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Maadathy, an Unfairy Tale Movie Review: CINEMA EXPRESS.COM

Maadathy, an Unfairy Tale Movie Review: CINEMA EXPRESS.COM

October 9, 2020

Leena Manimekalai’s blazing, poignant tale of terror

Leena Manimekalai’s Maadathy is a rare tale of oppression that gushes with the frenzy of terror and ventures into an inventive genre

Leena Manimekalai’s film, Maadathy – An Unfairy tale, premiered as part of the Coalition of South Asian Film Festival today. Watching Leena’s poignant and powerful film rendered in a stunning visual language, we realise that the tag ‘An Unfairy tale’ is only too apt. Leena fiercely channels gutting truth, horror and pain in her film, which blends the human and the otherworldly as it blazes against the unnatural and inhuman divisions existing in our cruel society.

Director: Leena Manimekalai

Cast: Semmalar Annam, Ajmina Kassim, Arul Kumar, Patrick Raj

 

Maadathy bears an unsettling relevance to what is currently happening in our nation where religious and communal tensions are rising to the fore. The opening lines chronicle a truth we often tend to overlook as a society, a truth of terror: “Behind every deity in India, there is a story of injustice.” Empowered by a singular narrative unravelling like a folk tale, the finely-layered social drama is the story of this injustice. Our reverence towards religion is deeply tainted by delusions, insanity, and hypocrisy. With what sanity can you comprehend a country which treats its women in the most despicable of ways and rushes to raise temples for goddesses?
Maadathy is a devastating portrait of the inhumanely ostracised lower caste community called the Puthirai Vannars and how the ruthlessness of caste scorches Yosana, a young girl who hails from the Dalit sect. In an intimate scene, when Yosana confronts her mother who keeps chiding her for roaming in the wild, she is told that the beasts of villagers will never let them live. When we first see the villagers, it is in a painting, and we see them for what they truly are: blind ghosts. The film then transitions breathtakingly from painting to reality, from fable to truth. There is a marvellous prowess in the eloquent cinematic style of Leena that elevates her on par with auteurs like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the independent Thai filmmaker known for his phantasmagorical political films with mesmeric underpinnings of allegory. Leena’s visual language is painterly, poetic and evocative of wrenching agony. 
Yosana, the film’s central character, bears a spirit that yearns to be free and wild, a spirit that naturally yearns to love. Yet, a higher price is asked of her and in harrowing terror, she becomes one with Maadathy. The inverse is also true as the film is revelatory of the dichotomy of the holy and sinful. Yosana (a wonderful Ajmina Kassim) is part of nature, her sole friends being rabbits, pigeons and monkeys in the mountainous forest region where her family resides, away from the village. She splashes around in the waters and when she is wronged, the thundering skies pour down ceaselessly in pain and anger. Leena’s film takes us deep into the forests, where we find the woods at their most liberating, sensual and frightful — it is both chilling and gorgeous. The forest is Yosana’s paradise, refuge and home. When she steps out of the forest, a beastly society preys on her innocence and life. 

I can’t resist talking here about a rousing sequence of female desire in Maadathy, which reveals with striking power why female gaze in cinema is refreshing and beautifully sensitive. It is a brief lyrical sequence which I honestly did not think I would see soon in a Tamil film. It is a moment of a girl’s first rush of desire, her sexual awakening when she spots a man bathing nude in the cascade waters. Karthik Raja’s haunting melody subtly underscores the ecstatic bliss of the moment. His music shifts magically from melody and melancholy to thumping rustic folk.

These wondrous scenes of beauty aside, the horror in Maadathy is visceral. After Yosana’s mother is abused, she takes out her rage on the clothes she washes. She maniacally beats them on the washing rocks and rends the clothes. It is excruciatingly gutting that even her sole vent could land the family in trouble with the village.
A fantastically-made independent film rooted in the ugly reality and irony of India, Leena’s Maadathy is a rare tale of oppression that gushes with the frenzy of terror and ventures into an inventive genre. Leena Manimekalai is a definitive voice in Indian independent cinema, and her Maadathy: an Unfairy Tale remarkably exudes the power of cinema, of storytelling that is poignantly reflective of a society where legends of sin circle and haunt our deities.
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I am not interested in making a biopic of Kamala Das, says director Leena Manimekalai

I am not interested in making a biopic of Kamala Das, says director Leena Manimekalai

March 16, 2017

Arya P Dinesh

|   Published: 16th March 2017 06:06 PM

Kamala Das has been a recurring theme in many of artistic projects in Malayalam including the latest one Aami. Can you elaborate on your motivation behind pursuing an independent film on her?

To be honest. Kamala Das with her unrelenting life and works is a delicious cinematic subject to explore. As a Poet, she is someone I look upto and no one I knew of, had sung into subjects of polyamory and bisexuality like her. The way she did herself away with pretensions and superficialities as a Writer to understand her true self is adorable and I am interested in tracing that journey. And only an independent expression that cannot be dictated by capital and market demands can depict her restless war between passion and reason, body and soul. Her ordeal to find true love is the one line subject of my film. I will pursue making an Indie English Film, ideally an Indo Canadian Co-Production for a global audience.

You have referred to this upcoming project as an ‘ irreverent and imaginative piece’ in your Facebook post about the same. How so and in what ways?

I am not interested in making a Biopic of Kamala das. My film will be a fictional take on the life and works of the iconic writer of her times but will remain fiercely loyal to her “essence”. She says ” I have no secrets” but she also says “I am a practised teller of white lies”. I cant think of any other tool than fiction to capture an artist who is full of contradictions. She was on a constant quest for true love and her own identity. She says in her poetry that she shall serve herself in bedroom mirrors, dark fruit or silver platter. Her writing constantly strip teases our mind. For me that is a “play”. Herself and her work come together, depart, conflict, make peace, peel of the layers one by one and that magic is a perfect aphrodisiac for me as a filmmaker. And somewhere I identify myself in her purgatory. Infact many women artists who believe in “personal is political” will all have a shade of “Kamala Das” in them. Irreverence is the only tool that can do justice to her portrayal.

Your take on the relevance of such a film in a state where mere mention of female sexuality is slammed as ‘lady oriented’ and denied by the CBFC

CBFC is a sick joke of our times. Some buffoons are occupying the chairs of that useless office and they are only interested in pleasing their political masters. Such a waste of our tax money. It is high time that this archaic, regressive and colonial institution is trashed and an independent body of filmmakers, film buffs, activists and artists should be realized just to “certify” films. Every filmmaker and every viewer should know that we are constitutionally guarded by laws that provide us with complete freedom to make and watch films without censorship and state intervention. If at the age of 18, one can decide who can rule them, he or she will be capable to decide what films to watch or to reject. CBFC’s existence is an insult to common sense, to all of us.

You have mentioned about being smitten by the many contradictions that Kamala Das embodied, can you share one such instance from her life that has struck you.

Aami, Mathavikutty, Kamala Das, Kamala Suraiyya – I see all these not as her phases but bundled into one. She was an enigma far from being labelled. The distortions and queerness present in her writing is herself. She writes, “I have no joys that are not yours, no aches which are not yours. I too call myself, I” and I am interested in that “I”, the distinctive feminine voice of a Poet. Many categorize her as confessional poet and critical response to Das’ poetry has been intimately connected to critical perception of her personality and politics. As a reader, I am seduced by her intensely personal voice in her work, be it fiction or poetry and the book “Love Queen of Malabar” by Merrily Wiesberg is full of life moments that would make anyone fall in love with her. I fell like a fly in the fire of her honesty.

Your views on the portrayal of strong women characters with an evident and powerful sexuality on screen in contemporary cinema. (Any projects that you noticed on the same lines)

It is a rarity in Indian Cinema. In the recent times, I really liked the women in films like Angry Goddesses, Parched. Mainstream space is mostly infested with “Taming the shrew” kind of stuff that feeds the machismo of our heroes bigger than any frames. Recently I watched Julieta by Pedro Almadover. Sigh. Felt like we have a long way to go.

Tell us about your current projects.

Rape Nation has already sparked the curiosity of many. I just completed a documentary film “Is it too much to ask” that follows the house-hunting mission of my two friends Living Smile Vidya and Angel Glady who also happen to be transwomen. The film will have its festival rounds this year. Rape Nation is something I have been trailing since 2013. It has grown larger than my life now. The film is a theatrical non-fiction feature that captures the life and struggles of five rape survivors across the Indian Subcontinent. I shot it in Chhattisgarh, Manipur, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Kerala. I am right now editing it.

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