A Kerala police unit in Maoist country: notes on Unda

Continuing with recommendations for online viewing: the Malayalam film Unda (on Prime Video), directed by Khalid Rahman. About a police unit from Kerala traveling to Naxalite territory in Chhatisgarh for election duty, and being out of their depth – struggling with lack of resources and information, language barriers, the hostility/suspicion that comes their way from the locals as well as the disdainful ITBP force, and the note of terror that is struck with every uttering of the word “Maoist”. (It doesn’t help that some of these men know little about what Maoists are and what they want – as far as they are concerned, these might be primeval monsters with sharp fangs and claws.) A serious shortfall of bullets doesn’t do much to make them feel secure either.

One thing I was amused by: the use of “Megastar Mammootty” in the opening credits. I have no problem with that sort of drumroll announcement in itself (and I have been a Mammootty fan ever since I first saw Thalapathi), but it felt strange for THIS film, given that his role (as Mani sir, the leader of the unit) is so subdued and unglamorous. One of the first “dramatic” moments in Unda has Mani becoming paralysed in a moment of crisis, unable to issue a command (later there is a suggestion that he has a heart problem he knew nothing about). Mammootty does very briefly get to play the super-cop action figure in the climax, but the dominant image for much of the film is that of an avuncular man in a check-shirt, buying Parle G biscuits to distribute among his unit; or his eyebrows furrowing with concern and incomprehension when people speak urgently in Hindi in his presence.

In general too, Unda might be too quiet for some tastes, especially if you go into it expecting a story about a police-Maoist confrontation – or if you’re enticed by the plot point about a police unit having to make do with a very small supply of bullets. But this is a slow-burn film, and that is part of the point. Those mythical demons, the “Maoists”, are notable mainly by their absence: wait and wait and wait for them, but like Godot they might never show up. Instead there are other, more palpable dangers: in the cultural disconnect between this police unit and their setting; in the blatant and casual election-rigging by local politicians and their goons, which the police are expected to look away from; in the persecution of poor indigenous people who can easily be “encountered” on the charge of being Naxalites. And there is, too, the natural conflict between being a policeman and having other competing identities, most clearly underlined in the subplot about a member of the unit who is also from the Adivasi community. (This sublot reminded me a little of the Kikichiyo character played by Toshiro Mifune in The Seven Samurai: fascinated by the Samurai, wanting to be one of them, but also resentful about their historical oppression of the villagers.)

Though Unda’s premise and setting is similar in some ways to that of the 2017 film Newton, the most direct connection between the two films might be the marvellous Omkar Das Manikpuri who plays a supporting role in both (he also played the farmer Natha in Anusha Rizvi’s Peepli Live). In Unda he plays a man whose son has been arrested for being a Maoist, and who laments that the original inhabitants of this land have been ridden roughshod on for decades. His unhappy, lined visage is as important to the film’s effect as the preoccupied, often uncertain expression on Mani’s face. Here they are, natural adversaries in some ways, two men occupying different rungs on the privilege ladder – but equally adrift in a land that both is and isn’t theirs.