Kalamkaval, like any good work of art, suggests more than it shows, applauds Arjun Menon.
Kalamkaval is one of the most anticipated Malayalam movies of the year, thanks to its leading man, Mammootty.
Taking off from where he left things off before his brief hiatus from cinema for eight months, Mammootty is back to what he does best -- subverting his screen image with one curve ball choice after another.
Kalamkaval is the latest entry in his tryst of playing evil on screen.
The film begins in 2005 in Nagarkovil.
You see a young woman's encounter with a older lover, a family man who is clearly leading a double life.
The film breaks down the central crime into closely linked events that lead to tragic revelations.
An unknown killer, who gets his highs from the seduction and allure of the primitive grip of killing, becomes the lynchpin in this upsetting game of morales.
Kalamkaval, divided into chapters like The Curious Case of Kottayikonam, The Golden Plan and The Inevitable Crossover, uses the structural looseness to depict the horrifying adventures of a cold-blooded killer.
Jonathan Glazer's Oscar-nominated feature Zone Of Interest dealt with the concept of the 'banality of evil', coined by philosopher Hannah Arendt and dealt with the normalisation of evil through the point of view of the Nazi commander in charge of Auschwitz. It was a terrifying indictment of the straight-faced detachment with which evil sometimes operates.
Similarly, Kalamkaval is a an exercise in 'mundanity of evil' where one evil act after another is thrown at us with deliberate detachment.
The film teaches us to view its chronology through the repetitions in the way the crime is committed.
The modus operandi of the central crime becomes as important as the central crime itself. As the film's leading titles read, The venom beneath can't be suppressed forever.
Mammootty is creepy as the cold-blooded killer, who finds solace in his own twisted methods of madness.
It's a subtle performance. There are no monstrous laughs or slimy line readings to make the evil palpable.
Mammootty is toned-down and even charming as the chameleon, who hides behind the trust of unsuspecting woman.
He is devilish and scary by virtue of the straightforward, buttoned up 'stoicism' that brings to the part.
It's a performance that underscores how evil is almost second nature to the man, a way of life.
Vinayakan is also well cast as 'Nattu' aka Jayaprakash, a persevering cop, who does not give up his trail of the mysterious lady killer.
It's a toned-down, tired iteration of a copy who has seen it all and is not bothered by the cruelty and narcissistic thrill-seeking killer.
Vinayakan is not given dimension as a person but his performance makes up for the voids in the character design.
Jithin K Jose and his co-writer Jishnu Sreekumar build a tense enough vessel of intrigue that becomes a fight of morales between two contrasting individuals.
Jithin stages the scenes with the necessary detachment, not to make over melodramatic points about the violence or pure sadism on display.
A scene in the second half which transposes a familiar history with the roots of the killer's psyche is one of the most economic montages in recent memory, that drives home the banality of searching for any coherent logic in such acts of evil pervasion.
Jithin and music director Mujeeb Majeed use this montage to underline the sometimes pathological nature of unadulterated, unmotivated evil taking shape.
The Tamil song Nilaa Kaayumblasting from the killer's radio at each killing is a creepy placeholder that bookend's the crime episodes.
There are some dialogue scenes that are shot with the sort of inexperience that clearly shows in the way the blocking and staging gives of amateur first time filmmaking vibes, despite the gravity of the issues being discussed.
Kalamkavaltries to make a cat and mouse narrative out a typical cop and killer story.
But the mood, lived in textures and lead performances espouse the thin line between civility and barbarism with little to no show of violence.
The film, like any good work of art, suggests more than it shows.
It's a world where our perceived renditions of all the immortality on screen is more than little, subtle clues at evil that thrives on the goodness and weakness of the human capacity for hope.
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