Heart of Darkness

Watching the recently released Malayalam movie, Jallikattu, was a painful experience much as the movie was hilarious. The film has nothing to do with the savage entertainment by the same name indulged in by some people in Tamil Nadu. The film is about the savagery that lies deep inside the human heart.

Man is a beast, far more evil than the wildest beast in the forest. The movie tears apart the facade of sophistication that we have put up to conceal our intrinsic savagery. A buffalo escapes from the butcher's sledge hammer and runs amok. How the people of the village react to the situation is what the movie is all about.

Violence reeks right from the beginning to the last scene. The killing of a buffalo by a butcher who cuts up the flesh into lumps that are suspended on hooks in the meat shop is the revolting scene that ushers you into the terrifying and simultaneously hilarious darkness that follows.

Soon you are made to realise that the darkness actually lies within you. You become part of the mad crowds that run after  the buffalo with various motives. Many are greedy for the flesh. Most revel in the cruelty being inflicted on the animal both physically and psychologically. Even the local parish priest who orders 3 kg of beef from another butcher (since this buffalo's fate is uncertain) is a caricature of contemporary religiosity.

The priest and the police, the leaders and their followers, all are butchers at heart. You are there too in one of those crowds, you realise again and again.

You can be part of the lynch mob without being physically present among the savages. Savagery lies in the heart. If the darkness out there - in the lynchings, to stick to the allegory - doesn't arouse your indignation, you are very much there, right in the midst of the savage mob. The ideology you preach from there - nationalism or whatsoever - is bound to be painful and hilarious at once.