It is no hyperbole to say that Ayyappanum Koshiyum, one of those rare Indian films that meets head on the reality of class and caste differences in Kerala, is the magnum opus of director KR Sachidanandan, fondly referred to as Sachy. As the Malayalam film wins big at the 68th National Film Awards announced on Friday, July 22, however, Sachy is not here to celebrate with his friends and well-wishers. The director, who passed away after suffering a cardiac arrest and hypoxic brain damage (wherein the brain does not get enough oxygen) on June 18, 2020, just four months after the release of his chef-d'oeuvre, has now posthumously won the national film award for Best Direction. The film has also garnered awards in the categories of Best Supporting Actor (Biju Menon), Best Female Playback Singer (Nanchamma), and Best Stunt Choreography (Rajasekhar, Mafia Sasi and Supreme Sunder).
Ayyappanum Koshiyum was a first-of-its-kind attempt for Sachy, who had also written the script for the film. Even though at the centre of the film’s conflict is the ego clash between two hypermasculine men, Ayyappan Nair (played by Biju Menon) and Koshy Kurian (Prithviraj Sukumaran), Sachy is successful in not limiting the film to a show of toxic masculinity. At par with the performance of the lead characters in the film stood that of Anil P Nedumangad, as police officer Satheesh. Anil, too, is not around to celebrate the film’s grand victory anymore. The actor, who had just reached the peak of his career like Sachy, drowned in Malankara dam site in December 2020.
Sachy’s characterisation of Ayyappan in the film is near flawless. As Koshy aptly sums him up in the film, Ayyappan is wild. As raw as they come, Ayyappan never comes to terms with the society’s constant denial of justice to the poor. Even as a police officer, it is not the law of the land that takes precedence for him, he would rather be human. He marries a tribal woman after the system tries to clamp down her protests against a government official, who had been neglecting the delivery of justice to tribal people, by arresting her after giving her a tag of a Maoist.
Like Ayyapan, his wife Kannamma (Gowri Nanda) is also someone who constantly fights with the system that neglects people like her. She is also tormented by the internal conflict of someone who never compromises with the mainstream society, the practices of which she isn’t able to come to terms with.
For Ayyappan, the Nair (a dominant caste in Kerala) surname was his mother’s way of registering her protest against a Nair man’s betrayal towards her. In olden days, it was a common practice, rarely questioned, for Nair men to impregnate women of the oppressed caste and abandon them without taking responsibility for their actions. In this manner, step by step, Sachy has well established the rebel in Ayyappan Nair.
Koshy, on his part, has failed to stand on his own feet, staying under the shadow of his rich and dominating father, even in his late 30s. Unlike Ayyappan, the only choice that Koshy has made on his own was to join the army, but his arrogant father even discredits that by saying he had ‘allowed’ it only for his son's mental build up. Koshy is used to living in comfort, and has never dared to question his father, even when the latter went too far.
Thus, when Ayyappan and Koshy come face to face, what takes place is a fight between two entities who are aware of each other’s complexities, a rare feat in mainstream movies. Ayyappan, in fact, has nothing personal against Koshy. Rather, as he takes on Koshy, he is actually taking on a system that has spoiled many like him, while consistently leaving behind the nonprivileged.
With Ayyappanum Koshiyum, Sachy had climbed to the stature of a filmmaker who can convincingly deal with complexly hued characters and plots. Through the movie, Sachy had also introduced to the world a hitherto hidden talent, that of tribal folk singer Nanchiyamma. The song ‘Kalakkatha’, which was sung by Nanchiyamma, had played a significant part in elevating the entire mood and rhythm of the movie.
After coming to know that he has received the national award for the Best Supporting Actor on Friday, Biju Menon dedicated the award to Sachy. “I am very happy that the character Ayyappan Nair has won a national award. I am remembering Sachy now. He was the one who gave me a movie like this. I never expected this award. But I had wished for such a recognition when many people applauded the performance and said that the movie will win awards. But the one and only person I am thankful to for this is Sachy,” actor Biju Menon told the media. “I had been with Sachy since the initial discussions for the movie,” he said, adding that he was sad that Sachy was not here to witness this honour.