“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”
– Charlie Chaplin.

This new film of Lijo Jose Pellissery’s, which is centered around a son trying to get his father’s funeral in place, feels like it has been literally structured around this quote. He at first lets us have a blast as onlookers, and then takes us inside his character’s head (courtesy some great sound design) where we see his tragedy in close-up. It isn’t really hard to come to terms with the fact that Eesy’s dreams aren’t going to come true and that this isn’t just your weekly escapist cinema. Lijo Jose shows us a world where the people have nowhere to go. A gravedigger who dies in a grave he himself dug for someone else. One guy likes to speculate and gossip for the fun of it, he doesn’t give a damn about the consequences. A priest who is into crime novels has more suspicions about a death than an inspector does. Chellanam is the sort of place where a father and son discussing their future means discussing the logistics and grandeur of the former’s funeral.

Amidst these close-to-real-time proceedings, which are unsettling enough, we also get to mythical allegories in the form of entire characters. This kind of threw me off at first, but when seen in retrospective, Lijo Jose and PF Mathews (the writer) have clearly placed them out of, or should I say “above” the film’s primary narrative. The final shot is the one of Eesy’s. It is an image from reality, as opposed to the dream that started the film. What comes after the end title card works as an adjunct more than a conclusion. The film has already spoken to me by then. I see the religious parallel as an add-on layer, though he might not have conceived it so.

With all these elements we get something that feels like an expansion of the coffin scene from Angamaly Diaries. A funnier, thought-provoking one at that. The latter for how it doesn’t feel the need to explain Ayyappan’s selflessness. Or Pennamma’s borderline crocodile tears. These people are what they are. They don’t have to explain themselves just because this is a film. Can it get any more real?