Film Review: Asuran (2019)

Film Review: Asuran (2019)

‘Asuran’ is a must watch film primarily for its realist and unexaggerated portrayal of the struggles of Dalits, the Indian ‘have nots’ and showing their oppression at the hands of the landlords and the upper castes. I watched Asuran coincidentally and I wouldn’t have watched it, had I not been in South India. I imagine the same situation for many Indian viewers like me who either get to watch Hollywood/Bollywood films or regional cinema according to their state of residence. Films in regional languages of social relevance, unlike the Marathi film ‘Sairaat’, have been mostly confined to the consumers of regional cinema. Bollywood has given a couple of films (Dhadak, Masaan) in the past few years and others dating back to 1970 and 1980's (Diksha, Ankur, Nishant, Manthan etc.) that have indeed talked about different aspects of the life of Dalits. However, they have been just a handful. As such, the caste question is an extremely sad reality, it's further appalling and equally pathetic that just a handful of films dealing with this subject are made today by an industry that boasts of huge capital investments.

Quite a few of films I mentioned above often fall under the category of ‘parallel films’ or ‘art films.’ Viewers of parallel cinema are a niche audience and somehow, the caste issue fails to grab attention among the common masses. Further, what I regret most is that none of our great celebrity stars of Bollywood see worth in doing films highlighting the caste question. Then, films dealing with caste, if any, get easily relegated to the margins of any discussions or within the confines of scholarly seminars and conferences. This lack of discussion and quasi-absence of any urge to portray, talk about and engage with a social issue of such magnitude is indeed regretful. To watch ‘Asuran’ was therefore, in itself, quite something. To talk about the film, it is interesting for not only it realistically depicts the remote interiors of our country where casteism is a way of life, but also because; it historically foregrounds this phenomenon and provides a workable solution at the end. The film thus presented an important issue of contemporary India, traced, showed its modus operandi in the early years of Indian Independence, followed it through the early years of liberalization in 1990s and finally, imagined a message for all of us to realize in the times to come.

THE PRIMARY CHASE

The chase, the running away and the kill constitute the focus points of the film. The chase as a trope acquires different meanings and therefore, occurs many times in the film. Obviously, ever since the start, we realize its significance. The film opens with what I call is a primary chase – in an overt, physical chase induced by personal vendetta, Siva Saamy (Dhanush) and his son Chidambaram (Ken Karunas) are shown running away from a gang sent by the landlords (Vadakuran, played by Pavan) to kill them. Such an attempt to escape from oppression and caste injustices is frequent as is seen from Sivas life. His struggle has two dimensions. On the one hand, a) he has to tackle the upper castes, and on the other hand, b) he needs to train his son.

Tackling the dominant castes - Siva’s resolution to the struggle with the upper castes both through dialogue and violence doesn’t seem to have worked as shown in the first part of the film. The landlords are willing to go to any extent of bloodshed and the chase in the opening scene, if successfully done, will lead to the killing of Siva, the most dreaded of the lower castes and symbolically, an eventual wiping out of those poor people who are primarily invested in tilling their lands. This revenge will also help the landlords to establish a cement factory and strengthen their existing capital and supremacy. In a context where dialogue and violence have both failed, the running away in the first scene becomes one of survival and importantly, also of creating a buffer time and space for one self to survive and tackle the deadly attack. At the end of the first part of the film, Siva Saamy resolves the chase by overpowering the gang in an action packed scene. In a twist to viewer’s expectations, however, Siva decides not to kill them. This, I think, was his predicament. Violence begets more violence and Siva wants to move away from this vicious circle. He probably wants to let his killers realize their own (mis-)deeds and the landlords’ cunning. In the meanwhile, we are shown that previously Siva’s whole clan including his fiancée and later his son too had been burnt alive. He had been at the receiving end of the bloody violence and killings by the landlords and therefore appears to have chosen the pacifist path when vengeance beckons. A temporary peace is an attempt to change the rules of the game of chase or to revert the subject positions of the chase. The prey (Siva, the hunted) strikes the gang (the hunters), paralyses their members and at a crucial moment, decides to spare their leader. By deciding what to do next, Siva alters the course of events too. All this happens at the surface level.

SECONDARY CHASES –

a. At a secondary level, the symbolism of the chase is also cleverly depicted through another chase scene – this one (secondary) between man and animal. We see early on in the film that a big swine that may ruin the crops enters the fields and Siva and his men try to kill it. Their attempt fails and the swine is able to get away. The swine can be seen as an agent of the upper castes possibly meant to provoke the poor labourers. That he survives is a strategy to show the agile and cunning operation from the landlords. What happens in the meanwhile is quite tragic. The loyal dog becomes a victim of the chase and is killed. It will be helpful to think about the way the dog dies. The dog would be alive had it not been for the electric, barbed wires or the fencing done by the adjacent fields owned by the landlords. In the worldview of the poor, lower castes, the livestock (cattle, dogs, hens, pigs, sheep, etc.) are very much a part of the Dalit life. Man and animal live in symbiotic relationship to each other. While a bark from a patrol dog can signal a forthcoming threat and invites a routine check, the electric fencing can be dangerous, even deadly without any warning. The live wire is a very masculine manifestation of ownership, a manly way of showing property. It’s like saying ‘You touch my property and I kill you.’

b. The chase of a woman, though secondary, is equally very saddening. In one scene, Siva’s fiancée is teased, heckled, beaten in public for wearing chappals. This public humiliation is also a kind of chase where one forbids the other from doing things deemed as one’s own privilege. In other words, wearing chappals becomes the exclusive right of the upper castes, not to be enjoyed by others. The right to wear chappals therefore assumes significance, socio-political and cultural, and it is for this reason that later, Siva decides to buy a chappal before entering the court. An act of wearing footwear becomes an act of defiance and also, a symbolic gesture of reducing the lag between the dominant and the lower castes. The scene about public humiliation is also very revealing as the Dalits wear chappals they have themselves made and ironically, they are deprived of their own products.

c. The revenge of the chappal scene happens deservingly but with fatal consequences – that of burning Siva’s entire village. This is another moving scene (of a successful secondary chase) where hardly anyone is able to ‘escape’ or run from the fires in their locked houses.

Transfer of skills - Having confronted with the dominant castes in various ways, Siva is shown tired of the endless violence and all he wants is the wellbeing of his family. He is shown with his son from the very beginning whom he is particularly concerned about. There are a couple of scenes that show Siva’s irritation with regard to his son’s attitudes. Chidambaram’s character is very interesting because he is shown to be sluggish, slightly careless and unmindful of his actions. His actions and attitudes are at times in sharp contrast to his father’s. If Siva is adept in running away from the gang members, Chidambaram is shown to lack vigilance while being on the run. In a way, his body language is akin to someone from the upper castes. A person from dominant caste can afford to be dis-interested in the occupation of his ancestors. By showing this trait, at times at the cost of his life, Chidambaram demonstrates his right to be different, to be disassociated from his father’s occupation. Despite being un-privileged, he does what a son of an upper caste would do. The otherwise negative qualities of being reckless, un-careful let Chidambaram do something none of his ancestors probably ever did.

Siva’s desperation to impart skills is apparent and obvious. How to keep vigil on one’s fields, how to kill a harmful animal (intruder), how to be alert while being pursued, how to physically confront stronger men, how to move around in the jungles, how to deceive one’s followers, etc are some of the skills required to sustain one’s life as a poor untouchable and Siva is keen to transfer these skills to his next generation. Interestingly, many of these skills can be identified as pertaining to hunt/chase/escape. Therefore, what Siva is essentially doing is to tell his-story and importantly, teach his son how to physically survive a chase. It thus underlines chase as an historical persecution of Dalits from the castes above them. The film shows different ways in which Siva tries to deal with the chase. At the end, he realizes the futility of violence - that he can never equal the economic, social, cultural, political and brute muscle power of his oppressors. Due to his failure to confront the upper castes through violence, in order to save his son from being killed, he tries the legal way, even surrenders his lands but that too fails. His concluding message is therefore far more consequential, relevant and deeper - to prepare his son for a longer fight for and of History in which only Truth will prevail. The fight for justice can be realized only though education and this will help his son to ‘catch up’ with the dominant castes in various spheres of life and even to historically outlive them.

On the flip side, the film seemed to lack a feminine presence. Apart from Siva’s wife (Manju Warrier), most of the characters are males and the film failed to explore the double oppression of women - victims of caste and patriarchy. The film is shot through Siva’s lens and his wife’s life doesn’t add anything significant to the narrative. While an upper caste or a landlord’s wife will be happily caring for children and cooking for the men of the family, the women of the lower castes can never afford to be just engaged in household chores. It was therefore heartening to see a seeming equality on the fields – to see Siva’s wife tilling the lands along with her sons and to see her physically confront men of higher castes. The point however remains that the film is not layered to unpack the inequities of gender.