Kerala Film Awards 2022: How Aavasavyuham, Chavittu and Prapedda are expanding the scope of playing with the form | Eye News,The Indian Express
More than Malayalam mainstream, it is the indies — such as these three films, which won top creative prize at the 52nd Kerala State Film Awards — that are proof of what Anurag Kashyap said at the 26th IFFK about Malayalam cinema chronicling the times, unlike Hindi films
Halfway into Krishand RK’s Aavasavyuham: The Arbit Documentation of An Amphibian Hunt, you’re still wondering if it’s an environmental documentary, a fiction feature, spy thriller or sci-fi. It employs elements of all, stylistically, for its multitiered storytelling. With vérité shot on 28 mm lens, for 90 per cent of its length. Here is a group of biologists looking for a mysterious frog species in mangroves, there is a man with supernatural abilities, calling upon frogs, fish, crabs, drifting from one set of people to another, evoking astonishment, attachment, greed or fear among the locals of Puthuvype. The hunt for the frog Mysticellus joy (loosely based on Mysticellus franki that was discovered in Wayanad in 2019) turns into one for the elusive — note Krishand’s wry humour — Joy (Rahul Rajagopal), the amphibian man (inspired from Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954). The film’s title reads like a research manual and it’s structured like one too, in prologue, epilogue, chapters.
In the depths of his film are layers of contemporary history, at a remove: Section 144 is mentioned one too many times, an LPG plant is shown in long lens. Krishand draws from the present reality: the 2017 incident when Puthuvype locals protested against the LPG plant, where one accident could put the lives of thousands in peril, and were lathicharged by the police.
The trigger for Krishand was also a 2019 incident when the police killed in an “encounter” four Maoists, and arrested two students under the UAPA Act for “possessing/distributing Maoist literature”. Krishand found a crime-noir-like ready villain (the State/big corporates) for his realistic superhero movie. And satire/humour saves the day for the small-time indie film which, among mainstream heavyweights (Joji, Churuli, Naayattu, Bhoothakaalam, Minnal Murali, etc.), picked up the Best Film and Best Screenplay (Krishand) at the “well-balanced” 52nd Kerala State Film Awards, whose jury was headed by parallel-cinema great Saeed Akhtar Mirza. If the indies picked up the creative awards, the heavyweights won most of the technical awards. “The whole point of the state film awards is to encourage alternative cinema. With Mirza’s presence, the awards were able to do big justice to that. It’s heartening,” says film critic CS Venkiteswaran.
Why frogs, though? Krishand says, “I’ve been fascinated with amphibians, their population is declining the world over. There’s some fungal infection that’s going to change the world’s climate; and drifting creatures (frogs, fish) from one region are becoming endemic in another. Survival of the fittest is not just of the creatures but of nature, too. Joy is like nature, an ecosystem that looks beautiful but once it’s abused, its balance disturbed, then you’d be washed out. You try and kill the ecosystem, but it will return in another form. In Kerala every now and then, there’s discovery of new species (wildlife/nature). It is as important as losing species (the tribal people and the poor being displaced in the name of development) every day.”
He initially wanted to set the film in the ecologically affected Munroe Island in Kollam district, which is sinking owing to global warming, but the lens shifted to Puthuvype, “one of the world’s most densely populated islands” in Kochi, the wake of the protests/lathicharge, says Krishand, whose 2018 documentary Waterbodies was on Narmada (and the Narmada Bachao Andolan).
Rating: 5