Ee.Ma.Yau.

Ee. Ma Yau. is Malayalam cinema at its best in recent times. Adapted from P.F.Mathews' 'Chavu Nilam', this out and out dark satire surrounding a death in a coastal village and the associated pandemonium it creates is an amazingly shot motion picture of true class! Making the film a technical benchmark on realistic making with some excellent natural light camerawork from Shyju Khalid, Lijo Jose Pellisery has done full justice to his role as director and quite so deserves the state awards bestowed to him for the same this year. Starting off as a light hearted satire based on a coastal Latin catholic family of Vavachan and his son Eesi, Ee. Ma. Yau gets much darker and haunting along the way, the entire proceedings reeking of the grim reaper's arrival. Barring the last 20 min, the howling wind, splashing waves and incessant downpour have been captured beautifully as the background amidst all the hullaballoo unleashed between vavachan's first and second wife, their families, the rude vicar and some crazy villagers. Dead bodies, cremation, cemetery, coffin and the last rites from the church take up majority of the proceedings, making this a unique and literally 'deadly' experience. Last 20 min of the movie belongs to Chemban Vinod Jose and Prasanth Pillai, the former for his amazing and effortless transition in to semi lunatic, self mumbling Eesi - the dutiful son of Vavachan who loses it towards the end - and the latter for his downright haunting BGM, something that echoes in to your mind even as the end credits roll by. Another performance worth lauding is from Pouly Valsan who played Eesi's mother, a seasoned and hilarious performance on so many levels. Ee. Ma. Yau is another surreal experience which I've missed watching in the big screen again - this one will go down as a true classic in Malayalam after quite some time!

The film took me on a whirl. It gives a constant shoot of adrenaline in the most predictable scenes by revealing the agendas and cursory nods we have learnt to live in the society. Every whirl was a opening a nasty part of funerals. Wonderful. It compares to movies like Carnage, Synechdoche, Thondimuthalum Drusakshiyum, Panchavadi Paalam and all to me. Most parts of the movie is cast with a heavy rain that adds magic to the senseless hullaballoo. Beautifully orchestrated. I fell in love with the director.

In Ee. Ma. Yau lijo has once again built a place and a set of great characters, who feel grounded to the setting they are placed .With an ensemble cast , lijo has made a film which is rich in atmospherics and dark humor. Strong performances across the board and Shyju Khalid's beautiful night frames has elevated this films to be one of the best films to come out of the Malayalam film industry recently.

How often do we think about death? Our brushes with mortality are often when misfortune strikes loved ones or through books and movies. But while there have been great movies centred around grief and dying, one aspect that is sidelined to very simplistic projections is the funeral. Usually, in South Indian movies, you see a gathering where women are wailing and men standing sober faced around a body covered with a white sheet. This scene is often just a few minutes of the movie itself.

Ee. Ma. Yau is different. The entire movie is about the funeral - the messy affair of saying a final goodbye. A poor fisherman's son wants to bid goodbye to his late father with some dignity. But when death strikes suddenly, time is against you and you are poor, this is no easy ask, especially in a society where the distinction between private and public blurs - where rituals, religion, neighbours, corruption, bureaucracy, everything converge to hassle you before you can take even five minutes off to grieve. This is not your usual film that follows an arc - the one where problem strikes, hero suffers, he fights and then overcomes it all. This is more like a documentary on the sociology of death that pays attention to the details - how women grieve differently in front of different people, how a village with little to look forward to creates its own entertainment around death and the dynamics of power that is asserted by religion in times of crisis.

The movie in itself is a little boring - there, I said it. Because, as I mentioned, there is little plot; the genius is in the realism and attention to subtle, societal details. You need patience to sit through the first half, at least. But it does push one to think of the complexities around mortality. Towards the end, all at once, strong emotion hit me. And I did dream a thing or two about death for a few days.

Cheers to the most elaborate funeral in Indian Cinema!