Angamaly Diaries

 Angamaly Diaries is a Malaylam-language crime film released in 2017 and directed by Lijo Jose Pellissey.  Films produced in Malaylam are sometimes called "Mollywood Movies".  On the evidence of this movie, and Pellissey's most recent film, the ineffably weird Nanpakal Merathu Mayakkam,  Pellissey is an important filmmaker with a lavish visual style and fantastically ambitious objectives.  Pellissey is relative young, his first picture made in 2010, and I expect that he will prove to be an important director in world-cinema.  Angamaly Diaries was made with actors who had never performed previously for the camera and the picture is fantastically energetic, complex, and visually exciting.  The terrain is exotic and many aspects of the film were inscrutable to me and so, my appreciation, is tinctured, I'm afraid, by my ignorance.  That said, the film is reasonably accessible (more so than Nanpakal) and, in fact, its form and several crucial episodes mimic scenes in Scorsese's Goodfellas and Mean Streets.  If the picture is interpreted in light of its American models, viewers, I think, will have a useful perspective from which to view the movie.  

Angamaly is a city in Kerala in Southwestern India.  It's a Christian settlement with a vibrant Syria-Malakbar Catholic community; this religion seems to be similar to the Roman Catholic traditions shown in Mean Streets and, indeed, religious festivals play an important role in the film; the picture's climax reprises the scenes involving the Feast of San Gennaro in Mean Streets.  The town is an important character in the movie and shown in lightning fast montages that feature exotic religious processions, huge crowds of people, and spectacular close-ups of various stews and curries that characterize the local cuisine.  Apparently, the people in Angamaly are carnivorous in the extreme and everyone is always scarfing down huge amounts of chicken, beef, and pork.  In fact, raising, butchering, and eating swine, is a principal theme in the movie -- I don't know of any picture involving more close-ups of pigs and pork.  At one point, one of the characters, aspiring to the pinnacle of pleasure in Angamaly says: "We just want to chill happy, eat some pork, and have some drinks.  

The film's structure involves an elaborate flashback that comprises 8/10ths of the 132 minute movie.  Beginning in 2014, the picture cuts back to events beginning in 2001 and comprises, more or less, the autobiography of the movie's main character, Pepe.  Pepe, named after Joseph, Jesus' human father, narrates the movie and he shows some of the wit, amorality, and insouciance of Henry Hill in Goodfellas.  The picture begins with "team members" (gangsters) killing time among buses that they apparently control -- one of the gangsters is eating python, a creature stolen from High School biology class room; these people seem to be willing to eat just about anything.  (The teacher confronts the gangster and slaps his face, an act of courage that apparently impresses the thug because he doesn't retaliate.)  A homosexual who operates a ladies' clothing store complains that rival gangsters are extorting him -- like most everyone in the picture, the little queer guy is very fierce.  The bus-gangster go downtown to beat up their rivals, some punks lead by two hirsute crooks, Rajan and Rani.  A religious festival is underway and the crowded streets are full of percussion bands, people carrying crosses, and, even, some folks dressed up as centurions, disciples, men crossdressing to play Mary and Mary Magdalene, and, of course, Jesus himself.  Jesus with the centurions, "women", and disciples are all getting drunk in a local tavern when the bus gangsters appear, planning to administer a beating to Rajan, Rani, and their team.  But, suddenly, Jesus and his followers attack Rajan and Rani and their gang and a wild fracas ensues.  (The movie involves many gang fights that don't seem particularly lethal until someone accidentally gets killed -- this is probably a realistic depiction of this sort of violence).  As Jesus punches one of his enemies, the movie flashbacks to Pepi (who is dressed as Jesus for the festival) singing as a choirboy in the local Catholic Church (it's the spectacular basilica of St. George in the center of Angamaly).  The film, then, proceeds in a roughly chronological narrative that depicts Pepi's childhood, his early admiration of the local "teams", and his development as a gangster himself.  The "teams" of gangsters are literally soccer teams but they run all sorts of illicit activities, operating in the local slaughter business as well, and, not only do they administer beatings, and occasionally murder people, they also mediate disputes.  Pepi and his five friends are affiliated with one of the local gangsters, a man named Babuju.  In a gang fight, Rajan and Rani with their hoodlums kill Babuju and go to prison for a few years.  Pepi falls in love with a girl that he knows from Church but the relationship ends and she "goes to Singapore to marry some guy."  (One of the motifs in the film is that the local kids can't make a living in Kerala and are always emigrating to Australia or Europe.  Pepi's second girlfriend is studying in Germany.  Pepi is encouraged to emigrate to Germany where reportedly you can get a college degree in "butchering pigs.")  For a while, Pepi runs a cable TV business, but, when Rajan and Rani, whom he hates, return from prison, he and his friends, nonetheless, agree to work for them in the swine industry.  They have some concrete pens where they raise pigs, slaughter them, and retail the meat through R & R's enterprises.  Pepi is ambitious and he decides to eliminate the middleman, surreptitiously going into the pork business for himself.  Rajan and Rani are enraged and they attack Pepi's food booth with home-made hand grenades and blow it up.  Pepi and his gang pay a local reprobate, the fat Kinjooty, to teach them how to make grenades and they acquire three bombs.  When Rajan and Rani attack Pepi's hog farm, another big battle ensues.  In the course of the fighting, Pepi and his thugs pursue R & R's gang through the jungle.  Pepi throws a grenade as one of the enemy crooks is scaling a wall; unfortunately, the gangster loses his grip and falls right into the explosion.  He's killed and the rest of the movie involves Pepi's efforts to avoid reprisals for the accidental killing.  (The problem is the implacable R & R; the local cops are all cheerfully corrupt -- they torture the gangsters apparently for fun but always let them go.)  The services of shady lawyer are engaged and Thomas ("Shots" as in shotglass drinks) Chetta, an older mobster, acts as a go-between.  (Thomas "Shots" was earlier one of Babaju's thugs and he runs a tavern that features Arrack booze and, of course, pork curries.)  After elaborate negotiations, R & R agree to a cash settlement to end the vendetta -- this is financed by Pepi running card games and profiting from gambling.  R & R are devious, however, and once paid, they invest a sizeable share of the proceeds in hiring several assassins to murder Pepi and his crew-members.  This sets up the film's bravura climax, a tour de force involving a thousand extras and shot in one continuous eleven minute sequence.  (The scene is similar but far more elaborate to the famous tracking shot in the Copacabana nightclub in Scorses's Goodfellas.)  The assassins hunt Pepi and his buddies through a fantastically colorful street festival; Pepi and his buddies don't know they are about to be attacked and they get very drunk.  (This scene takes place on the evening after the fight in the barroom in which Pepi dressed as Jesus beats up some of R & R's thugs.)  There's a big knife-fight and R & R get pushed into fireworks which explode in a tower of flame and white smoke over their writhing bodies.  Pepi has been married to a childhood sweetheart, Lichi, who works in Dubai.  In the film's impressive last scene, we see him watching a video on his phone, these shots intercut with images of tiny, naked pigs being born; the camera tracks back and we see that he's in an aerial crane perched about 500 feet above Dubai; the camera slowly retreats along the crane's huge hoist drifting upward over the vast city all hazy with blowing dust and heat.  

The movie is vastly more complex than my summary and contains many very funny sequences.  One of the gangster is very volatile, like Joe Pesci (for instance in Raging Bull) and there's a big fight over someone being served the last plate of rabbit curry.  A dead gangster has to be buried; his mistress wails exorbitantly over his casket while his rather indifferent wife and daughter look on.  But the casket is too narrow and the dead man's arms protrude and they can't get the box into the wall-niche where it is supposed to repose.  After every try, the mourners stop wailing and weeping as if on cue while the undertaker tries to figure out how to get the body into the narrow cubbyhole.  Finally, R & R  intervene simply breaking the body's arms and folding them up in the box to the horror of all the mourners.  There are very lively montages -- for instance, everyone in Angamaly is apparently called "Marty" and we get a series of shots of various "Marty's" introducing themselves to the camera.  Feasts of curry and pork goulash are lavishly detailed.  Pepi's mother is like an Italian mamma; she's a tyrant in the kitchen and slaps everyone who gets in her way.  As is the case with Indian movies in general, there are several impressive musical interludes and some of the gang violence is scored to these musical tunes.  (There's a great musical number with the lyrics "Good times have come / the famine of money is over", this played to illustrate shots of cash changing hands.)  The film is edited into very quick, digressive montage sequences and, in general, the cutting is very fast.  However, there are freeze frames and slow motion sequences as well.  And, of course, the climactic fight during the religious festival is shot in one continuous take.  There's some Goodfellas-style advice -- in a gang fight, always punch the guy next to the person with whom you are speaking.  This will result in a chaotic melee with everyone piling onto everyone else.  People engage in casual criminal conduct -- the kids steal tools from a neighbor which they then sell back to him.  Cops cheerfully threaten to torture bad guys with meat-hooks.  It's tremendously hot all the time and the tough guys wear skirts around their loins which they are continuously hitching up or retying around their waists.  And, of course, in every scene someone is eating.  When a girl orders catering for her wedding, she apparently has some Hindu of Muslim friends and asks for a vegetarian dish -- the caterer is amazed but says he can cut up some potatoes and cook this is a beef or pork curry.  On first viewing, I found the film very hard to follow.  However, on a second viewing, everything falls into place and I would expect that further study would reveal many more interesting details that I missed when during earlier screenings.  You can watch this movie on Netflix and I highly recommend it.