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12/12/2017 On the face of it: Community and State in a Police Thriller | MCPH Film Club: The Journal

T U E S D A Y , D E C E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 7 M C P H F I L M  C L U B

T H E J O U R N A L

H O M E A B O U T I S S U E S S U B M I S S I O N S

You are here Home > On the face of it: Community and State in a Mohanlal Police Thriller

O N T H E F A C E O F I T : C O M M U N I T Y A N D S T A T E I N A M O H A N L A L P O L I C E T H R I L L E R

The accompanying picture to this essay (g. 1)is from a 1990 movie Mukham [face] (dir. Mohan), starring Mohanlal and . Mohanlal plays the character of Hariprasad, Assistant Commissioner of Police, now in charge of investigating a series of murders which can be inferred to be the doing of a serial killer. The victims are all upper class women, and there are insinuations that the victims were of loose sexual mores. Ranjini “I have a headache” plays Hariprasad’s wife Usha, a housewife with an interest in curios, who also has an active outdoor life. The house is also inhabited by their domestic help Kesavan Nair, played by Sankaradi, and their dog Jackie. Though Usha’s parents call on the couple very early in the movie, there are no signs of Hari’s parentage. (1)

The year 1990 saw an interesting mix of Mohanlal movies who was by now already a superstar. (2) Among the movies were three thrillers, feudal romance, a communist movie, and a folk-historical. Mohanlal has already had huge successes behind him – Kireedam in 1989, Aryan in 1988, and the third instalment of ’s CID trilogy was already out. If one is to trace the career of Mohanlal, he had just crossed the stage of being nobody (Sanjeev and Venkiteswaran 2002; cited in Radhakrishnan 2002, 33) and more than half a decade short of his next phase as the spectacular star (discussed by Radhakrishnan 2002) (3). Mukham was not a successful Mohanlal movie, but is still interesting because it is one of the very few movies in which he has played a policeman, and thus out of his usual repertoire. (4) That Mohanlal has already been established as a superstar makes the movie further important, because even though the movie in itself is not a hit, the stardom would be one of the factors which decide on the parameters of acceptability of a lm at the level of its production (Thomas 2014) as well as its reception (Srinivas 2009).

The diegetic context to the accompanying image is this: Hariprasad has just returned from his ofce for lunch. He hears from his help that his wife had gone out in the morning and is yet to come back, rounded off by “’t know what she’s up to”. We see Hari deep in thought in the bedroom when we are alerted to the sound of the approaching car. The scene shifts to car. Usha comes in. The dgetiness about her suggests that something is amiss. In the sequence that follows we see Usha, accompanied by Hari, walking across the hall, captured in a tracking shot. Usha is telling Hari where she has been, and sounds unconvincing. Hari can sense that Usha is not her usual self, and in the tracking shot it is clear that he is observing her movements. Usha then walks to the refrigerator, opens it, takes out the bottle of water and drinks from it, while Hari is now in an objective distance from her. Usha comes closer to Hari, and in the dialogue corresponding to the accompanying image (g 1), she claims to have a headache, which conjures the image of a woman who wants away from her husband and has something to hide, deployed in numerous other movies. Though this indication of licentiousness is bare for all to see, Hariprasad doesn’t see it. Hariprasad doesn’t see what is clear enough because the lm has so far operated through a rupture between the spectator and the protagonist, which, given the situation, is no more tenable. What is available as ‘knowledge’ to the spectator is lost to the protagonist who nevertheless shares the space. For a moment the spectator has an edge over the star who is blind to the tell-tale signs of his victimization.

Soon the protagonist receives an anonymous letter which says as much as the spectator has known – that his wife has an extra marital affair and therefore she is to be the fourth victim of the serial killer. The accusation http://mcphfilmclub.org/face-community-state-mohanlal-police-thriller/ 1/4 12/12/2017 On the face of it: Community and State in a Mohanlal Police Thriller | MCPH Film Club: The Journal

turns out to be false, as Usha tells him the truth that has been disturbing her (to which I won’t go into), as a ashback. As is wont, the truth does not comply with her version only in its essentials but even in its minute specicities, like playing the same in both her narrative and outside it. All of these happen in the rst half of the lm, to which this paper is restricted to, for this is the site of certain crucial lmic negotiations which may be of interest in thinking of the idea of public in cinema.

So far operates on two parallel axes of seeing. The spectator sees what is not available to the protagonist – the spectator is the privileged viewer of the set ups to the murders. The movie begins with the long shot of a boat approaching a landing bridge and we see a man, identiable in general outline, pulling out something from the bed of the river. We are then to see the scoping of the gun, thus giving us a notion of who the murderer is. This information is however not available to the protagonist, who has to come to the same person through other means, making it a plot of ‘how to catch’ rather than ‘whom to catch’. On the other hand,the protagonist is the privileged viewer of certain other information, like the piece of paper passed by one of the characters indicating a possible suspect. We see the protagonist perusing it, but are denied access to it nevertheless. The spectator has to come to know of him through other means, again provided by the lm itself. Thus each of these separate domains of viewership soon emerge as knowledge on the other side. What the spectator objectively knows the protagonist will see, and what the protagonist objectively knows, the spectator will soon see. Thus in each of these cases, seeing is also a corollary of a spatial placement. The spectator is accorded certain knowledge which the protagonist isn’t because the protagonist wasn’t there; the spectator cannot see the piece of paper, because the spectator occupies a third position. Thus the spectator is involved in the lm neither as the relay point of the protagonist’s eyes, nor as an omniscient recording point; thus allowing for a third position as an active public incorporated in the diegetic as a particularity with its own entries and exits. I shall further qualify this public as the extra lmic counterpart of the public that is available in the lm – a public which is not public at all because it is constituted as the sphere of gossip – in which knowledge is transmitted through word of mouth and devoid of authority and unamenable to an objective enquiry. The public in the cinema are in privy of ‘knowledge’ regarding the victims, but this knowledge can only be passed on as rumours, and cannot be testied in a court of law. The public is similarly unwilling to step up, except as conveyors of information in scare quotes.

The twin axes of gaze operates as the lmic counterpart to the operation of gossip. Knowledge is available but cannot be conrmed or referred back to, is relayed across ellipsis and has to satisfy itself with incomplete evidences. The knowledge afforded by a community of gossip is a binding force, but retains its force only insofar as the sense of secrecy that comes with it has to be maintained as well as relayed. The long shots employed in the depiction of the arrangements behind each murder operates within the coordinates of such a structure – it is clear enough who it is, but will not give you a closer look for scrutiny. It will insinuate, but never conrm. In that brief moment described here, the public is constituted as the holders of a knowledge which cannot be objectively proved, but can yet sustain this communal public. The star appears unable to see as long as he is in the register of the law. For a moment the social relation is fractured and space becomes a holder of three different thoughts, held in a tableau of emotional separation. The wife has something to hide. The husband is preoccupied. And the spectator becomes the point of suture whose mediation cannot be M C P H C O M M U N I T Y upheld unless there is a change of register. The wife is now a target as well, but there is no way that this fact can be objectively conveyed to the protagonist.

The specic thrill that the moment lends us is made possible only because the female is denied to us in its interiority, as has been the case with (Pillai 2013, 102-114). We do not know what is going on in her mind, which then renders her body to investigation, for the truth of her has to be assembled from her corporeal traces. Usha recedes to her bedroom and is disturbed by her thoughts. Hari joins an objective position untainted by her thoughts her and asks her if she was not well, to which she responds that she is ne. We are soon given her as if under a scope, from an objective position and untainted M C P H L I T E R A R Y J O U R N A L by her own thoughts (g 2). Soon after, the protagonist receives a letter from the murderer which accuses his wife as being a loose woman and therefore now deserving death which we see as it is also read by the protagonist, thus ending the order of the parallel visions.

The moment that I describe through the picture is then the one through which the world of crime has now to be subjugated to the communal order. Until now, what we have is a police story where the Police, as the representative of the state, is after the perpetrator who is a law and order issue. But precisely at this moment the law and order problem becomes a moral problem for the spectator in which the Police Ofcer’s U P C O M I N G S C R E E N I N G S private space will now colour his public function also. Or, one could say that the public function now has a

private reason which lends it the moral force. One is now beset with two enemies, one internal, and the November| Theme: Alienation other external. The external force, the murderer, can be gotten rid of by force, which is what will happen.

But the internal enemy strikes at the root of the conjugal modernity at the centre of the Malayalee moral 03.11: World’s Greatest Dad (Bobcat universe which came into being by controlling female mobility (Pillai 2013, 102-114).(5) That the protagonist Goldthwait/2009/USA/English/99′) http://mcphfilmclub.org/face-community-state-mohanlal-police-thriller/ 2/4 12/12/2017 On the face of it: Community and State in a Mohanlal Police Thriller | MCPH Film Club: The Journal

does not look eye to eye with his wife (because she avoids it) inspite of the mounting evidence against her, 10.11: Brazil (Terry Gilliam/1985/UK/English/132′) also suggests an inability to be mediated by the spectator, constituted as a communal body. The suspicion, even as a suspicion, had to arrive in the form of an anonymous letter – a letter whose credibility is because it 17.11: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel is purportedly from the one who knows. But the one who knows, or the message from elsewhere, turns out Gondry/2004/USA/English/108′) to be falsity, enough to deceive, like it did the spectator, but falling short of an objectivity which the wife’s narrative cannot refute.But wherein lies the objectivity of a narrative if not in the order of gossip? The arrival of the letter, and its purported nature as from the murderer himself, allows for the installation of the B R O W S E T H R O U G H I S S U E S communal order as the driving force of the narrative in the guise of the objectivity of the state. It is at this point that the two hitherto parallel axes of vision intersect. At the same time, gossip, that is, unsubstantiated A Photograph by Aby Abraham allegations of a moral nature, has now turned itself around. First of all, the target of the gossip is no longer an outsider. Notice that the victims so far has been depicted as very wealthy, but is now in one’s own home. A tale of wonder: Sahaj Pather Goppo Secondly, gossip has lost its communal character because its face-to-face mode has been lost. In other About the Art of Cinematography words, the public problem of the state has now become a private problem of the community because it cannot be sure of its cohesion anymore (6). Faced with such a moment, the community asserts itself from the An Interview with Nitin Chandra impostor precisely by privileging the face-to-face as against the written word. Since the order of the gossip An interview with Shijith V.P brooks no challenge from demands of veracity made by the order of the state, the wife has to be acquitted within that order itself. Book Review

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The Police Ofcer, who is also a star, is now a representative of the communal order. His moral force, as From Caste to Class: Recovering North in opposed to the legal force, is sustained by the perpetrator being a perpetrator in this parallel order, based as Malayalam Cinema it is on notions of spatial approachability – on a regime of communal order of meaning production which From the Editor privileges the face-to-face and therefore also those who can face-to-face. (7) From the Editor The suturing of the protagonist with the public each of who had so far occupied different axes of vision and knowledge is carried out by turning the threat to the order of the state also a threat to community which How can lms be for the Blind? Some Thoughts on the possesses distinct mores from the state. But more importantly, it is also the moment in which this order of Art of Visualization the community appropriates the order of the state, such that the two parallel axes of vision is now conated In search for identity, pleasure and good memories: to one. The immediacy of the wife’s narrative is what lends this order its communal nature. A parallel vision, Food and cinema which the lm could so far afford, is now made an impossibility. But this community cannot be confused for the nation, whether linguistic or religious or however else it is thought of, for the simple reason that this Interview with Govind Kalburgi community sustains itself by being the un-named. This is a community which operates through proxy and in Madras Studios – A Review the shade of the hear-say. Which is why it needs the Police garb. Making Homes Everywhere We Go: Finding Cinema in Notes: Everyday Life

1. Many of Mohanlal’s successes from the period feature him as an orphan, and in some of these instances as Making sense of “new generation” in Malayalam adopted by an upperclass family occupying an ambiguous space– Unnikale Oru Kadha Parayam (1987, dir. Cinema

Kamal), Dasharatham (1989, dir. ), His Highness Abdullah (1990, dir. Sibi Malayil), Kilukkam On the face of it: Community and State in a Mohanlal (1991, dir. Priyadarshan), Minnaram (1994, dir. Priyadarshan) are what come to my mind. Police Thriller

2. In an article published in 1988, Shreedar Pillai mourns the category of superstar and that the youth could Rainy Afternoon Hunting For Posters go to such extent that fteen fans were injured in a stampede in on the opening day of Mohanlal’s Realism as Ethics: with an example from Moonnam Mura (1988, dir. . ). Pillai, cited in George (2017, 55). Kiarostami 3. One could also see that these laughter lms were central to Mohanlal’s rise through the eighties in a role Star, or just a dot in history? The story of distinct from the other superstar of Malayalam cinema of the period, , who played the liberal humanist middle class single hero ethos. Mohanlal’s laughter-lms from the eighties boast of such State and Cinema in Revolutionary Soviet: A resounding successes such as Boeing Boeing (1985, dir. Priyadarshan), Gandhi Nagar Second Street (1986, Centenary Perspective dir. Anthikad), Peyyunnu Maddalam Kottunnu (1986, dir. The Casablanca Test Priyadarshan), Nadodikkattu (1987, dir. Satyan Anthikad), (1988, dir. Priyadarshan), Pattanapravesham (1988, dir. Sathyan Anthikad), (1989, dir. Priyadarshan), etc. The Rise and Fall of the Ramsay genre of horror in Indian Cinema 4. Kariyilakattu Pole (1986, dir. ) and Moonnam Mura (1988, dir. K. Madhu) are two successful Velleity, Or Criticism In Vernacular thrillers from the time in which Mohanlal played Police roles, the former of which is muti-starrer featuring Mammootty, Mohanlal, and . Vandanam (1989, dir. Priyadarshan), another movie from the same Vol.1 No.2 November 2017 period, a hugely successful movie and still a formidable presence in the Malayalee cinematic memory, has a When John Locke Watched Memento dominant strain of even though Mohanlal dons the role of an undercover cop, and thus http://mcphfilmclub.org/face-community-state-mohanlal-police-thriller/ 3/4 12/12/2017 On the face of it: Community and State in a Mohanlal Police Thriller | MCPH Film Club: The Journal

inclines toward a set of romantic comedies (the denition comes to some strain if we go by actual plots – but I am avoiding spoilers) of that period by Priyadarshan such as Kilukkam (1991) and Minnaram (1994). C A T E G O R I E S

5. As Rowena (2010) notes, the eighties is also marked by the consolidation of the laughter-lms which over- hauled the liberal humanist patriarch-al masculinity of Malayalam cinema in the favour of groups of men Apparatus from different social backgrounds engaged in a competition of dislodging each other (in unscrupulous ways) Life from the position of desirability in the eyes of the central woman character who continued to be the upper caste woman of the earlier cinema. Insecurity is a characteristic feature of this marketplace masculinity Paper Bound which corresponded to the increased mobility of the non-hegemonic ‘other’ castes and communities of Photography Kerala. These lms imagined these masculinities as aspiring for a role earlier occupied by the uppercaste single hero. Prole Scope 6. To quote Michael Warner, “Intensely personal measurements of group membership, relative standing, and trust are the constant and unavoidable pragmatic work of gossip… An apparent exception is gossip about public gures who do not belong to the social network made by gossiping, especially when ofcial or unofcial censorship makes scandal unreportable by more legitimate means.” (Warner 2005, 79)

7. It is interesting that the real perpetrator who is vanquished at the end is actually someone who is in a face- to-face mode with the protagonist. What is different here is that his presence there just as his dealings with the protagonist are strictly within the domain of the state even when it happens within the intimacy of the G E T N E W P O S T S B Y E M A I L house. Enter your email Contrast Mukham with Kariyilakattu Pole (1986, dir. Padmarajan) where the objectivity of law is strong enough to consume the near and dear, even as the communal order strives to be the structure of feeling. Subscribe

Works Cited:

George, Ann Mary. 2016. “The Portfolio of Superstars in Malayalam Cinema: The Visual and the Creation of Stardom”, Diotima’s: A Journal of New Readings, Vol.7, December, 53-59.

Pillai, T. 2013. “Matriliny to Masculinity: Performing Gender and Modernity in Malayalam Cinema”, in K. Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas, London and New York: Routledge, 102-114.

Pillai, Shreedar. 1988. “Celluloid Sultans of Kerala”, , 31 December.

Radhakrishnan, Ratheesh. 2002. “‘Looking’ at Mohanlal: Spectatorial Ordering and the Emergence of the ‘Fan’ in Malayalam Cinema”,Deep Focus, July- December, 29-38.

Rowena, Jenny. 2010. “The ‘Laughter-Films’ and the Reconguration of Masculinities” in Meena T. Pillai (ed.) Women in Malayalam Cinema: Naturalising Gender Hierarchies, Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. 125-53

Sanjeev, S. and Venkiteswaran, CS. 2002. “”. Re-Vision, March.

Srinivas, S.V. 2009. Megastar: and after N.T Rama Rao. New : Oxford University Press.

Thomas, Rosie. 2014. Bombay before : Film City Fantasies. : Orient Blackswan.

Warner, Michael. 2005. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.

A B O U T T H E W R I T E R

Shafeeq is a Post-Doctoral fellow at the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities. He was drawn into the world of movies with the Malayalam slapstick comedies of the eighties. He has kept a small place for his childhood mirth in the respectable guise of teaching Film Studies.

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