For anyone who has at least briefly sat through an interview for a corporate job, the opening scene in Baakki Vannavar (The Leftovers) will be painfully familiar. The young job-seeker looks, to a layman’s eye, to be in perfectly acceptable formals, ironed shirt and combed hair; his documents in a plastic file. But to the trained eye of the interviewer, all this is out of order. The appearance is unfitting, the beard apparently a taboo, and plastic files a huge no-no. You almost hold your breath until the interview is over and heave sighs of relief when the bearded young man is finally out. But you soon realise, the bad interview is an easily forgettable part of his very miserable life.
The young crew behind the film present, through the character, a replica of an average Malayali man, fresh out of college and without a proper job. The protagonist – the bearded young man – doesn’t even have a name. He doesn’t need to, says Salmanul who played the character and co-wrote the film with Amal Prasi, the director. Both of them, and nearly 90% of the cast and crew, are former students of various batches of the Maharaja’s College in Ernakulam. Rajeev Ravi, acclaimed director and alumna of the college, agreed to present the film when it was shown to him after its premiere at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) last December.
“He was happy to do it, and collaborated with us to enhance the post-production work,” Salmanul says, a day before the first screening of the film for a public audience in Kochi. So far, Baakki Vannavar has been to multiple festivals including in countries like Argentina and Australia. The August 8 show is expected to be full, but there will be a release in theatres afterward, Salmanul says.
Watch: Teaser of the film
He and Amal have both had to resign their corporate jobs and have been in a state similar to that of the nameless hero in Baakki Vannavar. They leave out many details. There is no clue to his religious or caste background. Clearly he is from a poor background, having to pacify an angered house owner about delayed rent, lamenting about the meagre sum he made from his job as the delivery partner of an online food delivery service. He is mostly quiet, his face unreadable as he passes through the endless frustrations of a single day. Spending most of his free time in the hostel of his former college, he listens to the heated discussions of others around him. Migration, brain drain, and the hopelessness of unemployment keep coming up in their conversations.
The film is in no hurry, allowing long moments to pass between scenes, sometimes in total silence, letting you dwell on the goings-on. Little about the protagonist’s personal life is revealed. He doesn’t divulge much to even the friends he spends entire hours with. I have dinner waiting at home, he tells one, but rides to an empty home, or what seems like one. “We didn’t want to make it about the family. It is more to do with the issues young people have with society,” Salmanul says.
Some of the cast and crew of the film
The making is so studied that it is a surprise when Salmanul says they have had no formal training in filmmaking, though they have all been interested in the art form since their college days. Barring a few inadequacies, there is an admirable professionalism in the whole setting – from the subdued performance of Salmanul and the more talkative demeanours of his friends, to the cuts between the scenes. The quietness of the protagonist, even as you feel the urge to react in his place to the obnoxious customer ordering food, is more painful than a very understandable outburst would have had.
In some ways, Baaki Vannavar is also reminiscent of Zwigato, Nandita Das's detailed telling of the struggling and exploited gig worker's life. But Baaki Vannavar takes a more generic view of the whole spectrum of unemployment the young go through year after year.