Appan & its subversion of patriarchal protocol will stun you

We use the term masterpiece so often and so liberally for cinema that a trueblue masterpiece becomes a crywolf illustration. Director Maju’s sophomore film (his Malayalam debut was the satire on alcohol prohibition French Viaplavam) comes as close to being a veritable masterpiece as any film in any language in recent times.

It is a fiercely original take on the wages of patriarchy, damning as well disturbing, provocative and yes, constantly engaging. Very often, creatively soaring films tend to submerge their watchability in craft. Not so in Appan. This is a film that keeps us alert and  anxious all through in the way that Fahadh Faasil Shakespearean drama Joji did .

Familial politics was interwoven intricately, if not neatly into patriarchal despotism in Joji. In Appan, it is much worse:  both the inter-familial politics and the patriarchal despotism. The patriarch in this fable of  the damned and doomed is Ittychan (Alencier Ley Lopez), a man so despicable, depraved and cruel, it would be a crime to call him human.

Not only his immediate family, the entire village, comprising men he has cheated, women he  has raped and offsprings he has sired outside marriage, hates Ittychan and waits for him to die.

There is a semblance of humour attached to this death expectancy which luckily director  Maju does not explore beyond the surface. And thank God for that! I really don’t see any scope for humour in this saga of paternal perdition. You know this bedridden monster who can’t move a limb but who gets his mistress to move other parts of his anatomy, will burn in hell.

But hell, when will that happen? Appan is the  first Indian film that subverts all the rules of  parental affinity to show how tortuous traditional definitions of filial loyalty can get when the  father whom you don’t want to despise calls you a scoundrel for no reason, questions your parentage and treats your mother sister and even your child, his grandson, like toys to be played with, abused broken and discarded at his whim .

The pure irredeemable evil that Alencier Ley Lopez projects so vehemently, is brilliantly balanced by Sunny Wayne as the  baffled, griefstricken son Njoonju, who cannot fathom why his lineage is so brutally scarred. Wayne’s muted wails of protest haunted me more than his  vile  diabolical  father’s hyena-like laughter and eerie singing piercing the night destroying the entire family’s sleep.

We have seen many  recent films about Daddy issues. Appam is  an entirely new level of patriarchal tyranny. The father is  so bereft of  any redeeming quality that we  wonder, can any individual be so  nasty? This thought is not given much space grow  as we watch  Maju’s characters  grappling with a grievously evil force. This is the ultimate horror film. The monster  is not from another world. He is the man on the bed who produced you, now  leering mocking abusing everyone biologically close to him.

A special mention of  Radha Radhakrishnan  as  the old  undying man’s mistress Sheela. Her growth  from a docile doormat to an assertive woman seeking some answers from the man who has wronged her as much as he has wronged his family, is achieved in the screenplay (written by Maju and R Jayakumar) with an intensity that implodes on the screen.

Brilliant casting, not only Lopez and Wayne as father and son but the rest of the actors, is only part of this film’s crowded USPs. Appan is a work of unquestionable merit. It will seize  your attention not by trick or treat, but by merely being true to the evil design that is laid out with such convincing candour.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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