Official Trailer:

So far there are very few anthologies where all the stories worked. After Sillu Karupatti, all the five stories fare better, cross the above average bar, giving something fresh in Freedom Fight. The impact of each story comes out different. Ration and Old Age Home are subtle and leaves the interpretation to the audience. Geethu Unchained conveys the freedom aspect in a straightforward manner, nothing overdone but no subtlety either. Penkootu takes the documentary-drama style approach – it does feel little longer but thinking about it I do think it needed the time to do what it sets out to do. The last episode, Pra.Thoo.Mu shocks you with its content and portrayal – few will be put down by the scenes which are uncompromising like A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick.

We are all prisoners of the veiled expectation What others will think…What the society will think. Every action of ours is put under the lens of expectations and norms. Many a times we do things just because that is what we have been told to do, what the society expects us to do. In Geethu Unchained, everyone around Geethu pushes her to get married, parents, and elder brother (so that the path gets cleared for him to get married…again the expectation that brother can get married only after the sisters are married off), after she called off the engagement with her ex-boyfriend. Geethu called it off since he started bossing over her post the engagement. Story is not new, but the director makes it interesting with creative narration approach, what-if and Q & A type of scenes, Geethu sharing her opinions to strangers and neighbors (interestingly they, the society, don’t judge her 😃). What is in men that gives them the entitlement to boss over woman? That is the question Geethu Unchained leaves us with. Of course, the parting message is done with style and an attitude 👏

Ration focuses on two neighbors who are friends but separated by class inequality. How the inequality leads to a situation that could have been resolved with being open with friendly neighbor, but the veil of social pride and self-respect prevents from reaching out. That results in pawning the gold ring to buy the expensive fish which eventually ends as wasted food in garbage can. Director deep dives into the pain stemming from poverty and inequality and how the (false) sense of pride gets in between friends too. Unlike Geethu Unchained, here the protagonist succumbs to what others will think.

Old Age Home is the best of the lot and a good cinema. Baby, the husband is diagnosed with dementia, and struggling with diabetes and hypertension. He has craving for sweets. His wife, Lali, has finally found the time to do things she always wanted to do, jack fruit chips home business now that the children have moved out. From the outset, these come across as small and simple wishes, what could be that hard in achieving them. Again, the unwritten expectations of those around them, the children here, spoils the play. Children want their mother to stop her business and take care of the dad, after all it is mother’s duty to take care of dad. Then there is Dhanu, the domestic help, with her own share of issues, her children don’t want her. Joe Baby, the director skillfully brings out the pains and challenges old people go through, and he is aptly supported by outstanding performances from Joju George, Lali P M, and Rohini. For all its subtlety, I found Old Age Home highly disturbing, unable to stop the thought of what awaits us as we age 😨

I bucket the next two stories, Penkootu and Pra.Thoo.Mu under Educate.Organize.Agitate freedom fight. True to the title, thanks to the producers, they have given full freedom to the directors, allow them to go to places where no one has gone before. Subjects they deal with in these two are very basic needs but never get discussed in our society other than the usual lip service. Not just the subject matter, even the scenes are bold and uncompromising. Actors have been bold too in portraying those scenes. What do they deal with? In Penkootu, bunch of women and transgenders from unorganized sector come together and agitate the lack of access to toilets, to get a place to pee, yes you read it correctly, a toilet. The fight isn’t easy. They lose their jobs. They need to put up with lewd comments from male employers. Union isn’t helping. District administration puts a non-functional electronic toilet. They come together, educate themselves and the weapon they pick is the law. The threat of violation of building and labor laws, 10-11 long work hours, no overtime, and sexual harassment forces the employers to give in and construct one toilet. They give in not because they understood their needs and rights, but because they don’t want to face the law. With its humor and brilliant performances, it keeps us engaged even though the tempo dips in between. Penkootu ends on a high with women vowing to continue the fight to get ten more toilets. It leaves us with the key message, Law is the only weapon the powerless have in their hands, if you don’t ask and push for your rights, you will never get it, and Educate.Organize.Agitate.

Pra.Thoo.Mu deals with, there is no other way to put it, shit. Director deals with class and caste discrimination of septic tank cleaners. Conditions they work under and how badly they get treated. Good decision to show the whole episode in black & White considering the subject matter. The team has saved the shock for this last story. It is open to debate whether that level of brutality need to be shown. It does come across as exaggerated and possibly irrational of something like this happening in current Kerala, but it is a fact that manual scavenging still exists in our country, and it behooves us to ask the question why it is so. The translation of Pra.Thoo.Mu is The Emperor Has An Urge To Shit. And the director imagines what if the septic tank cleaners organize themselves, stop the work, and tell the emperor to pick up his own sh*t.

Overall, each story leaves us with a perspective on Freedom, what it means to different people and different segments of the society. We will be flooded with thoughts, questioning our behavior and actions, our expectations on others, after watching Freedom Fight. Therein lies the success of Freedom Fight.