Beyond the Animal

Watching Animal (Decem­ber 2023) and Three of Us (November 2023) back to back will disorient even the most stoic. Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s film with Ranbir Kapoor playing the lead—as the son of an industrialist who will sever 300 men to protect his father—is a blood-let­ting binge from start to finish. Critics tore it apart, but the audience loved it, and it emerged as the second highest grosser of 2023 after Jawan. Avinash Arun’s Three of Us about a woman with early-onset dementia, returning to her sea-washed village in the Konkan, to revisit old friends and old haunts is literally the opposite of Animal. There is no iota of violence here, and not even a hint of aggression. On the face of it the movies have nothing in common. But when watched together, one realises that both uphold a certain kind of masculinity, evident in their titles itself. Animal valorises the beast and spurns the ‘civilised’. Three of Us celebrates cooperation and harmony; we are better together than we are apart.

Animal lays out at the very start which kind of man it wishes to honour. Ranvi­jay Singh (Ranbir Kapoor) decides that he will have his woman Geetanjali (played by Rashmika Mandanna). To do this he must break off her engagement with the simpleton Arvind. He does so by de­livering a spiel about how centuries ago there were the Alpha men. “Alpha means strong,” he mansplains to wide-eyed Geetanjali, “They’d go into the jungle to hunt, while the others, the weaker ones, would share the food they brought back.”

“Who would you choose,” he asks her, “A bunch of Arvinds or an Alpha?” “Alpha,” she whispers with conviction. To belabour his point, he continues how the weaker ones got jealous as the wom­en were choosing only the Alphas. But the weaker ones had “desire and lust,” and what were they to do with their un­met cravings? That is when “poetry was born”. These weaker ones do nothing, except string together beautiful sentenc­es, the only ones who do something are the Alphas.

With Shefali Shah (who plays a court counsellor Shailaja Desai) as the undisputed lead of Three of Us, the two male characters perfectly personify a Beta masculinity. This movie is very much about Shailaja and her holding onto the past and the present before both melt from her grip. The men, her insurance agent husband Dipankar (Swanand Kirkire) and her childhood friend Pradip (Jaideep Ahlawat) are the supporting cast as she journeys back to her childhood. These Beta males are alright with a woman taking the lead. They are happy to support rather than reign. They can watch rather than impose. The premise of the film is simple; having left her job Shailaja tells her husband that she wishes to travel to Vengurla where she studied for a few years in school. When they reach this quaint Konkan village of shuttered shops and endless coastlines, Dipankar realises that Shailaja has come here to meet Pradip. (It beggars belief that Shailaja and Pradip knew love from Class 5 to 8, but we the audience shall play along with that.) The movie then chronicles the moments the three spend together, with Dipankar trying to piece together his wife’s past, and with Pradip questioning Shailaja’s intentions, as she’s returned after decades. It is the perfect setup for bruised egos and roaring insecurities. But the movie succumbs to neither.

Dipankar and Pradip’s wife Sarika (Kadambari Kadam) do wonder about their partners’ past friendship. But they are secure enough to know that their partners are anchored in the present. When Pradip asks his wife if he should spend time with Shailaja and revisit their old haunts, whether it is their old school or the neighbourhood temple, she tells him that he must accompany his old friend. Her only condition: he tells her everything about their time together.

As if in direct response to the Ranvijays of our times, Pradip is a poet. The giveaway sign of a “weak man” aka a Beta Male, according to Animal. His verses on the passing of time, rich with nature imagery, gently ink the film’s soundtrack. The one time Dipankar’s anxieties most obviously flare up is when he sees Shailaja reading Pradip’s book and laughing to herself. He accuses her of being happy in a way that she has never been with him. Pradip’s wife also teases him that over their long marriage he has never written a line of poetry for her, whereas with the arrival of an old flame he has composed an entire poem. But these are tender gibes and gentle conversations. Disagreements do not escalate to screaming matches, tempers are kept in check, dignity is maintained. In Three of Us voices (let alone hands) are never raised.

Animal expectedly is quite the oppo­site. A few dialogues towards women are so lewd it seems as if Sandeep Reddy Vanga wants to make a template of his Kabir Singh school of filmmaking where the hero’s stubbornness, and more im­portantly, blinding all prevailing anger are upheld as virtues. Ranvijay believes it is his right to tell his sisters who to marry and who not to marry, even if they have not asked him for his counsel. Ranvijay is front and centre in the story of his own making. Everyone else is secondary. He bristles at his brother-in-law for talking rudely to his sister, but he thinks nothing of bringing a gun into his bedroom (where his children are asleep) and shooting just past his wife’s ear when she delivers a truth that hits home. Early in the movie, he tells his to-be wife, “You have a big pelvis you can accommodate healthy babies.” In a scene meant to raise the hair on one’s arm, Abrar ul Haque (Bobby Deol) gouges out the eye of a mes­senger who brings bad news. Soaked in blood he proceeds to force himself upon his pliant bride. The women in Animal are vessels for male lust (and children), and foils for their anger. In the bedroom and on the battlefield, Ranvijay is always the command­er-in-chief. He orders, others obey.

In Three of Us the men are not ‘macho’, instead they are kind and gentle. Pradip has an office job, but he is also happy writing poetry and stitching late into the night. I can’t remember ever watching a scene in a movie of any language where a man embroiders. We realise what he is working on only towards the end of the movie, when he presents his wife with a gift of a saree that he has personally embellished. In another tender moment, Shailaja and Dipankar speak to their son on a video call, while Dipankar gently oils her hair. The son jokes that he is the one who is breaking his head over exams while it is his mother getting a head massage. The embroidering of a saree, the oiling of his wife hair—these are pursuits that the Alpha man will clearly look down upon as ‘unmanly’. But in their softness and selflessness these are gestures of love to a woman.

The peace-filled way in which the three adults treat each other in Three of Us takes one to Jeo Baby’s Malayalam film Kaathal: The Core (November 2023). Film critic Baradwaj Rangan rightly calls it the “calmest issue-based movie ever made”. The premise of this film is ripe for chest-thumping, eye-watering, door-slamming drama. Instead, what we have is a hymn of reconciliation. Mathew Devassy (Mammootty) and Omana (Jyotika) are a pious Christian couple who have been married for two decades. Mathew reluctantly decides to stand for a local by-election. Omana files a case for divorce against him, as she feels she has been living an unfulfilled life because Mathew is gay. The film ties together themes of religion, sexuality, politics, community, family and femi­nism but through it all it keeps its focus on the integrity of its characters.

The silences and glances and gestures often tell us more than the words in the film. Here again Omana takes the lead, and she is supported by a host of Beta men. Each of them—Mathew, his partner and his father—are strug­gling in their own morass of thwarted choices and desires. Mammootty and Sudhi Kozhikode (Thankan, a driving school instructor) are pitch perfect in their restraint. They never exchange a word through the film, but through their glances, through how they pass on the street, and how Thankan looks at Mathew’s political poster, it is clear that their relationship goes deeper. Set in a small town in Kerala, where monsoon greens and sparkling blues prevail, the ending of the film is perhaps too utopic.

In the last few minutes, we see the possibility of a blended family, a truly fem­inist family. Mathew and Omana sit in a restaurant waiting for the arrival of some­one. Their daughter video calls them and wishes her mother all the best. A man ap­pears and Mathew leaves. Here is a couple that is amicably divorced and where the Beta Man is happy to escort his wife on her first date. Waiting for Mathew in the carpark is the driving school instructor. The ending of the film tells us of people living their authentic lives, of beginnings which spurn outmoded thinking and a future rich with possibility. One can even forgive director Jeo Baby (who made the feminist pean The Great Indian Kitchen, 2021) for the rainbow straddling the sky, which is too heavy handed for a movie of this subtlety and finesse.

Interestingly, Animal, Three of Us and Kaathal all deal with absent fathers, which is used to explain the broken men. The crux of Animal is the man-child Ranvijay yearning for his father Balbir Singh’s (Anil Kapoor) love. Balbir was so busy building his business empire that he had no time for his family. Ranvijay spends his life (and expends hundreds of other lives) to be seen (and appreciated) by his father. Ranvijay’s wife also tells him that his greatest failing is his daddy issues (not in so many words). In Kaathal Omana is the mediator between father and son. She has never seen them talk, and neither do we the viewers. They avoid each other in the house like sparring ghosts. In a sensitive twist, it is Mathew’s father who comes out in support of Omana, ac­knowledging that he bears responsibility for their unhappiness. He forced Mathew to marry Omana, knowing all too well that his son was gay. In the denouement father and son for the first time exchange an impassioned hug, when the father ad­mits he was wrong. In Kaathal, the father must reckon with how his own actions have consequences, for there to be peace in the family. In Three of Us Pradip tells Shailaja that his alcoholic father one day beat his mother and him, and then left the house never to return. When she asks if he is still angry, he says, “Nahi, daya aata hai. No, I pity him.” And, perhaps, that is the crux. With time, anger must turn to compassion, otherwise, Animal-like, you’ll be left blind with rage.

Movies like Three of Us and Kaathal are a tonic in a tornado of macho films and images that have inundated our screens and lives. In their quietude lies hope. In their simplicity nestles dignity. And in their kind men, men who use heart over biceps, mind over guns, one can imagine a different kind of masculinity, and a gentler world. In the public square (in the box office) the men of Three of Us and Kaathal will be sneered at. They will be deemed as ‘womanly,’ but that is indeed a compliment, and not a slur. If these movies can be accused of a failing, it is that they are too idealistic. But we don’t fault films for hyperbole, so why should we mock them for their optimism? The Beta man is not ‘perfect’ (but then who is). But these Beta Men, these ‘Pappus’ are a reprieve, especially at a time when machismo equals patriotism, when con­frontation is encouraged, appeasement is avoided, and when majoritarianism rules. At such times, ‘feminine’ qualities like patience and acceptance, tenderness and heart, can create a more compassion­ate society. Perhaps, we need the Beta Men for a more woman-friendly world, where we can hear lines of poetry and not the rattle of gunfire.

animalcinemaIndian societyIndian womenKaathal The CoreThree of Us