This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on September 7, 2019.
The first part of this overview of Lijo Jose Pellissery (LJP)’s films focussed on the director’s earlier work — in this installment, I look at LJP’s three most recent films, starting with the very strange (and sometimes quite wonderful) Double Barrel.
Double Barrel (2015)
Double Barrel is probably the exception to the rule I suggested previously, that all of LJP’s films are deeply rooted in Kerala. The film is set in Goa, which has a reputation for being party central – which I could cheekily suggest adds to its whacked out storyline that seems, at times, like a substance fueled fever dream. At the core of this crime caper are two precious stones, one red, one yellow, one named Majnu, one named Laila, like the star-crossed lovers of the Persian tale. The gems are only valuable if they are together, and an underworld Don (Thomas Berly) tasks two thugs, Pancho (Prithviraj) and Vinci (Indrajith) to buy the stones. Pancho and Vinci need a week to come up with the money, and a chase to get the stones begins as Don’s son, Gabbar, his henchman Billy and his gang, a gang of Russian mobsters, and a hawla gang all want them. Toss in a Lover Boy (Asif Ali) and Lover Girl (Pearle Maaney), desperate for a little alone time, but always ending up in the cross-fires of the gangs as they fight for the gems, Shaolin Sweety (Isha Sharvani) who works for Don, and a mysterious hit-man named Silent (Sunny Wayne) whose side-kick is a little boy with a squeaky toy, and you have some idea of the madness that forms the core of this film, a kind of curry western that draws on inspiration from the films of Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, perhaps via Sholay (is it a coincidence that Pancho and Vinci travel via motorcycle and sidecar, not unlike Veeru and Jai, and that the Don’s son is named “Gabbar”?). There’s a bit of a running gag where Pancho tries to explain to people just who is involved in this deal for the gems, resorting to setting out cashews to represent the various players, and it’s not far from the truth, because there is a dizzying number of characters to keep track of.
Double Barrel is the only one of his films that LJP has scripted himself. It is at times confusing and confounding; at other times deeply inspired and wickedly funny, even if it is also uneven. I think the second half is stronger than the first, mostly because it focuses more on the race to get the stones as all of the players converge on Cross Hill for a final shoot-out. The film is gloriously shot by Abinandhan Ramanujam (who was also the cinematographer for Amen), all neon and fluorescent and colours so vibrant they glow. As the title suggests, everything in the film is set up like a double barrel, two chambers side by side, and everything has its pair or counterpart. The stones, Laila and Majnu have their human counterpart in Majnu (Arya) and Laila (Swathi Reddy), although the human Leila spends the film dead, except in the drug-fuelled mind of Majnu, for whom she remains alive. “Double-barelled” can also refer to something having more than one purpose, so perhaps the question to ask about LJP’s film is what is he really trying to get at here? Part of me wants to suggest that this was a film that the director needed to get out of his system, an idea, inspired by graphic novel style, that he needed to see if he could actually film. It definitely forms a break between his earlier works, and the films that would follow it.
Angamaly Diaries (2017)
Written by actor Chemban Venod Jose (who appeared in LJP’s Nayakan, Amen, and Double Barrel), who comes from Angamaly, Angamaly Diaries saw LJP moving away from his usual actors, like Indrajith, and putting out a casting call for new faces – the result was one of the films USPs, a cast of 86 new faces, headed up by Anthony Varghese as Vincent Pepe, a native of the Angamaly district of Kochi, known for its pork trade. The film is, as the title suggests, a chronicle of events that lead Pepe and his friends into the pork business and into conflicts with the brothers Ravi and Rajan. There’s some indication that “Angamaly” derives its name from the Malayalam word for an ancient battleground, “ankam”, and Angamaly Diaries is, in a very real sense, a battleground for the control of the pork business – this is most evident when a fight breaks out as Pepe and his colleagues are trying to negotiate a deal with Ravi and Rajan – as the battle rages around the discussions taking place, the background score is punctuated by one word: “ankam”. In the ensuing chaos, Pepe accidentally kills someone, and the rest of the film revolves around how he and his friends will make a deal brokered by Ravi and Rajan in order to stay out of jail. The film culminates in a now -famous eleven minute single tracking shot (no edits), set against the backdrop of a church festival, and is bookended by a reference to Chavittu Nadakam – a Christian folk art form from Kerala that takes its inspiration from bible stories for the most part, with performers dressed in colourful medieval style costumes performing in panoramas. As the film opens, Pepe and his gang are dressed for a panorama – but it’s only late in the film that we are given the context for the bar fight they are involved in.
If I’m honest, Angamaly Diaries doesn’t resonate with me as much as some of LJP’s other films – I appreciate the writing, and the sense we get of Angamaly as the central character in the movie, and of this representation of this place in this time, and I can appreciate the technical efforts (again, cinematography by Gireesh Gangadharan and Prashant Pillai’s music direction are both top notch). But just because I can appreciate the technicalities of testorone fueled chaos doesn’t mean that it makes a connection with me as a viewer. That said, I never thought I’d see a film that would supplant Salt N’ Pepper in terms of its representation of food on screen, but Angamaly Diaries does – I don’t think I’ve ever salivated so much as I have at watching food in a movie as I have here, and it makes me want to go learn more about the dishes we see on screen.
Ee.Ma.Yau (2018)
The title of the film generally gets translated as R.I.P – the invocation in English of the wish for the dead to rest in peace. In Malayalam, the dead are sent off with an invocation of Eesho Mariyam Yauseppe (Jesus, Mary and Joseph), abbreviated to Ee.Ma.Yau.
There’s a scene in Angamaly Diaries set in a funeral – a man has died, there’s a woman wailing over his coffin, in the midst of all the mourners, and another woman and a child off to the side. A couple of men at the back of the group comment that the woman is the man’s mistress, and that he’d turned his wife and child out in order to live with her. Much hilarity ensues when the man’s arms keep popping out of the coffin, causing the two men to finally rush forward and break his arms so the coffin will stay closed. I don’t’ know if writer P.F. Mathews (who apparently was also supposed to be the writer for LJP’s Antichrist, a film that was eventually shelved) was inspired by this while writing Ee.Ma.Yau, but it’s a reminder for me that there are many ideas and motifs that travel through all of LJP’s films – like the pig barn in Nayakan that eventually becomes a whole piggery and pig business in Angamaly Diaries, or the spirit of Solomon’s father and his two angel sidekicks in Amen, mirrored by a vision of Christ flanked by two angels in Double Barrel.
Ee.Ma.Yau revolves around the death of Vavachan Mesthiri (Mesthiri is a mason or carpenter – in this case Vavachan (Kainakary Thankaraj) is/was a carpenter – we’re told he did grapevine carvings for the church altar, which his daughter tells him is going to be replaced with something new). Vavachan, we’re given to understand, spends much of his time away from his family – much to the distress of his wife, Pennamma (Pauly Valsan), who wants him to just stay home. As Pennamma makes a curry with a duck Vavachan has brought home with him (adding a little bit of “medicine” that is supposed to make her husband not drink quite so much), Vavachan proceeds to drink toddy and get a bit tipsy. He talks with his son, Eeshi (Chemban Vinod Jose) about plans for his funeral – with Eeshi promising his father that he’ll make sure he has the grand funeral that he dreams of. As Vavachan grows more drunk, he begins singing songs from the time he was a performer of Chavittu Nadakam, and then, suddenly, he just drops dead. The rest of the film traces Eeshi’s attempts to keep his promise to his father, and along with his friend Ayyappan (Vinayakan), he sets about arranging for his father’s funeral. But Eeshi has very little money, making the idea of a grand event seem more and more impossible. Add to that the rumours that start circulating that perhaps there was more to Vavachan’s death that meets the eye, combined with the death of the grave digger, the arrival of Vavachan’s second wife and son, the local priest who refuses to allow for Vavachan’s burial until a proper investigation takes place – all of this combines to make Eeshi eventually reach his breaking point. The film is singular in that music director Prashant Pillai was instructed that there would be no songs or background score for the film – there’s one song only for the final credits, and the film is punctuated alternatively by the sounds of the sea, and the sound of the rain that begins to fall and never lets up as everything about the funeral spirals out of control. Life, death, and faith wend their way through most of LJP’s films, but in Ee. Ma.Yau they come together with some masterfully controlled filmmaking to create a very fine film.