mari selvaraj's
periyerum perumal was one of the most important debut films of the last decade or so - a very upsetting movie about a young dalit man's experiences attending a rural college that turned into a major word of mouth hit across the country. his new movie
karnan is another thing entirely - a fictionalized version of caste riots that erupted in tamil nadu in the mid '90s that fully embraces the mythic aspects that periyerum only hints at.
a remote dalit village, which has built itself up from a wasteland over the course of generations but is still locked in a subservient relationship to the upper caste village nearby which essentially acts as a landlord, is cut off from reaching the outside world by the refusal to open a bustop. small acts of resistance spiral into violence, then the police become involved...
in an interview before the movie opened mari selvaraj called santosh narayan (the composer, probably the most important indian movie movie composer since a.r. rahman) and dhanush (who unexpectedly had the biggest hit of his career with this, even with the covid restrictions) his two weapons, and this movie goes even further than mari's mentor pa. ranjith's
kaala in refashioning the tamil hero/masala film into something revolutionary, combining that form with this finely observed portrait of village life, all sorts of subaltern forms of art and expression, local politics and a reclamation of this mythic register...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yULZ8y1J-s
joji is dileesh pothan's follow-up to the great
thondimuthalum driksakshiyum; it was sold as a kind of blend of macbeth and k.g. george's cult classic
irakal but in its precision and vicious black humor it reminds me most of those late period chabrol films centered around hateful, wealthy families.
this has the always great fahadh faasil as the failed youngest son of a wealthy, rubber plantation owning family dominated by an overbearing patriarch; the "inspired by macbeth" opening title card more or less lets the audience know how things are going to pan out. like thondimuthalum there is a kind of removed clarity here that makes the way things play out feel removed, almost surreal. this was shot during covid during a period where the situation was largely under control in kerala, and this is the first movie i've seen that uses that social reality, totally uncommented on in the movie itself, as part of the social mise en scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2OyKsF6Tq4
had waited for years for
njan steve lopez to show up with english subtitles - it's one of those movies that found a cult following after a disastrous initial release, to the point that it's more or less considered rajeev ravi's best film (he's best known as a cinematographer - he shot thondimuthalum driksakshiyum as well as most of kashyap's better movies).
plays out as a kind of observational comedy of aimless malayalam 20 somethings (there is a lot of great onscreen text messaging) until steve lopez (played by fahadh faasil's younger brother), the child of a police officer, tries to save the life of a man targeted by what seems to be a gangland hit and the movie transforms into a paranoid fiction about the web of state sanctioned power and violence. it's actually a kind of genre of its own (shankar nag's kannada film accident, rahul rawail's hindi film arjun and its tamil remake satya to name just a few) but there is something special about the quiet way this one unspools, and a great patience in the way the movie allows its main character to come to terms with the nastier truths the audience comes to terms with long before he does.
esp loved this 'bollywood dream' sequence opening with raj's much beloved tramp character (borrowed from chaplin) and gold diggers reference 
need to fix this ASAP