On demand: "Aattam/The Play"

2024 was the year in which the Malayalam cinema belatedly underwent its #MeToo moment, with the publication in August of the Hema Committee report into abuses of power within the industry. Writer-director Anand Ekarshi's slowburn drama Aattam/The Play, which opened in India at the end of 2023 and worldwide this January, now appears to pre-empt the report's line of thinking and interrogation. Ekarshi's raw materials here are the tensions that ripple through a successful touring theatre troupe after leading lady Anjali (Zarin Shihab) accuses a recent recruit, a married film actor renowned for his portrayal of villains, of having groped her at an afterparty. The conversations that break out among the ensemble begin to echo those being had in wider society: some of Anjali's fellow performers don't believe her, quibbling with or casting doubts on her story; others threaten to have the accused beaten up; others still point the finger at a heavy drinking culture within the group, insisting everyone needs to clean up their act. What's immediately notable is that the decision of how best to proceed will be taken in-house, and almost exclusively by the troupe's men, assuming the new roles of judge, jury and potential executioner.

What follows, over two-and-a-bit hours, is a model of movie naturalism: actors you've probably never seen before suggesting very distinct personalities while engaging in conversation that sounds, from first scene to last, like real-world conversation. This may be an even stronger ensemble, all told, than that which powered the spring crossover hit Manjummel Boys. We are, after all, watching less heralded actors playing less heralded actors, the alleged villain of the piece demonstrating a charm and clubbability that has evidently carried his character a rung or two higher up the showbiz ladder, but then every face appears right for the role. While it's still mostly men - Anjali is shuttled offstage for much of the middle stretch - a) that's the industry, and b) the tactic allows Ekarshi to get to how men work these things out together: how they justify, excuse, downplay and enable aberrant behaviour, how quick they are to anger, how often they shirk their responsibilities. (One potential pitch: it's Oleanna done as Glengarry Glen Ross.) Ekarshi sees and dramatises how tricky it is to hold firm in these situations when there are professional benefits (sizeable cheques, European tours) to turning a blind eye; crucially, he understands how essential it is that these men do hold firm. Above all else, Aattam demonstrates how fascinating conversation in itself can be on screen when it's this urgent and necessary; when the speaking parts are invested with depth and cast to perfection, and directed to a rare level of precision. Quietly brilliant and insinuating, and right up there with the best films in the world on this especially fraught moment in male-female relations.

Aattam is now streaming via Prime Video.