Dinjith Ayyathan’s ‘Kishkindha Kaandam’ is a superb mystery that’s also a superb existential drama

The film – starring Asif Ali, Vijayaraghavan, and Aparna Balamurali – works as both text and subtext. On the surface, we have the question of a missing gun. And beneath the surface, we get the sense that not all of life’s mysteries can be solved.

There are two types of screenplay writing. Let’s take the early scene in Kishkindha Kaandam, where we see a man and woman having a registered marriage. The first way to present this event would be to tell us who this man is, who this woman is, how they met (given that he lives in a forest area in Kerala and she is an IT professional from Bengaluru). This is the traditional way, the easy way – this helps the audience latch on to the story and the characters immediately. The second way is to do what director Dinjith Ayyathan and writer Bahul Ramesh do, and this is to drop us into this scenario, cold, like in real life, as though we are a stranger getting a glimpse of a registered marriage as we pass by the building. Take another scene from Kishkindha Kaandam. Let’s say you are having a video chat with your brother. You are going to say “Hey”, and continue with the conversation (which means someone passing by may not know who you are speaking with). Whereas, the more traditional screenwriting approach would be to say, “Hello, dear brother, how nice to hear from you, I miss you,” which establishes both the relationship and the closeness of this relationship. 

Neither approach is wrong, technically – but if we consider cinema as an art form, the Kishkindha Kaandam approach is undoubtedly more sophisticated. It does not spoon-feed the audience. It asks you to engage. It lets events and characters and relationships emerge organically. And more importantly, the non-spoon-feeding approach to screenwriting in this film is more than just an aesthetic choice. Given that the plot is about the gradual unravelling of secrets, it is crucial that the element of unknowingness is maintained throughout – so that we get information at the point when we need this information. Otherwise, we are always kept a little off-balance. We are always wondering. Who is that pleasant man waiting outside, while the registered marriage is taking place? Why are there no obvious displays of affection between this man and this woman, who come across like they have entered this relationship more for companionship than passion? And how unfair is it that Kerala seems to have hoarded all the best writers and filmmakers and actors and technicians in the country!

I’m half-joking about the last part, but Kishkindha Kaandam is yet another great movie from Malayalam cinema this year. Let’s look at the setup. It’s election time and all firearm owners are asked to deposit their guns with the police. This kick-off plot point is presented beautifully, with a totally unknown man depositing his gun at a police station. Through the action (not through words), we get the necessary information. From this “action”, the story takes us into the lives of a sixty- or seventy-something ex-armyman named Appu Pillai, his son Ajayan, and Ajayan’s wife Aparna – played by Vijayaraghavan, Asif Ali, and Aparna Balamurali. The other main characters include a huge house in the middle of a forest, and the numerous monkeys that inhabit this area. This probably gives the film its title, which is the name of one of the chapters of the Ramayana, but there are no obvious references to the epic – at least, none that I could catch. 

“Appu Pillai’s gun goes missing.” This setup is the seed, and the events that sprout forth become a dense forest themselves. Early on, Ajayan says that his father does not like to use the phone. Later, we guess why – because you cannot see people over a landline, and if you don’t see them, you may not know who they are. When I first heard about the missing gun, I recalled Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, which took that event into an existential zone. In the midst of the mystery about the missing gun, that film made us think about this question: “If we lose a gun and if someone is killed with it, is the shooter who stole the gun responsible, or are we to blame for losing the gun in the first place!” 

Kishkindha Kaandam is similar, in the sense that there is both the mystery of the missing gun and a larger existential question about the word “missing” itself: missing your wife, missing your son, missing your father the way he was, missing vital bits of memory, and like Aparna, who is the outsider to this world and a stand-in for the audience, missing the links to the whole picture. In a way, it is possible to view Kishkindha Kaandam as a sci-fi story written by Charlie Kaufman. The room that Appu Pillai lives in, the room that he safeguards, the room that he does not want to let anyone into – that room is his brain. And the contents of that room are his memories. Aparna knows that she has to enter that room in order to get answers, but are there clear answers, in the first place?

There is a line in the film about how nice it must be to live in the realities that we like and we have constructed for ourselves – as opposed to the real realities we face on a daily basis. This, in essence, is the movie. Like Aparna (who is called Sherlock Holmes at one point), we look for clues that will make us say: “Aha! That is the singular answer. The mystery is solved. The case is closed.” But what if we are presented a false narrative? What if, through a flashback, one of these characters is lying about their past (because of guilt, or whatever other reason)? Or what if it is not possible to ever solve the mystery, because the memories associated with it are gone or are no longer reliable? What if someone’s life, like a sci-fi premise, is a cyclical memory reboot, where a fresh “reality” is constructed each time from other people’s narratives?

Kishkindha Kaandam is that rare film that works as both text and subtext. On the surface, we have the mystery (though, like Aarkkariyam, this is not exactly a nail-biting thriller). And beneath the surface, we have the unknowability, the sense that life is always going to have its mysteries and not all of them can be solved. Nothing is what it seems. When we see multiple photos on a wall, at first we think it is like how we frame photographs of our family and friends and put them up – but slowly, we realise that there’s more to this. These photos could be memory aids. If we were to look for a metaphor in this exquisitely shot film (the writer is also the cinematographer), it’s in the way the camera keeps leading us to places in the forest where it is not possible to see too far ahead. What lies beyond is hidden: or in other words, a mystery. I am not a fan of big background scores, but especially towards the end, the drama of Mujeeb Majeed’s music really adds to the very emotional things we are seeing and feeling.

At a less abstract, more humanistic level, Kishkindha Kaandam is a reminder to be kinder to the people around us, even if their behaviour is odd or hurtful – because we may never really know what they are going through, what they have been through. The three central performances are brilliant. It is not easy to play someone who is both inside the story and outside, and Aparna Balamurali inhabits that tricky space beautifully. The character is gently assertive, the calmest of the lot. But this is really the story of two father/son pairs. Vijayaraghavan is superb as an older man who is terrified of losing his grip on life, and yet unwilling to share these fears because that would be a sign of weakness. And after Anuraga Karikkin Vellam, Take Off or Kettiyolaanu Ente Malakha, Asif Ali adds another role to his impressive gallery of silent, socially awkward men who are struggling with issues. He does something at the end that made me tear up like crazy, and it’s also a reminder that to feel the bigness of an emotion, there’s nothing like the bigness of the big screen.