How will a common man take on an established systemic evil like dowry? Without preaching, ‘Ponman’ makes a hell of a case for how a social message can be sneaked into a very entertaining movie. The rest of this review may contain spoilers.
You take a loan. You are unable to repay the loan. The loan shark is after you. This premise can be played in a number of ways: as drama, as a psychological thriller, or perhaps even as a comedy involving chases. Jothish Shankar’s Ponman, set in the Kollam region, is all of the above, plus a commentary on the dowry system. The loan is that of gold. Basil Joseph plays PP Ajesh, a man with a unique plan. He is in the jewellery business. He “lends” gold jewellery to poor families where there is a wedding and a bride to be displayed in all her finery, and in return, he asks to be repaid with the cash gifts received during the wedding. One such transaction sets the plot of Ponman in motion. Ajesh lends gold to Steffi (Lijomol Jose) for her marriage to Mariano (Sajin Gopu).
You know things are going to go wrong, otherwise the screenplay (by GR Indugopan and Justin Mathew) cannot move forward. But the magic – the sheer magic of this movie – is in the way a Big Issue like dowry is humanised by a bunch of small people. These people are small because their lives are small, their dreams are small. In an early scene, a woman adds salt as per her taste to the fish curry being prepared by someone else. It never occurs to her that maybe the cook doesn’t want this much salt in the curry. We see that even these minds are small. But when a big vessel of wedding food is emptied in a big pile by a beach, you realise it is a big issue. Steffi’s wedding has not had the expected turnout, which means there isn’t enough money to repay PP Ajesh. And all hell breaks loose.
Basil Joseph can apparently do anything. He can play supporting characters. He can do lead roles, both as protagonist and antagonist. He can do comedy. He can do drama. In Ponman, he creates a magnificent loser in PP Ajesh, and the film’s commentary is delivered through this mostly drunk character’s arc: his growth from a man who only wants his loan back to someone who realises the emotional implications of the business he is in. At first, Ajesh sees gold as just something that helps him make a living. But slowly, he sees that he is enabling a system that degrades women. In pursuit of his gold, he lands up at Steffi’s wedding, but he is warned: “Don’t humiliate us. Don’t you have a mother?” If PP Ajesh creates a scene, Steffi could be cast out of her new home. After all, in this community, who wants a bride who brings no dowry! But if Ajesh doesn’t do something, he will be in trouble with the people he has taken the jewellery from. What a dilemma!
Ponman is a beautiful mix of laughs (including Jesus jokes) and tears. Early on, we see Steffi’s brother as a jobless man who picks random fights, and there are big laughs when he does something and is forced to hide out in a random stranger’s room. But much later, when PP Ajesh meets this character, they are both beaten men. Yes, Ajesh has reason to hate this man, whose family’s need for gold has turned his life upside down. But by now, Ajesh also knows that the brother is not at fault. It’s the System that has created this monster of sthreedhanam, which swallows up not just women but also men. So why continue to hold a grudge? Better to have a drink with this man, no? It’s a fantastic scene in a film filled with fantastic scenes.
Ponman is so organically written that the construction, the unfolding of the plot seems inevitable, like destiny. Steffi’s husband Mariano becomes the antagonist, and he is a huge monster of a man, as huge and monstrous as the dowry system he embodies. But even he turns out to have a sister of marriageable age, and even he needs gold. It’s a vicious cycle. Ponman begins to turn when Steffi begins to see PP Ajesh for who he really is. She thinks the man is a leech who cares only about gold, but slowly, we see his family, and we see why he is the way he is. Again, it’s a vicious cycle. The interval point is centered on Mariano’s shrimp farm, which he guards like a hellhound, and it raises the stakes for the second half. How will the puny Ajesh take on this man twice his size? Or to put it metaphorically, how will a common man take on an established systemic evil like dowry?
This is a story where everyone – at least the good guys – learns to have empathy, and begins to see that the bad behaviours of people are sometimes caused by an unjust System. The characters change in the eyes of other characters and in the eyes of the audience. The entire cast is terrific, but along with Basil Joseph, Lijomol Jose is a standout as Steffi. She internalises the disgust of a woman who hates what needs to be done to get her married off, and she directs his hatred towards her brother, her husband, and of course, PP Ajesh. But even if she hates the family she is married into, she empathises with her sister-in-law, who is going to suffer similar stresses when it is her time to arrange for a dowry. Steffi begins to stop looking at herself as a victim and decides to do something. The tension in these sequences is, again, a nice change of pace from a film that has already surprised us by changing course from comedy to drama. Is there a new love story at the end? We don’t know, but at least, it’s a friendship between the two people most affected by the System. There can be no other ending. The heart feels full.
