By Ruth Vanita
ISBN 0415929504, 9780415929509
252 pages
In these three films Mohanlal portrays a single unattached man, without a wife or even a girlfriend. At the outset he is located outside normative heterosexual bonding. He is initially defined by a male bond, a close friendship with another man who either desires or is desired by him. All three films subsequently explore the taming of this man within the heterosexual matrix.
Dr. Sunny, the psychiatrist in Manichitrathazhu, makes his initial appearance in the film as the best friend of Nakulan, whose wife Ganga requires psychiatric help. Verghese, the protagonist in Thacholi Verghese Chekavar, is also defined in terms of his close friendship with Shyam, his young male protege. Jagan the protagonist in Aram Thampuran, is introduced as the best friend and muscleman of Nandakumar, a wealthy businessman. Dr. Sunny is an eccentric globe-trotter who, in the episode that introduces him, provides a detailed description of his journeys in the episode that introduces him, provides a detailed description of his journeys during the previous few months, which include brief stays in several all-male spaces. He recounts his travels from the United States to Bangalore and then to Sabarimalai in Kerala, focus of an all-male pilgrimage, and mentions having stayed wiht various male friends. Verghese is a martial arts expert who is frequently seen in the all-male space of a traditional gym, the Kalari. Besides, he is indifferent to his mother's constant appeal to get married. jagan, a muscleman hired by business magnates, is a loner without a family who constantly inhabits sites frequented by the city mafia that are marked as masculine. The introductory episode presents him sharing a drink with a male rickshaw puller on the roadside. In a subsequent telephone conversation with his patron Nandakumar, he describes his activities during the previous few days, all of which are connected with male friends.
Apart from being confined to "masculine" locations and male bonds, these men are also presented as indifferent or even hostile to women. Verghese violently rejects the advances of an attractive young girl. Annie, who relentlessly pursues him through the first half of the film. Later, when he kidnaps the heroine, Maya, mistaking her for Shyam's truant girlfriend, he repeatedly makes it clear that he has absolutely no personal interest in her. it is his emotional commitment to Shyam that persuades him to be rude and violent to Maya. Dr. Sunny's initial reaction to the women he meets in Nakulan's house is marked by humorous sarcasm. He playfully harasses most of the women there till he embarks on the serious mission of curin. g Ganga, Nakulan's wife, of her mental illness. Jagan is not enthusiasti when his patron Nandakumar offers him a "few expensive blankets" (slang for expensive female sex workers) in return for his services. After relocating to the village, jagan initially reacts with sarcasm to the heroine Unnimaya's confident defiance. Later when his female friend, a city girl named Nayantara, proposes to him, Jagan rejects her without hesitation.
It is also interesting to examine the contradictions between visual and oral narratives in the film. jagan describes Nayantara as a good friend but the sequences in which they appear together present him as stiff and uneasy in her company. While Nayantara's words and body language clearly denore her warmth toward jagan, his response is cold and remote -- preoccupied as he is with several other issues that constitute the main concern of the narrative. yet Jagan is the only character among these three who shows any heterosexual inclinations. A subsequent song sequence in the film suggests an earlier heterosexual affair he had -- perhaps a brief relationship with a northern Indian girl that ended tragically.
The weariness or hostility that these men exhibit toward women directly contrasts with the warmth, affection, and commitment they show toward women directly contrasts with the warmth, affection, and commitment they show toward male friends. The Mohanlal character in all the films discussed here is either desiring or desired by a male friend. Verghese, the martial arts expert, is clearly depicted as desiring his young male disciple and friend, Shyam, and the entire film is about his struggle to win him back after a brief estrangement. When Annie's desperate attempts to seduce Verhese fail, she taunts Verghese by telling him that when she last met Shyam he looked "so cute and sexy". Instead of being worried about the possible alienation of Annie's affections, Verghese's anxieties about Shyam are heightened, since Shyam has been avoiding him for the past few days.
Dr. Sunny and Jagan do not express such overt desire for their male friends. Yet these friendships are the most important commitments in their lives. Though he is a busy psychiatrist, Dr. Sunny puts off all other engagements to be with his friend in his hour of need. Jagan's commitment to business magnate Nandakumar is similar; he violently assaults and almost kills a rival businessman for his friend's sake and later refuses to accept the monetary reward offered by Nandakumar.
Negotiating the Physical
Male bonding has been a prominent trope in mainstream cinema all over the world ever since the film industry was established. Patterns of male bonding and structures of same-sex friendships have changed overtime. Commercial concerns make it mandatory for mainstream cinema to engage in dialectic with changing attitudes and realignments of desire in hegemonic social discourses. Thus, the solidarity of two white males that appeared in early Hollywood Westerns is replaced in more recent films by an interracial friendship between white and black men. The function of the female vis-a-vis male bonding has also been changing. Conventionally, it was the destiny of one of the two men to die so as to faciliate his friend's union with the woman. But in some recent films it is the woman who dies while the male buddies survive the final catastrophe (for example, in The Deep Blue Sea, 1999). In this context I am interested in the evolving structure of male bonds in Malyalam cinema, particularly its negotations with the physical.
Most striking in these male solidarities is the recognition and definition of the male body's organic existence as both desiring and desired. For example, jagan's stiff response to Nayantara stands in contrast to his response to similar overtures from Nandakumar. In an earlier scene we see a jubilant Nandakumar celebrating the achievement of a sought-after business deal that Jagan had earned for him. Nandakumar expresses his joy by repeatedly uttering phrases like "ever since I got you," and "since you became mine," while holding jagan by his shoulders and caressing his hair. He also offers him a few curious rewards; prominent among these is a joint trip to Europe. Throughout the scene, Jagan is more composed than Nandakumar, yet warm and willing. The scene ends with Nandakumar declaring that they are going to forget everything that night and "sleep together." Thus, Jagan is more desired by than desiring Nandakumar.
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