Review of Malayalam movie Joji directed by Dileesh Pothan
When I launched this film in Amazon Prime, it said that the movie is inspired by Macbeth written by William Shakespeare, of which I had faint memory. For me to relate to the story better, I went back and read Macbeth again! For those of you who are raking your memory to figure out what Macbeth is all about, here’s the story in brief: Macbeth, an army general of Scotland serving under King Duncan, is driven by his wife’s desire and greed to attain power and wealth; this was in fact triggered by the sudden appearance of eerie witches and their words, which Macbeth shares with his wife and she becomes obsessed with that thought. She pushes Macbeth to take the extreme step of killing King Duncan and helps him hide his act by passing on the blame to the guards. Macbeth is crowned as the king, but his killing act haunts him and his wife, and to cover himself, he loses control and kills anyone in his way ruthlessly and eventually succumbs to his enemies in a battle. The moral of the story is greed and treachery begets itself.
Coming back to Joji’s plot, the story revolves around the character Joji played by Fahad Fasil, who is an engineering dropout and aspires to become a wealthy person. He is the youngest of the three siblings. Their father, Panachel Kuttappan(PK), played by PN Sunny, who with his menacing look and well-built body overpowers others in this family, has his final say on everything and is very calculative about money. When Joji asks PK for some money, he precisely states the amount of change he has got in his purse, which is an example of his precision in controlling the affairs in the house. Suddenly, things overturn as PK suffers from Stroke, as he carries out some superhuman act. His collapse, on the contrary, gives a sense of relief to everyone, especially Bincy, Jaison’s wife and Joji. Jomon, the eldest son and a divorcee staying with his son Popy, ensures that he leaves no stone unturned to save his father and brings him home, as he shows good signs of recovery. Joji and his sister-in-law, Bincy shares a special bond and frets over their short-lived freedom as PK returns. Bincy wants to move out of the house and live in a city and pushes her husband to seek money and approval from PK, which he blatantly denies. Joji makes an attempt to instill in his father’s head that he needn’t worry about his health and they all will take care and they would need him to trust them; he also grieves over his hard luck at succeeding in anything in life and begs him for some money to take a chance again in his life. While Joji would have expected a pat in his back, PK strangles Joji’s throat and pushes him away. He, perhaps, would have come to understand that his father would never change!
His collapse, on the contrary, gives a sense of relief to everyone, especially Bincy, Jaison’s wife and Joji. Jomon, the eldest son and a divorcee staying with his son Popy, ensures that he leaves no stone unturned to save his father and brings him home, as he shows good signs of recovery. Joji and his sister-in-law, Bincy shares a special bond and frets over their short-lived freedom as PK returns.
The temporary freedom, the words
from their family doctor on Joji becoming a potential millionaire following PK’s
collapse and his never-ending failure in life, makes him act aggressively but
in the wrong direction. He subtly engineers his father’s death and Bincy, who
notices Joji’s act, behaves as if she hasn’t seen anything at all. After the
death, the talks on inheritance goes smoothly and everyone comes to a consensus
on the terms. All seems to go well, when Jomon comes to Joji about the rumours floating
around in the village regarding PK’s death. Joji feigns innocence and resolves
to silence the rumor monger, whom when Joji and Jomon encounters, raises
suspicion in the minds of Jomon on Joji. As Jomon probes further, Joji sputters
out inconsistent answers, which leads to a fight between the brothers, resulting
in Joji committing his second murder.
With the lead from Popy on Jomon’s death, Joji gets cornered in all fronts, his family, village members and the police, which forces him to take the lethal step to escape from the unescapable web he has spun around himself. Whether he succeeds or not is what the viewers will get to know in the climax.
On the whole, it’s a good movie with all the characters playing their roles perfectly, especially Fahad Fasil who exhibits multiple facets of his character, ranging from a happy-go-lucky guy, to a jittery person fearing his muscle flexing father. His turning into an accidental criminal exposes his vulnerable nature that he too is a normal human with aspirations, who eventually takes the wrong and self-destructing path. And when I tried drawing a parallel between Joji and Macbeth plots to verify the movie’s disclaimer on the inspiration, I found very few resemblances – soothsaying by witches to doctor’s forecast of Joji becoming potential millionaire, the hideous thoughts of Lady Macbeth and execution followed by sequential killing to cover earlier acts of Macbeth to Joji’s actions and thought process, as there essentially isn’t a separate character for Lady Macbeth; Fahad dons both the roles.
But, yes, the movie does leave you with few questions in your mind such as how to deal with your emotions and failure as an individual and how to change the culture in some of the households of demeaning one’s children for not performing well instead offer necessary encouragement for it serves well in building a mentally sound society, which I feel is deteriorating over the last few years for various reasons including the pressure of performing well in all fronts.
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