Director: Rajeev Ravi
Writer: Gopan Chidambaran(dialogue)
Cast: Nivin Pauly, Poornima Indrajith, Indrajith Sukumaran
Spoilers ahead…
There’s a lot one can understand about the essence of Rajeev Ravi’s Thuramukham just by the way it sets up its two major “hero introduction” scenes. Set in two time periods, across two generations of a family, these scenes show how differently a father and his son react to the same predicament. The scene shows the exploitative token system in which coins (chaapa) are tossed at dock workers, giving them the right to work at the harbour for a day. Maimu (an excellent Joju George) comes across as a man who tries to deal with his crushing reality, with a friend comparing this act of token-tossing to how dogs are fed. Maimu stands in line, understands the injustice and grapples with the idea of remaining a passive participant.
His son Moidu (Nivin Pauly), though feels more at ease with this system. There’s a heroism in the way he’s able to use his physical strength to dive for these tokens and you see this even more when he’s able to share an extra token to a friend. There’s a half smile on his face too as he walks back with his daily chaapa, hinting that he’s accepted the practice, arguably because he doesn’t see another option. The unfairness continues from father to son with only the faces around changing, apart from a small increase in the wage from annas to rupees as the film transforms from black and white to colour.
Yet the film’s cynical spirit is more in line with what Maimu is able to foresee for himself and family. As he sits on the dock at night after a traumatic day, you sense him accepting his fate and that of his children. His brute force is not enough to protect his family, let alone secure their future, and as he stares hopelessly at the flowing river, incapable of turning his family’s saviour, we also see the beginning of a whirlpool of injustice that is impossible to swim out of.
The same reproach is mirrored in that scene in which Maimu’s wife (Poornima Indrajith in one of her best. A scene in which she witnesses her son’s rowdy ways reminded me of her in Randam Bhavam’s ‘Maranittumengilo’) simply goes to bed that night. With her kids sleeping right next to her, the blankness on her face shows the weight of her truth in which she cannot even afford to cry.
As we move ahead in time to join this family after the children have grown up, you sense that her sons have more options, even if they are minimal. This period too coincides with India gaining its freedom (although the period isn’t established specifically), which calls for changes that are bound to affect everyone. This is where we see the two brothers (Nivin playing Moidu and Arjun Ashokan as Hamsa) and the two paths they have in front of them. Moidu hopes his strength will help him remain above his fate. He colludes with those with power but only to fuel his decadence. He shifts away from his family and instead becomes a part of the very system that suppressed him and his people before.
Hamsa, the younger brother, chooses the political route to escape oppression. With new unions maintaining status quo despite making fresh promises, Hamsa realises that it is only through political participation that he will see any real change. As we see the film interject between the two brothers and their respective paths, we get several instances where we’re made to understand their father Maimu through the actions of his sons. Fate may have forced Maimu to live (and die) like his son Moidu but you see more of him in Hamsa. Maimu perhaps did not have the option his sons did and from the looks of it (he shuts up his children as they’re shouting a particular slogan), he too may have wanted the world Hamsa hopes for.
And the film itself is easier to approach with the temperament of reading a novel, which is surprising given how Thuramukham is based on a play that was widely performed in the 50’s and later. We switch between the brothers and several smaller characters, coalescing to create an unending loop of tragedies. The detailing is so rich and pristine that you want to remain still and hold on to moments; an example of this is a tiny scene in which we see their mother’s job. Even as the content itself gives us enough to think about, we’re also forced to remember that there was such a job as that of a rice picker’s, whose duty it was to pick up fallen rice, one grain at a time. Details such as these keep the internal world of the family just as relevant as the external world of the workers and their rights.
Which is what the film does so well by denying us any simplistic resolutions to their plight or dramatic highs. In a film where the central villain remains a group of people (including businessmen, politicians and the police) that keep changing even if their affect remains the same, we realise that it is the protagonist Moidu that creates the maximum damage to both his family and people. His interventions (or the lack of it), create obstacles for his ilk and even when he realises the folly of his ways, it’s too late to turn around and make a difference. But even when we see the two brothers and where their paths eventually lead them to, the difference remains who they have left at home, crying for them.