Jallikattu
Theatrical release poster
Directed byLijo Jose Pellissery
Written by
Based onMaoist
by S. Hareesh
Produced byO. Thomas Panicker
Starring
CinematographyGirish Gangadharan
Edited byDeepu S. Joseph
Music byPrashant Pillai
Production
company
Opus Penta
Distributed byFriday Film House (India)
XYZ Films (North America)
Release dates
  • 6 September 2019 (2019-09-06) (Toronto)
  • 4 October 2019 (2019-10-04)
Running time
95 minutes[1]
CountryIndia
LanguageMalayalam

Jallikattu is a 2019 Indian Malayalam-language independent action thriller film directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery with a screenplay by S. Hareesh and R. Jayakumar, based on the short story Maoist by Hareesh.[2] The film stars Antony Varghese, Chemban Vinod Jose, Sabumon Abdusamad and Santhy Balachandran. In the film, a bull escapes from a slaughterhouse in a hilly remote village and the villagers sets out to hunt it down.[3][4]

Jallikattu was premiered on 6 September 2019 at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and received widespread critical acclaim.[5][6] The film was showcased at the 24th Busan International Film Festival under the section 'A Window on Asian Cinema'.[7] It was released in the home state Kerala on 4 October 2019.[8][9] Lijo Jose Pellissery received the Silver Peacock-Best Director trophy at the 50th International Film Festival of India.[10] It was selected as the Indian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.[11][12] It was third Malayalam film after Guru and Adaminte Makan Abu to be chosen as India's official entry to the Oscars.[13] It was included in The Hindu's top 25 Malayalam films of the decade and is widely regarded as one of the defining movies of the New Wave Movement.[14]

Plot

Kalan Varkey is a butcher at a rural village in Kerala who meets with his assistant Antony before dawn each day to slaughter a buffalo and prepare its meat for sale in the market. One morning, a buffalo slips its bindings before Varkey can kill it, escaping into the hilly forest. Soon after, a large haystack is set ablaze and the entire village wakes up to put out the fire. Hearing of the buffalo's escape and believing that it was responsible, the men of the village begin an urgent hunt for the animal. As the day progresses, the villagers repeatedly try to corner the buffalo and kill it, but to no avail. The crops at the rubber plantation are trampled, a drink vendor's cart is smashed and the village's bank and convenience store are both destroyed. The villagers begin to turn on Varkey, blaming him for the destruction.

Meanwhile, the police refuse to help as killing cattle is illegal - instead, they focus on merely warning people to stay inside until the buffalo is caught. The frustrated villagers call Kuttachan, a renowned local poacher, for help. Antony is unhappy to see Kuttachan back in the village; in a flashback it is revealed that, before Antony married his wife Sophie, the two men had been rivals over her. Antony had won by informing the police that Kuttachan was stealing sandalwood from the local church, leading to his arrest. As Kuttachan prepares for the hunt by chopping up a metal bucket handle into pieces of buckshot, they start a mass argument among the villagers over which man deserves to land the killing blow on the buffalo.

Elsewhere in the village, the disruption - both from the buffalo's rampage and the hunt - spreads further, causing other personal and social issues to come to the surface. The law and order begins to break down with some of the men setting off fireworks and committing random acts of vandalism. Kuriachan, a wealthy man who had been planning an elaborate feast of buffalo dishes for his daughter's wedding party, ventures out to try and find some chicken instead, but is seized by a group of workers who strip him naked and bring him to the hunt as a trophy. Kuriachan's daughter tries to avoid the arranged marriage by running away, but a neighbour catches and punishes her. Several of the men, enraged and frustrated, beat their wives or drink heavily, while other women find men openly leering at them through windows as they sleep.

After night falls, the buffalo is found lying at the bottom of a well. Antony immediately takes credit, insisting that chasing the buffalo down into the well had been his plan all along. Kuttachan wants to shoot the buffalo, but Antony demands that they bring it back to the surface so that he and Varkey can still butcher it properly and sell the meat. By contrast, Varkey is indifferent and he takes a nap under a nearby tree as the other men argue and plan. The men construct a scaffold and lower Antony down so he can attach ropes around the buffalo's legs and neck. However, it begins raining heavily. The ropes slip off as soon as the buffalo reaches the top, and as it thrashes around one of the villagers is thrown down the well and killed. The buffalo escapes again into the forest. Kuttachan and the other villagers blame Antony for the man's death.

Meanwhile, another group of men, furious that a cop is still refusing to help, set his patrol car on fire. By this point the villagers are desperate and frantic. In-fighting leads to them splintering into smaller groups, each with its own plan - and with each man desperate to be the one to finally claim the kill. As the men string up ropes, chains, and nets around the perimeter of the village, forcing the buffalo into a smaller and smaller area, night falls and the situation becomes increasingly chaotic and confused. Antony and Kuttachan stumble across each other in a clearing in the dark forest, and begin fighting. Kuttachan is about to kill Antony, but the buffalo suddenly emerges from the undergrowth and disrupts the fight.

Kuttachan catches the buffalo by its horns and asks Antony to hold its legs, but Antony uses this opportunity to stab Kuttachan multiple times, fatally wounding him. This allows the buffalo to escape. Antony and the villagers chase it towards the river and across a bridge, where the animal becomes stuck in deep mud. Antony stabs the buffalo and screams to the crowd of hunters that he deserves the credit for killing it. This kicks off a desperate pile-on, as dozens of men, holding lit torches and bearing crude weapons, jump on top of each other, stabbing both the animal and each other as they form a huge, writhing mass of human bodies. The screen fades to black, then fades back in to a final shot of a group of prehistoric men, wearing loincloths and carrying spears, racing each other through the dark in pursuit of a buffalo.

Cast

Music

The film score was produced by Prashant Pillai.

Jallikkattu
Film score by
Prashant Pillai
ReleasedSeptember 6, 2019 (TIFF) October 4, 2019
Recorded2019
GenreOrchestra, World Music
LanguageMalayalam
LabelOpus Penta with Friday Film House
ProducerPrashant Pillai
Prashant Pillai chronology
Unda
(2019)		 Jallikkattu
(2019)		 Ranarangam
(2019)

Release

Theatrical

The official trailer of the film was unveiled by Friday Film House on 28 September 2019.[15] Jallikattu was premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2019.[16][17][18] It was theatrically released on 4 October 2019 in Kerala.[8]

Home media

Jallikattu was released on streaming service Amazon Prime Video on 4 February 2020.[19] A Telugu dubbed version with same title was released on Aha.[20]

Reception

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 25 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Jallikattu uses a violent conflict between man and animal to set the stage for a story that's as visually haunting as it is rich in subtext."[21] Sajesh Mohan of Onmanorama wrote "After Ee.Ma.Yau., Lijo Jose Pellissery has again opted to saunter through the innate nature of humans in an off-kilter manner. The movie's technical brilliance is something that Mollywood can flaunt for a long time to come."[22]

Box office

The film grossed ₹7.3 crores in its first week run in Kerala and became commercial success.[23]

Awards and nominations

Award Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Ref.
Asian Film Awards 28 October 2020 Best Cinematography Girish Gangadharan Nominated [24]
Best Original Music Prashant Pillai
Golden Reel Awards 16 April 2021 Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Foreign Language Feature Renganaath Ravee, Sreejith Sreenivasan, Boney M. Joy, Arun Rama Varma, Amandeep Singh and Mohammad Iqbal Paratwada Nominated [25]
International Film Festival of India 28 November 2019 Best Director Lijo Jose Pellissery Won [26]
Kerala State Film Awards 13 October 2020 Best Director Lijo Jose Pellissery Won [27]
Best Sound Mixing Kannan Ganapathi
National Film Awards 22 March 2021 Best Cinematography Gireesh Gangadharan Won [28]
Satellite Awards 15 February 2021 Best Foreign Language Film Jallikattu Nominated [29]
South Indian International Movie Awards 18 September 2021 Best Film – Malayalam Jallikattu Nominated [30]
Best Director – Malayalam Lijo Jose Pellissery Won
Best Cinematographer – Malayalam Girish Gangadharan Nominated
Best Actor in a Negative Role– Malayalam Sabumon Abdusamad Nominated

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Jallikattu". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 2 October 2023.
  2. ↑ Ramnath, Nandini (17 August 2019). "In Lijo Jose Pellissery's 'Jallikattu', a buffalo runs amok and brings out the beast in humans". Scroll.in. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
  3. ↑ "Toronto 2019 Review: In JALLIKATTU, The Line Between Man And Beast Dissolves". Screen Anarchy. As much a wild action film as an exploration of rural masculinity run amok, Sallikattu takes its audience on an incredible visceral and emotional journey over the course of 90 blood, sweat, and tear-soaked minutes that will leave viewers gasping for breath by the time it reaches its incredible conclusion.
  4. ↑ "Busan Film Review: 'Jallikattu'". Screendaily. 4 October 2019. While there is a question mark over the appetite in overseas arthouse audiences for Malayalam language action films about a buffalo gone berserk, the picture shares a relentless gung ho energy (if not the technical polish) with martial arts pictures like The Raid. .
  5. ↑ Motamayor, Rafael. "10 Horror, Sci-Fi, and Genre Films That Blew Minds at TIFF – And Will Be Coming to You Soon". RottenTomotoes. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  6. ↑ Staff, Onmanorama (7 September 2019). "Sallikattu opens at TIFF, Lijo and team get wide applauds". OnManorama. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  7. ↑ "A Window on Asian Cinema: Sallikattu". Busan International Film Festival.
  8. 1 2 News Network, Times (25 July 2019). "Lijo Jose Pellissery's 'sallikattu' to hit the screens in October?". The Times of India. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
  9. ↑ "സെന്‍സര്‍ പൂര്‍ത്തിയായി ജല്ലിക്കട്ട് ഒക്ടോബര്‍ നാലിന്". www.thecue.in. Retrieved 2 October 2019.
  10. ↑ Sangeeta Nair (29 November 2019). "IFFI 2019: Full list of winners; Particles wins Best Film, Lijo Jose Pellissery wins Best Director award". Jagran Prakashan. Jagran Josh. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  11. ↑ Pooja Pillai (25 November 2020). "Malayalam film sallikattu is India's entry for Oscars 2021". Indian Express.
  12. ↑ "'Jallikattu', India's official entry for the Oscars, fails to make the cut". The Hindu. 10 February 2021 – via www.thehindu.com.
  13. ↑ "Malayalam film sallikattu is India's entry for 2021 Oscars". The Indian Express. 26 November 2020. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
  14. ↑ "The 25 best Malayalam films of the decade". The Hindu. 19 December 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  15. ↑ "sallikattu Official Trailer - Lijo Jose Pellissery - Chemban Vinod - Antony Varghese". YouTube. Friday Film House. 28 September 2019.
  16. ↑ "sallikattu". Toronto International Film Festival. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
  17. ↑ Native, Digital (14 August 2019). "Pics from Lijo Jose Pellissery's 'sallikattu' go viral, film to premiere at Toronto fest". The News Minute. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
  18. ↑ George, Anjana (14 August 2019). "Lijo Jose Pellissery's sallikattu and Geethu Mohandas' Moothon to premiere in Toronto International Film Festival". The Times of India. Retrieved 17 August 2019.
  19. ↑ "Here's Everything New on Amazon Prime Video in February 2020". Time.
  20. ↑ Vyas (28 September 2020). "Sallikattu's World Digital Premiere on aha". www.thehansindia.com. Retrieved 6 December 2020.
  21. ↑ "Jallikattu". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 18 July 2022.
  22. ↑ Mohan, Sajesh (5 October 2019). "sallikattu review: Lijo Jose Pellissery unleashes a crafty mayhem". October 5, 2019. Onmanorama.
  23. ↑ Pillai, Sreedhar (14 October 2019). "Jallikattu beats Aadyarathri, Vikruthi to top Kerala box office, earns Rs. 7.30 cr in opening week". Firstpost. Retrieved 14 October 2019.
  24. ↑ "The 14th Asian Film Awards Nominations Announced". afa-academy.com. 8 September 2020. Retrieved 10 September 2020.
  25. ↑ Tangcay, Jazz (1 March 2021). "'Sound of Metal,' 'Wonder Woman 1984' and 'News of the World' Among Golden Reel Nominees".
  26. ↑ "Malayalam film 'sallikattu' is India's official Oscar entry in International Feature Film category". The Economic Times.
  27. ↑ "Suraj Venjaramoodu, Kani Kusurthi and Lijo Jose Pellissery win big at 50th Kerala State Film Awards". The Times of India. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  28. ↑ The Hindu Net Desk (22 March 2021). "67th National Film Awards: Complete list of winners". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 22 March 2021.
  29. ↑ Van Blaricom, Mirjana (1 February 2021). "25th Satellite Awards Nominees for Motion Pictures and Television Announced". International Press Academy. Retrieved 1 February 2021.
  30. ↑ News9live (19 September 2021). "SIIMA awards 2021 winners list: Jersey, Lucifer, Asuran, Yajamana win big". NEWS9 LIVE. Retrieved 19 September 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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