from the basics of its ideology. Also, lines such as "Tamil/Malayalam Parambariyam" and "Dravida Parambariyam" from Communists, who divide the world between haves and have-nots and do not carry parochial passions, sound awkward.

Veeravanakkam, to sum up, which is mostly a recall to the 2014 film Vasanthathinte Kanal Vazhikalil, is an important documentation of our inglorious past amidst the national freedom struggle. However, the film is a cinematic disappointment, as the contemporary portions and the Krishna Pillai segments are disjointed and act in silos. With ideological compromises, it gets even weaker to be called a powerful propaganda film.