Bullish on life

I finally gathered courage to watch Jallikattu, a new Malayalam movie by Lijo Jose Pellisery that seemed to be reeking of blood and gore. The movie title itself is written in blood while pools of blood in the trailer also make many of us keep off. However, movie choices seem limited in our region and so anything new on OTT platforms is worth a trial.

Jallikattu is a popular sport in Tamil Nadu like the Spanish bull fight. But in our tale, it is not a sporting event though the way the humans hunt down a truant bull that escaped the butcher's knife looks like one. In the man versus animal fight, one wonders who is more beastly - the bull running for its life and destroying crops in its wake or the humans living in a village near a forest that itself was carved out of the forest driving away its real inhabitants.

Going by the story, it is not clear if it is a domesticated bull or a wild bull that is up for sacrifice. Though it is illegal to kill a wild buffalo, the practice still continues and the meat is considered tastier and a delicacy. The police warn the locals against shooting down the beast but do nothing much to help them. In the end, the humans in their desire to extract their pound of flesh fall one upon the other like crabs.

The film is also the fight between two of the butcher's assistants over the butcher's sister. How Antony tries to get the better of Kuttachan in winning the affection of Sophy as well as in taming and capturing the bull.The men in the movie are generally coarse and hardened rustics - the kind  whose briefs  show under their folded lungis - save for a pacifist who tries to bat for animal and its right to live. 

Thankfully, we dont see much blood and killing. The  violence is mostly insinuated. At the crack of dawn, we see an animal's shadow, and then the butcher asking his assistant to hold tight, then a severed bull head and pools of blood followed by people queueing up to buy the meat in the morning. Even the parish priest cannot have one meal without meat. There is the father planning his daughter's wedding feast with a beef preparation in the menu even as the daughter is planning to elope with her lover - a failed escape that provides some comic relief in the grim landscape. So does the father's attempt to get some chicken instead of beef early morning when villagers mistake him for approaching the chicken seller for an extramarital rendevous.

That the whole story comes at a time when meat eaters are frowned upon in the country is poignant. It shows man's basic instinct is to hunt and eat animals, and our savagery comes to the fore when we are fighting for survival. The owner of the meatshop is a Hindu while the butchers are Christians - settler people who were allowed by the State and the church to clear the Ghat forests and eke out a living. What we see in the story are second and third generations of settler families many of whom left their original villages in the plains to escape poverty or ignominy. 

This review is for an average viewer like me, and not for the intellectual and reviewer categories who see beauty in the very boring.

#Jallikattu