The Kerala Story Movie Review: A serious issue lost to bad direction, worse writing
The Kerala Story has been at the centre of controversy ever since the teaser and the trailer of the film dropped. But is the Adah Sharma-starrer worth a watch? Read the review to find out.
We know we have reached Kerala in The Kerala Story, directed by Sudipto Sen, when its lead character, Shalini Unnikrishnan (Adah Sharma), wears a white and gold saree and walks with a Kathakali dancer. It’s the tourist brochure version of Kerala that you will never see in a Malayalam film. But then, the outsider gaze is crucial for The Kerala Story and the message it wants to send to the Hindi-speaking audience – look, bhaiyo aur behno, the state you thought was ‘God’s own country’ is in the grip of the wrong god and the epidemic is spreading!
Written by Sudipto Sen, Suryapal Singh, and Vipul Amrutlal Shah, The Kerala Story is a knight-in-shining-armour attempt to save the Hindu and Christian women of Kerala who are walking the roads in their nighties (minus a Kathakali friend), unaware that they’re on the verge of being impregnated by Muslim men and transported to Syria. The film is loosely inspired by a video report put together by StratNewsGlobal, a Delhi-based news website, that pieced together the footage of three young Malayali women who were questioned by Indian officials about their links to the terrorist organisation ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). They had left India with their spouses and a group of others to join the ISIS. However, all the “creative” liberties it takes with these stories are presented as the absolute truth, with no serious attempt to understand why such radicalisation takes place and what feeds it.
Before its release, for instance, the promos claimed that the film was about “32,000” women from Kerala who had been misled into joining ISIS. When the number was fact-checked, the team backtracked and made it “3”. The film, though, not only has this imaginary figure of “32,000” but goes on to add that the actual, unofficial figure is “50,000”.
Featured Videos from TNMThe characters speak of nothing but religion day and night. Nobody orders a plate of parotta- beef fry or eats a pazham pori (banana fritter) like they do in Malayalam movies set in Kerala. The writing is so desperate to drill the film’s agenda every second of the screenplay that all you can hear are Hindu-Islam-Allah-your God-my God and occasionally, “communist”. While communists, in general, are fond of holding lengthy conversations, Geethanjali’s father merely looks confused and wears a T-shirt with ‘WROGN’ on it. Like The Kashmir Files that has clearly inspired it, The Kerala Story also uses posters of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin to warn us of this “Western” ideology.
The Vivek Agnihotri film successfully mixed dangerous fictionalised narratives with incidents drawn from reality, and The Kerala Story follows the same formula. It indulges in exaggerating and even changing facts in the stories of these real life people for “dramatic” value, in a bid to polarise viewers further. The actors are uniformly earnest, quivering their way through scene after scene that reiterates their helplessness in the hands of vicious Muslim men. The film tries to position itself as a ‘feminist’ narrative by including lines like “my body, my rules” and the powerful real life image of Syrian women burning their burqas after being freed from ISIS, to suit its purpose. But, its idea of ‘women’s emancipation’ begins and ends with Hindu women toeing the line and staying within the fold. It cleverly stokes distrust between one minority and another through Nima’s character – basing itself on the rise of the Christian right in Kerala. It also subtly berates Hindu parents of not doing enough to make their kids aware and proud of their Hindu identity, unlike Christians.
Nobody should be in denial of religious indoctrination and radicalization. In fact, India is at a juncture when all of us should be thinking about it. But, The Kerala Story is not an effort that wants to lead its audience towards such a reflection. It is not willing to look at the complexity in these stories, the spectrum of differences that exist within communities (for instance, the fact that the Salafi movement in Kerala has opposition from within the Muslim community itself), women’s agency in an increasingly rigid society, and what happens when religious polarisation and communalism are normalised – who does it really benefit? The film, instead, is similar to the ‘brainwashing’ pill that its characters swallow to turn into zombies, and the dawn it desires is the zombie apocalypse.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the producers or any other members of its cast and crew.
Sowmya Rajendran writes on gender, culture, and cinema. She has written over 25 books, including a nonfiction book on gender for adolescents. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for her novel Mayil Will Not Be Quiet in 2015.