Purushapretham has been among this year’s most intriguing releases so far, seeming like a police procedural at the outset but revealing hidden depths. Deepti delves into how the director draws viewers into a complex ecology of human and nonhuman actors, marking an exciting addition to the emergent ‘cli-fi’ genre in Malayalam cinema.
Deepti Sreeram
In his previous film, Avasavavyuham [Habitat]: The Arbit Documentation of An Amphibian Hunt (2022), the director had efficiently worked with ecology, paying attention to the ways in which water bodies, flora, and fauna interact with a constellation of characters. The director places Joy, an amphibian being, as the pivotal centre of this rich universe. In Purushapretham too, there is a similar attempt at myth-making. For most of the cops at the station, Sebastian (played by a brilliant Prashanth Alexander) is Super Sebastian or the Super Mario of Kerala. He is brave, resilient and a man who does not shy away from scarring. Most of Sebastian’s stories of fighting criminals are met with an eager audience of cops that want to believe in his larger-than-human spirit. Although the cops may have doubts about Sebastian’s claims, they would rather believe the world that Sebastian paints for them than doubt his stories.
But as the trope goes, a descent is inevitable for the superhero to then rise up like the phoenix. For Sebastian, the descent begins when he has to deal with the case of a missing corpse and the stubborn figure of Susanna (played by Darshana Rajendran). Sebastian’s everyday until this point of the movie is divided between taking care of his angry bedridden mother and then resting happily on the stories he creates of his superhero cop self. When the corpse he had buried with the help of his trusted sidekick, Dileep (played by Jagadeesh) goes missing, Sebastian isn’t too worried. But with Susanna’s insistence that the corpse is her dead husband and whispers of the corpse becoming an evil spirit, Sebastian is left shaken.
While the corpse brings Sebastian face-to-face with his personal demons, Susanna reminds him of his incapability as a cop. When the movie began, we were witnessing Sebastian going through the motions of a cop. It was an isolated one-man universe until he was forced to reckon with an ecology of human and nonhuman actors: a corpse; his temporary lover, Susanna; the marsh land around him; and the treacherous water that may have caused the corpse to float away.
Although one could categorise Purushapretham as a police procedural, it is also possible to see it as Krishand’s contribution to the recent spate of climate-fiction movies or prakriti [nature] movies in Malayalam. Unlike Parava [Bird] (2015) which showed a group of friends creating and sustaining their bond through their relationship with doves, Purushapretham doesn’t explicitly suggest a relationship with other beings. But most of the movie has a strong element of water in it. The first sight of the body and the ways in which the cops negotiate the movement of the river makes water a key character. It is water that has damaged the body beyond recognition. It is water that is suspected to be the culprit behind the missing body. It is in the middle of rainfall that Susanna declares that the body has been stolen. Finally, it is also amid heavy rains that we see Susanna and Sebastian fighting. Water is integral to how the movie, which began with an introduction to Sebastian’s private world, eventually shows how this private world is linked with other worlds that he is unaware of.
For example, since the mortuary has limits to keeping a body, the cops are forced to bury bodies in the marshland next to the river. Krishand’s lens zooms out to give a sense of the world that Sebastian inhabits. In his fantasies, he is smashing thugs and gangsters. He is bathed in retro background music from a Suresh Gopi action movie of yesteryear. This private universe shatters as soon as he interacts with his surroundings. The marshland and the innocuous yams that grow on the land threaten to disrupt his superhero self and become his Achilles’ heel. When Dileep reassures Sebastian that the corpse has been safely buried along with the yams, the camera pans out to show the number of yams that had grown with the onset of monsoons.
Like all superheroes, Sebastian has a trusted sidekick in Dileep. Krishand shows caste hierarchy here, pointing out the ways in which Dileep is enlisted to pull the body out of the water while the other cops look on. Caste is alive and kicking even when there is no explicit mention of it. An ecology involving a dead body cannot be created without caste. In that sense, Krishand’s Purushapretham discusses everything all at once. A passing reference to the rains taking away the corpse suggests climate change. A nod towards Sebastian’s tears in the lap of his lover suggests a gender angle where we are now witness to a broken form of masculinity.
Although the movie, like its predecessor, is genre-defying and brilliant in several aspects, it struggles to keep up with the many undercurrents that it wishes to focus on, key among them being Susanna’s character. Although Susanna is central to the movie’s narrative, there is very little attention paid to this character. As a mysterious woman who watches from the sidelines, one would expect the role to be played with a bit more oomph. Darshana’s performance, however, seems passive and similar to her character from Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey (2022). There is very little heart in the role except for the beautiful sunglasses that she adorns to hide her eyes. The movie’s weakest scenes involve Darshana struggling to hold her ground with veterans like Prashanth Alexander and Jagadeesh.
In spite of these flaws, Purushapretham tries to show the many worlds that exist even within the private world of an ordinary flawed cop. Krishand enlivens these worlds by letting Sebastian and his peers believe in the story of his superhumanness. With his suspension and disrepute, Sebastian is shown to be struggling with his new reality. The discovery of a crucial piece of evidence makes him rise up once again, as Super Sebastian.
Every superhero story has a turning point where the hero rises from the ashes. In Sebastian’s story, the turning point is enmeshed in the everyday from which he insulated himself through the grandiose mythology around his prowess. It is at the bottom of an ordinary well that we see Sebastian rise up from the waters. And as he makes his way out through the rain, he is baptized. He is Super Sebastian, the hero of Krishand’s universe of beings.
About the Author: Deepti Sreeram is a second-year PhD student of anthropology at Ashoka University, and an editor at Ala.
Edited by: Shilpa Parthan
