Freedom Fight Review : A glorious achievement in the anthology form and texture

 Directors: Jeo Baby, Akhil Anilkumar, Kunjila Mascillamani, Jithin Issac Thomas and Francies Louis.

 Star Cast: Joju Goerge, Rohini, Rajisha Vijayan, Srinda.

Freedom Fight is a superior product, an anthology united by the love for the grammar of freedom, a feeling that means different things to different facets of our shared human experience.

 

Anthologies in the Indian content scenario has been a largely lost cause, a direct result of hayward marketing campaigns and messily structured narrative through lines, that fails to connect seemingly different stories under a common byline. The largely democratized milieu of streaming services, have enabled the integration of earlier voiceless storytellers into the fringes of mainstream movie making. These writers and filmmakers, bring in their street cred in terms of recognized craft into the pre-modelled thematic super structure’s imposed by shaggy production houses and their namesake promotional designs, a challenge often times hindering conception of original ideas. Even though the Malayalam cinema landscape has been overwhelmed beyond saving by mediocre anthology storytelling in the recent past, Freedom Fight twitches the generic, glossy look of the anthology platter to delve into some very uncomfortable facets of Kerala’s decaying morale and cultural fabric.

The very first segment, titled Geethu Unchained, the title being a direct hat tip to Quentin Tarantino’s alternative western Django Unchained, a quite revealing title. The central conceit of the carefree yet emotionally daunted heroine – read a fluffy derivative of the Emmy award winning tv show “Fleabag”, employing many of its narrative devices like the frequent fourth wall breaking, quirky backstories narrated by omnipotent characters who pop out of their timelines to offer a gist like peek into the flashbacks. The callousness of the writing is never apparent as the debutant director Akhil Sreekumar finds interesting visual ideas to keep things pretty much at the surface level and guarantees a sincere glee inducing ride.

The film stars a phenomenal Rajisha Vijayan as the volatile bundle of joy, who takes it upon herself to bypass judgements and counter check attempts at gaslighting by her conservative ex-boyfriend, insecure parents, screamingly indifferent elder brother and others around, in a world designed, operated and run within the confines of her picturesque head. The short offers a great, gentle greeting to the heavy-duty themes running through the rest of the more serious shorts. The short film like aesthetic at times render this an exercise in filmmaking possibilities rather than a fully realized, deep commentary on wrongful confinement of the female identity.

The second film in the anthology is a personal favorite, a brilliantly layered empowering drama titled, The Unorganized, a direct riff on the lives of the lower working-class women who populates the narrative fulcrum. The short offers a richly observed, layered examination of the toxic neglect in woman’s sanitation in workplace surroundings. The narrative is tied around the lives a of a few working woman, struggling to keep their bodies clean and heads sane, due to the inhuman working hours sans time and place to meet their urinary requirements during work. The film sacrifices any set visual patterns and follows the grammar of resilience fought by the group of hapless women, against the lewd comment passing, voyeuristic male gaze that for never once realizes the long-term health implications of their privileged systematic denial of basic human necessities like female sanitation and absolute importance of female toilets in public places.

The film cuts back to talking heads like footages in between, a device used to underline and news headlines of severe atrocities propagated against helpless female entities, toiling hard in jobs that fails to accept their existence at a very visceral level. The film tries to throw in trans – movement and the stories of individual token symbols meant to express the trans gender – experience in a seemingly progressive society like Kerala, where all the dirty baggage of regressive denial pent up underneath. Though the narrative is centered around the female group’s fight to secure a public toilet under a newly formed union yet all this for never feels forced or written in as mere afterthoughts to punctuate an imagined political uprising.

The film belongs to Srinda who surprises with a low-key comical turn that demands a nuanced yet evident irony and she walks the tight line with a superb supporting cast each churning out career making performances as the restricted, wronged elements waging their own daily, private, contained wars against patriarchy. The Third film is the most economical and the leanest tale from the lot, in both its narrative ambitions and conceptual scope. The film begins with a lower-class family celebrating their daughter birthday in the presence of a small gathering of relatives and friends. Behind all the fun and gloss of the part, we sense that these are the kind of people who are willing to sacrifice a meal or two, just to throw a birthday party and put a smile on her face.

The film derives its temporal beats from the class division, symbolized by the friendly neighbor living in a Porsche designer home and the poorer working-class family, hanging onto the last straw of a decent life, demarcated by the wall that separates the two houses. It is a series of exchanges between the two families of left-over food and a package of frozen fish, are used as symbols of societal class definitions and what it means to be free in a world where the economic freedom outweighs individual dignity. The film stars director Jeo Baby and a string of unknown faces who reflect the harsh realities of the dramatic economic entrapments faced by the marginalized at the hands of the privileged lot.

The fourth film starring Joju George and Rohini in the lead role, is the biggest star ensemble in the whole anthology and to good measure. The film helmed by the anthology presenter Jeo Baby of The Great Indian Kitchen fame, is an ode to freedom through the grammar of old age hassling individual and familial freedom. The film revolves around a retired govt employee, who starts to develop an acute memory loss post retirement, who stays along with his entrepreneurial wife with kids working abroad. The filmmaking grammar in display is one of self-contained, economical strokes that Jeo Baby has previously mastered with his heavy handed take down of patriarchy and male privilege with the GIK, however the rage of the former film is replaced by a sense of blandness of still - time and the frustrating nature of a life devoid of memories. The protagonist (Joju) is made to be a walking piece of nostalgia machine who dwells in the sweetness of a life denied up until that point.

The bond that the frail old man forms with his servant, herself a product of off spring neglect and old age abandonment, is a sweet tale that captures the essence of the anthology in a nutshell and pins down the critical takeaway points, that is the crushing nightmare of being a prisoner to your better memories at old age, a form of existential recluse from where there is no coming back. Joju nails the stoic blankness of the man caught between fragments of his past and present without an ounce of flab and Rohini too features as the key narrative voice of the hero’s emotional outburst and play along to his cat and mouse game with memory with the graze and charm inherent to a seasoned performer. The film also tackles the wife’s own journey into new found personal freedom of old and stunted ambitions, thanks to ungrateful children and an emotionally weak husband on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This feels like the most personal, lived in tale in the anthology and is aptly titled Old Age Home.

The final film curiously titled Pra.Thu.Mu is the boldest, craziest outlier among the bunch, the film makes itself readily available for further dissections owing to its B&W visuals, visually punctuated style and rebellious core ideas. The film deals with a dirty; downright shitty showdown between a septic tank servicer and an influential politician over a domestic issue that pretty much escalates into an unprecedented arrangement of images that you are unlikely to see elsewhere, a very disturbing allegory to the exploitation and disposal of the lower rings of the society by the all-powerful. The film is structured among chapters and follows a psychedelic mood. The most disturbing bit of on-screen grotesque imagery that you will see this year from Malayalam cinema for sure.

Freedom Fight is a superior product, an anthology united by the love for the grammar of freedom, a feeling that means different things to different facets of our shared experience. The filmmakers have been able to contort the norms of the big event anthology space to narrate highly personal, self-lubricated tales of fringe elements fighting for what rightfully belongs to them. The takeaways from the five consuming shorts will be totally relying on the individual’s ability to tolerate the restrained, often times escalating , ticking bomb like explosiveness of the material at places, that being said this feels like a step in the right direction for the form to take, from the content corrupted, power point presentation led branch of storytelling to more personal stories of people caught in the cross fire of personal integrity and societal freedom.