Jallikattu (2019) by Lijo Jose Pellissery

[cranefly]

[watched on Kanopy]

An Indian Malayalam-language film about a remote village where one day a buffalo escapes its slaughter, creates havoc for all concerned, and in the increasingly frantic attempts to find and subdue it, the villagers grow ever more primitive and savage.

This is a very busy and chaotic film with lots going on.  There's a young woman trying to escape an arranged marriage, philandering men, a notorious poacher, a sandalwood thief, police at odds with the locals, personal grudges and merchants tiring of customers buying on credit -- all sorts of conflicts  that reach the boiling point as everyone closes in on the buffalo.

This is outstanding in capturing the feel of daily life in all its gritty vagaries in a remote village.

Recommended for, uh, me.  Not certain who else would find it their cup of tea.

[Drunk Monk]

Any dance numbers?

Exploitive and gratuitous scenes?

Whiskey?

[Drunk Monk]

Wow, what a visionary film. And grating. Everyone is yelling all the time. It’s noisy and tense. 

There was a lot going on and I was impressed at how these side stories were told quickly with only a shot of two, building that mounting tension. 

Some of the shots were just gorgeous. The too-close-for-comfort zoom-ins on random objects with tense music felt like early David Lynch. The rhythmic interplay of scene and sound was captivating, especially at the beginning. 

Such a carnal film. The butchering was gratuitous (no dance number or whiskey - not sure what they were drinking - moonshine prolly). And the buffalo stunts were too convincing. I wonder how many buffalos suffered to make this film. 

There were some amazingly chaotic one-ers - always impressive. The color usage and some of the ramshackle huts brought me right back to India. And the noise. India is noisy. When we were there, we encountered a bull charging down an alleyway. We were nonplussed until a local ran past us in appropriate panic. Then we ran. That’s how noisy India is - we were desensitized to a charging bull. So noisy. This film captures that chaos.

I liked the way the fights were handled. They felt real, especially the big fight between the rivals. That had a brutal authentic vibe, like a real fight.

I’m not sure I understood what the filmmaker was saying, especially with that final scene, but the mood and setting alone was enough to engage. 

Definitely not a film for everyone but I’ll recommend it for the D00M cinephiles. From a technical standpoint, there’s some really impressive cinematography here. This director has a unique understanding    of light, color, composition, and sound that’s worth a look.

[Drunk Monk]

I'm still thinking about this film. A few of its ideas are clinging to my brain like a bad earworm. 

Definitely my cup of tea too. Good call cf. Although I didn't watch this after your review. It popped up on my Kanopy feed and I watched it on a lark. I was impressed that you reviewed this before me. That's great D00M for ya.

[cranefly]

Yeah, one of the cultural details that I missed while watching but picked up afterwards from wikipedia was that the village was allowed to raise and slaughter buffalo for meat, as it was viewed as a "domestic animal," but as soon as a buffalo escapes, it gets reclassified as a wild animal, and those buffalos are culturally protected.  That's what the police tried to enforce during their visit.  But the villagers weren't having any of it.

At least I think that was one of the conflicts.

I also think the terms cow and buffalo were used a bit interchangeably throughout.

[Drunk Monk]

Right. The cow is sacred in India. Wild cows are everywhere just walking about doing their thing. There are meat-eaters in India, but they are in the minority. It's like when you see an occasional restaurant in the US that advertises 'vegetarian' it's the opposite in India. You'll see an occasional eatery that advertises 'meat'. And then, it's mostly chicken and goat. Beef is very rare. That's why the cop used a godly name for the buffalo when he was talking about not being able to act. So there's this underlying vibe of desecration of the sacred, that the villagers had lost their ways and gone down the path to hell.