A few years back, I watched a compelling Argentinian film on television, Israel Adrian Caetano's Chronicle of an Escape, which told the story of a bunch of youngsters who are kidnapped by the secret military police and chucked into a detention center outside the city where they are routinely tortured for 'names'. The names of more youngster who are suspected of being 'anti-government', or just simply names of other people. If they don't croak, they will be subjected to various forms of torture till they do.
It was easy to spot that Vetrimaaran's harrowing Visaranai, inspired from M. Chandrakumar's novel Lock Up, a true-life account of what he went through when he was jailed for two weeks, has a few parallels with Caetano's film. It opens with four Tamil migrant workers getting scooped up by the police one day for no real reason and taken to the station, and instead of being given answers, they are introduced to their newfound nightmare with a round of relentless, meaningless beating. Their cries go unheard. Their questions remain unanswered. When one of them tries to scamper, he is smacked across the face with a steel bucket. The resounding thunk is enough to send shivers down the spine. But the only difference between this film and Caetano's film -- which was also based on a true story -- is that the bad guys there had traces of goodness in them. And the good guys had hope.
In the first fifteen minutes, the mood is created with expertly built tension. A second round of carefully controlled bone-crunching beating follows. Then a third. Then a fourth. (The sound design is absolutely top-notch.) In between a round of whacking, they are untied and made to walk around the room just to prevent clots from forming in their legs. Their questions don't change. The cops want them to confess, but they are not given the details of the trumped-up charges they are being held for. They have no idea what they are supposed to have done. They are left to guess, which scares them even more. The punishments meted out to them become increasingly sadistic, almost playful, with the cops treating them like puppets. A ghastly kick in the face is an answer to an angry question. The dinginess of the station and the gloominess of their cramped cell signify the hopelessness of their situation.
Visaranai makes us cynical without ever resorting to tricks that filmmakers usually use to do so. We don't get out-and-out evil caricatures as the bad guys (the film does come close to creating one in one of its most brutish sequences), but quiet, mysterious ones. Strange as it may sound, their evilness has a justification. To them torture is just another way of life, a routine. A beating, though shocking, lasts only for a short period of time. They know when to stop. The film reinforces the idea of them being human by turning them into machines during the torture scenes: to them, it is a chore that they must carry out. They are not settling a personal vendetta against the victims, so the beatings are largely emotionless. This detail stands out among the many, many little ones that make up this miraculous film.
But what works in Visaranai's favor is the layered screenplay by Vetrimaaran which keeps unravelling through twists and turns, never letting the film become hackneyed. The first-half is mostly about the time the quartet spend in the police station, but it crosscuts between another sub-plot that simmers away gently and emerges as the core in the film's second-half. Each sequence has a purpose, even the ones where the protagonists are thrashed black and blue, because we need to be in a particular frame of mind for what the director has up his sleeve. Paranoia seeps in without invocation in the film's second-half, one of the film's smaller but significant achievements and a sign of how marvelous the film's screenplay is.
And then Visaranai has those occasional touches of irony and symbolism. The victims are assigned the task to clean a police station of the filth ahead of a puja, a detail so ironic that it amusing. Or like how every road leads to a police station from which they never seem to escape. Or that bit where they get stuck in a swamp and the police eye them silently like hawks. It is probably indicative of the flawed justice system the film seems to indict; we cannot escape it. The system will find a way to get back into our lives in some way. In a way, it is like a maze without an exit, as the protagonists learn with time and so do we.
Ultimately, Visaranai is a significant achievement. It tells us about the deeply sown seeds of corruption and power play between the levels in the system. It remains a work of great finesse. It doesn't ever impose or manipulate. And surprisingly, for a film with unsettling amounts of violence, it is never unwatchable. In the scene where the polite request to clean the police station is made to the victims by a cop they like and trust, we see a slight fear and unease creeping into their faces. It is a look of disillusionment. To them, it doesn't matter anymore who the good guys are. They don't trust anybody, especially a person is in a uniform. That look skillfully sums up what the film was aiming for.
(Not For Reproduction)
It was easy to spot that Vetrimaaran's harrowing Visaranai, inspired from M. Chandrakumar's novel Lock Up, a true-life account of what he went through when he was jailed for two weeks, has a few parallels with Caetano's film. It opens with four Tamil migrant workers getting scooped up by the police one day for no real reason and taken to the station, and instead of being given answers, they are introduced to their newfound nightmare with a round of relentless, meaningless beating. Their cries go unheard. Their questions remain unanswered. When one of them tries to scamper, he is smacked across the face with a steel bucket. The resounding thunk is enough to send shivers down the spine. But the only difference between this film and Caetano's film -- which was also based on a true story -- is that the bad guys there had traces of goodness in them. And the good guys had hope.
In the first fifteen minutes, the mood is created with expertly built tension. A second round of carefully controlled bone-crunching beating follows. Then a third. Then a fourth. (The sound design is absolutely top-notch.) In between a round of whacking, they are untied and made to walk around the room just to prevent clots from forming in their legs. Their questions don't change. The cops want them to confess, but they are not given the details of the trumped-up charges they are being held for. They have no idea what they are supposed to have done. They are left to guess, which scares them even more. The punishments meted out to them become increasingly sadistic, almost playful, with the cops treating them like puppets. A ghastly kick in the face is an answer to an angry question. The dinginess of the station and the gloominess of their cramped cell signify the hopelessness of their situation.
Visaranai makes us cynical without ever resorting to tricks that filmmakers usually use to do so. We don't get out-and-out evil caricatures as the bad guys (the film does come close to creating one in one of its most brutish sequences), but quiet, mysterious ones. Strange as it may sound, their evilness has a justification. To them torture is just another way of life, a routine. A beating, though shocking, lasts only for a short period of time. They know when to stop. The film reinforces the idea of them being human by turning them into machines during the torture scenes: to them, it is a chore that they must carry out. They are not settling a personal vendetta against the victims, so the beatings are largely emotionless. This detail stands out among the many, many little ones that make up this miraculous film.
But what works in Visaranai's favor is the layered screenplay by Vetrimaaran which keeps unravelling through twists and turns, never letting the film become hackneyed. The first-half is mostly about the time the quartet spend in the police station, but it crosscuts between another sub-plot that simmers away gently and emerges as the core in the film's second-half. Each sequence has a purpose, even the ones where the protagonists are thrashed black and blue, because we need to be in a particular frame of mind for what the director has up his sleeve. Paranoia seeps in without invocation in the film's second-half, one of the film's smaller but significant achievements and a sign of how marvelous the film's screenplay is.
And then Visaranai has those occasional touches of irony and symbolism. The victims are assigned the task to clean a police station of the filth ahead of a puja, a detail so ironic that it amusing. Or like how every road leads to a police station from which they never seem to escape. Or that bit where they get stuck in a swamp and the police eye them silently like hawks. It is probably indicative of the flawed justice system the film seems to indict; we cannot escape it. The system will find a way to get back into our lives in some way. In a way, it is like a maze without an exit, as the protagonists learn with time and so do we.
Ultimately, Visaranai is a significant achievement. It tells us about the deeply sown seeds of corruption and power play between the levels in the system. It remains a work of great finesse. It doesn't ever impose or manipulate. And surprisingly, for a film with unsettling amounts of violence, it is never unwatchable. In the scene where the polite request to clean the police station is made to the victims by a cop they like and trust, we see a slight fear and unease creeping into their faces. It is a look of disillusionment. To them, it doesn't matter anymore who the good guys are. They don't trust anybody, especially a person is in a uniform. That look skillfully sums up what the film was aiming for.
(Not For Reproduction)
