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While Jithin Laal's ARM aka Ajayante Randam Moshanam turned out to be an enjoyable big-screen entertainer and Ajith Mampally's Kondal and Omar Lulu's Bad Boyz were disappointments, the best film among Onam 2024 movie releases was Dinjith Ayyathan's Kishkindha Kaandam. A psychological drama with layers of mystery and family drama, Kishkindha Kaandam starred Asif Ali, Vijayaraghavan and Aparna Balamurali in the lead. Now, when I say Kishkindha Kaandam was the best Onam 2024 movie release, I should say that it is also one of the best Malayalam movies of 2024, with many who have watched it already declaring it THE best Malayalam film of the year. ‘KishKindha Kaandam’ Movie Review: Asif Ali and Vijayaraghavan’s Brilliant Performances and a Layered Mystery Make for a Spectacular Combo!
The highlight of Kishkindha Kaandam is the smart, nuanced screenplay by Bahul Ramesh, who also cranked the camera for the movie and the impactful performances by the lead stars. The plot of the movie revolves around its three central characters - Appu Pillai, an ex-military man with memory issues; Ajaychandran, his son and an employee in the forest department who is searching for his missing child Chachu; and Aparna, Ajaychandran's inquisitive wife, who he married after his first wife succumbed to cancer.
The three live in a big house near Kallepathi Reserve Forest. The crux of the story revolves around the search for a missing licensed gun that was in Appu Pillai's possession. The irate old man does not remember where he kept it. The son and the cops believe monkeys around the place have stolen it, while his old Naxal connections come into play in the accusations.
Watch the Trailer of ‘Kishkindha Kaandam’:
So, what happens in the climax? Before we discuss the event of the finale and our thoughts on the same, let's warn you there will be MAJOR SPOILERS about Kishkindha Kaandam in the below article.
The Missing Gun and Child
When Appu Pillai is taken in for questioning by the cops (who later had to let him go when they realised their mistake of issuing a license to a gun to a man with memory issues), Aparna searches her father-in-law's room for any clues. After finding notes and pages that have been assisting Appu Pillai with his broken memory, Aparna finds the missing gun in a secret compartment in his wardrobe, and two bullets are missing.
It was already confirmed in an earlier flashback scene by Sumadathan that one of the bullets was used by Chachu to kill a monkey in his childish abandon. So, where did the second bullet? Unfortunately, in the scene where Appu Pillai thrashes his grandson for playing with the gun, he gives a foreboding warning about how the gun may harm him in the end. That's what happened that night when Ajaychandran and his first wife returned from the hospital. Ajayan's first wife finds the son playing with the gun again, and in trying to take it out from his hands, the gun accidentally fires, killing him. His shocked mother tries to end her life by overdosing on her medicines, forcing a grief-stricken Ajaychandran to take her to the hospital immediately.
When he returns, however, the body of his son is missing, the place has been cleaned up, and his father is calmly eating his gruel. It is presumed that Appu Pillai has hidden the body and washed the evidence, but thanks to his short-term memory loss, he has forgotten he has done any of that. In trying not to implicate his dying wife (for accidentally killing his son) and his father (for owning the weapon and hiding the body), Ajaychandran files a missing complaint for Chachu and keeps up the ploy of searching for him for months, even travelling to faraway places to identify unclaimed corpses.
The Tragic Loop of Appu Pillai
I am not sure if that's the case, but Christopher Nolan's 2000 breakout movie Memento feels like a major influence on Kishkindha Kaandam. Both movies deal with main characters who suffer from short-term memory loss but use their condition to forget parts of their lives they never want to remember (something that Appu Pillai's therapist tells Aparna). In the case of Memento's Leonard Shelby, it is the fact that he accidentally killed his wife that he wants to forget. In the case of Appu Pillai, it was the fact that he had hidden his grandson's body somewhere.
In a way, Appu Pillai has joined the league of Drishyam's Georgekutty and Aarkkariyam's Ittyavira when it comes to hiding bodies and bring burdened with that secret. While the other two may have to live with the guilt of committing crimes and protecting their families from the police, Appu Pillai's guilt is more troubling. In the case of Georgekutty and Ittyavira, they had to hide the bodies of abusive people (a molester, an abusive son-in-law), but for Appu Pillai, it is the body of his innocent grandchild. What's more, he has to keep coming back to his crime again and again and relive the pain on a looped basis thanks to his short-term memory lapses, perhaps to the end of his time. Drishyam 2 Ending Explained: Will Mohanlal’s Georgekutty Return for a Threequel? Find Out!
The reason Appu Pillai goes on an investigation is because he wants to know what happened to Chachu (that he has forgotten) and determine if it was he who was responsible for the death of the child. His scouring of the news articles covering the disappearance, his frequent visits to the hospital where his dead daughter-in-law was treated (to get the report and match dates when Chachu went missing), and his questioning of Sumadathan (Jagadish) as to what happened with the first bullet is proof of this. When he finds out that either his son or the daughter-in-law could have killed Chachu and he himself had hidden the body, Appu Pillai burns all his findings on the grounds of his property (always at the same place).
It is that moment of burning the 'proof' when Appu Pillai knows the whole truth (albeit only for a short time), and that's when he had opened up to Ajaychandran about what he had done and why he had done it during the first loop.
Appu Pillai is a brilliant strategist (his army colleague had said the same about him), and he knows he has to answer where the two bullets in his gun have gone to the cops. That's why he has to claim that the gun has gone missing, and thanks to his memory loss, the blame may not come to him. His insistent desire to keep his room's door locked and wanting no one to enter his room without his knowledge is also perhaps his inherent desire for no one to find what he has been up to.
In the end, we finally realise the existential crisis in which Appu Pillai and his son have trapped themselves. Appu Pillai will continue to investigate his missing grandson and then keep burning all his findings after realising the heartbreaking discovery, and Ajaychandran has to keep watching his father over and over while living with the guilt of what he knows about his son and living that lie his entire life. While Aparna may have discovered the missing gun, the whereabouts of the body will always be in Appu Pillai's fragile mind, and he is not going to share it with anyone. ‘Ajayante Randam Moshanam’ (ARM) Movie Review: Tovino Thomas’ Maniyan Is the Show-Stealer of Jithin Laal’s Larger-Than-Life Fantasy Entertainer.
A Tale of Three Wise Monkeys
The monkeys living in the forest reserve play a crucial role in the movie, and what's more, they even haunt the film's tagline. The monkeys were blamed for stealing the gun and were also the trigger for Chachu's death. I want to believe Chachu killed the monkey using his grandfather's gun only because the monkeys kept stealing his toys.
But it's the tagline of Kishkindha Kaandam that makes the film's climax more interesting—'A Tale of Three Wise Monkeys'. The 'three wise monkeys' is a Japanese pictorial maxim depicting three monkeys, one holding its eyes shut, one clasping its ears shut, and one covering its mouth. Ideally, they were supposed to represent 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil'.
By the end of Kishkindha Kaandam, its three principal characters become like the monkeys of the idiom. Here's how that happened.
Appu Pillai - Speak No Evil
Appu Pillai knows where Chachu's body is, but he is never going to tell anyone the secret, keeping it in his heart till his very end; never mind, he has to keep finding out about it on a repetitive basis.
Ajaychandran - See No Evil
It's not just us realising the extent of Appu Pillai's troubles with his memory and what he has been doing with it, but the movie also slowly uncovers Ajaychandran's awareness of what his father is up to. Towards the end, like Aparna, we realise he knows everything and more that Aparna has been trying to find answers for, including what happened to his son, and he has just been playing along. He has been seeing what his father has been doing on a repetitive basis, but he chose to ignore them for the sake of his family and the memory of his dead wife.
Aparna - Hear No Evil
Aparna had once told Ajaychandran that she was not a tourist at his place; she felt his home and the people living there were her own, and she saw their problems as hers. This is why she was more inquisitive to find out what happened to Chachu and if Appu Pillai had a hand in it. Even though Ajaychandran knew the truth, he couldn't tell his wife about it initially, perhaps because he feared losing her. Towards the end, Aparna finally gets to hear everything that happened that night Chachu went 'missing'. But she doesn't break her marriage over the revelation and acts as if she hasn't 'heard' the story from her husband. The final scene sees them going to Nagpur with Ajaychandran's former brother-in-law (who is still clueless) to 'identify' another unclaimed body, confirming that Aparna has also joined Ajaychandran and Appu Pillai's existential tragedy.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 16, 2024 12:42 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
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