{"id":5619,"date":"2016-04-18T14:37:18","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T09:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5619"},"modified":"2016-04-18T14:37:18","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T09:07:18","slug":"man-vs-wild-the-spectacular-horror-of-lijo-jose-pelliserys-jallikattu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=5619","title":{"rendered":"Man vs Wild: The Spectacular Horror of Lijo Jose Pellisery\u2019s Jallikattu"},"content":{"rendered":"\nT<\/span>he source of horror in Lijo Jose Pellissery\u2019s <\/span>Jallikattu<\/span><\/i>, the Malayalam filmmaker\u2019s seventh feature in nine years, is not a <\/span>supernatural<\/span><\/a> element. The horror lies within humans \u2013 in factors that are an integral part of civilisation and are all too normal.<\/span>\n\nSet in a verdant village in <\/span>Kerala<\/span><\/a>, the film opens with a bird\u2019s eye view of the sunrise\u00a0gradually piercing the chilly indigo sky with a splattering of warm orange.\u00a0We see the lights in the houses being turned on.\u00a0People get ready for work, as they do every day. Shop shutters go up.\u00a0It is business, as usual. Except, this won\u2019t be just another day in the village.<\/span>\n\nA rich man\u2019s daughter is about to get married and he wants to throw a buffalo feast for his guests. A butcher, Varkey (Chemban Vinod Jose) is in charge of providing the beef. But just as Varkey is about to slaughter the buffalo, the beast escapes. Destroying the crops and trampling down the shops in the village, it runs to a nearby forest. Here begins the village\u2019s collective descent into madness, all caused by the mere escaping of an animal meant to be <\/span>slaughtered<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\n\nThe men in the village make several unsuccessful attempts at reining in the buffalo. There\u2019s Antony (<\/span>Angamaly Diaries<\/span><\/i><\/a>\u2019<\/span><\/i> Antony Varghese) who wants to be the one to catch the buffalo and be recognised as the village hero. But when Antony and his cohorts fail to catch the buffalo, the villagers decide to call upon Kuttachan (Sabumon Abdusamad) who was ostracised from the village for smuggling sandalwood and cultivating cannabis. It\u2019s this tussle between Antony and Kuttachan that forms the dramatic crux of <\/span>Jallikattu. <\/span><\/i>Rather than being limited to a conflict between two men, the film manages to ask much larger questions about humankind.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nJallikattu<\/span><\/i> makes no bones about the fact that its protagonists are <\/span>misogynist<\/span><\/a> chauvinists. Early on in the film, we see a cop violently threatening to beat up his wife; throughout the film, women are present only on the sidelines without much agency or power. Essentially, <\/span>Jallikattu<\/span><\/i>\u00a0is set in a universe dominated by male action (and Malayalam cinema often makes an example of this) \u2013 a metaphor for society\u2019s collapse at the hands of the imperious male id running wild. The film is quite literally, man versus wild.<\/span>\n\n

Jallikattu<\/em> is set in a universe dominated by male action \u2013 a metaphor for society\u2019s collapse at the hands of the imperious male id running wild.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nPellissery and cinematographer\u00a0Gireesh Gangadharan make ample use of the lush greenery and the drizzly ambiance of rural Kerala to build an ominous atmosphere that gives the village a mythical feel. Contrasting the greens are the abundant shots of red animal flesh, underscoring how integral killing is to this society. It\u2019s instructive that <\/span>Jallikattu<\/span><\/i> is set in Kerala, one of the few Indian states where the idea of eating beef is not frowned upon. <\/span>Butchery<\/span><\/a> is an utterly normal part of life in this universe, thereby freeing it of any obligation to drive home a \u201cmessage\u201d about violence. Instead, the shots of meat serve the larger purpose of painting man as a fundamentally arrogant animal, one who thinks that he can bend and mould nature according to his will.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nIt\u2019s only a matter of time before nature hits back.<\/span>\n\nThe two halves of\u00a0<\/span>Jallikattu<\/span><\/i>\u00a0are sharply demarcated in style and tone: For the most part, Pellissery doesn’t give us a full view of the beast, much like the shark in Spielberg\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Jaws<\/span><\/i><\/a>. The first half takes place during the day, with the camera tagged to the buffalo running amok as the men try to trap it. No matter how many men are running after it, it always finds a way out, almost making a mockery of the system that the humans have in place. The second half, in contrast, is set during the night, as the buffalo runs wild in the jungle after the villagers almost manage to trap it in a well. The visuals in the second half are dominated by blinding flashes of light perforating the dark forest night as hordes of men run through the forest with flaming torches and electric flashlights. It is at this point in the film that the village\u2019s collective madness gets the better of the men: Supposedly the most intelligent animals in the ecosystem, they turn into zombies mindlessly running after prey.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nJallikattu<\/span><\/i> makes a jaw-dropping \u2013 yet seamless \u2013 leap from realism into actual horror mode, replete with zombie movie imagery. There\u2019s a scene where a mass of men turn from cognisant humans into zombie-like creatures propelled purely by a feral drive, like moths to a flame. Pellissery doesn\u2019t make the viewer empathise either with the buffalo or with any of the humans, but revels in the symphonic way in which the entire fabric of society comes apart. On the one hand, a mob of\u00a0humans cannot rein in a wild buffalo despite multiple attempts and on the other, all it takes is a few men to set a police car on fire and drive the cops away. The institution of human society\u00a0rests on such precarious pillars that all it takes is an animal to escape captivity for civilisation to come apart.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nPerhaps, the horror in <\/span>Jallikattu <\/span><\/i>feels potent because it is not posited as a horror film. It\u2019s rooted in a world all too real, where cops are wife-beaters and <\/span>BJP<\/span><\/a> flags loom the streets and men will literally tear each other apart to assert their superiority. So when the rug is swept from under our feet and it transforms into a horror film, it inspires awe and dread because it hinges on our recognition of how close to the real world this horror feels. This is where we\u2019re headed, <\/span>Jallikattu<\/span><\/i> tells us. All we\u2019ve got to do is look within.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The horror in Lijo Jose Pellissery\u2019s Jallikattu feels potent because it is not posited as a horror film. It\u2019s rooted in a world all too real, where cops are wife-beaters and BJP flags loom the streets and men will literally tear each other apart to assert their superiority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":5620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[9524,9525,2256,4452,9526,8978,1132,9527,9528,8979,3858],"class_list":["post-5619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-angamaly-diaries","tag-antony-varghese","tag-bjp","tag-horror","tag-jallikattu","tag-jaws","tag-kerala","tag-lijo-jose-pellisery","tag-malayalam","tag-man-vs-wild","tag-steven-spielberg"],"yoast_head":"\nMan vs Wild: The Spectacular Horror of Lijo Jose Pellisery\u2019s Jallikattu<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The horror in Lijo Jose Pellissery\u2019s Jallikattu feels potent because it is not posited as a horror film. It\u2019s rooted in a world all too real, where cops are wife-beaters and BJP flags loom the streets and men will literally tear each other apart to assert their superiority.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5619\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Man vs Wild: The Spectacular Horror of Lijo Jose Pellisery\u2019s Jallikattu\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The horror in Lijo Jose Pellissery\u2019s Jallikattu feels potent because it is not posited as a horror film. It\u2019s rooted in a world all too real, where cops are wife-beaters and BJP flags loom the streets and men will literally tear each other apart to assert their superiority.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5619\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arr\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-04-18T09:07:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1572347546-1024x573.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"573\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mohit Patil\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Man vs Wild: The Spectacular Horror of Lijo Jose Pellisery\u2019s Jallikattu\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"The horror in Lijo Jose Pellissery\u2019s Jallikattu feels potent because it is not posited as a horror film. 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