A scene from ‘Thurmukham’
Pieces of copper fly into the air, thrown by a man by his goons. When the pieces fall, desperate men fight each other to get one. Those who manage to secure a piece heave a sigh of relief, while the rest shrug their shoulders and walk back. This is not the scene of an old world competitive game, but the work allocation system followed in Cochin Port till the 1950s. The men who got the copper pieces, known as ‘Chappa’, were allotted work due on the day, mostly loading and unloading work in the port.
Building workers’ solidarity in an environment where survival depends on seizing your chance before anyone else gets it must have been quite the task. Rajeev Ravi’s fifth directorial Thurmukham Chronicles the formation of the Left trade union, and the tragic incident at Mattancherry in 1953, when three protesting workers died in police firing. It is a struggle about which not much has been written. drama of KMC Chidambaram ThurmukhamBased on the conflict, has been adapted for the screen by his son Gopan Chidambaram.
The workers’ fight story has all the elements of a commercial pot-boiler, yet Rajeev Ravi does what we know him to do. He painstakingly recreates the time, place and social situation in all its rich authenticity, and places a family at its centre. The mother (Poornima Indrajit) is a sign of the passage of time, having witnessed the struggle being waged by her husband Mammu (Joju George) from the ground up, and in which their sons (Nivin Pauly and Arjun Ashokan) will later play their part. The suffering of women like her, which often comes to the fore in the backdrop of many heroic struggles, is brought to the fore here.
Thurmukham
Director: Rajeev Ravi
Cast: Nivin Pauly, Poornima Indrajith, Indrajith Sukumaran, Joju George, Arjun Ashokan, Sudev Nair, Manikandan Achari, Nimisha Sajayan, Darshana Rajendran
This is not a story of individual heroism, which is played out in collective service. Nivin Pauly, the biggest star, briefly gets to play an anti-hero who turns out to be one of the henchmen for the oppressor. But the screenplay doesn’t take a hard look at their choices, always making us aware of the pathetic conditions and their own lack of awareness, which forces them to pay for their next meal or drink. Then there are references to real-life heroes like union leader Santo Gopalan (Indrajith Sukumaran), who rarely wavers from the norm, and suffers for it.
Even the breath-taking climax sequence of a pitched street fight between the workers and the police doesn’t have its key figures (except for the activist played by Arjun Ashokan), Rajinikanth’s protagonist being absent in the film by the way. BlackThe climax of The manner in which the sequence is reached, from several smaller street marches coming together into one huge street rally, can also be considered a commentary on a movement that by then had grown larger than any of its individual leaders. Was.
What may work against the film is the three-hour run-time, portions of which are not engaging enough. As yet, Thurmukham remains an honest and important document of workers’ struggle to unionize for their rights, in an era in which such hard-won rights are taken away, and even minor protests ridiculed Is.
Thuramukham is currently running in theaters