Bramayugam -Subjectivism in Cinema

Understanding Film theory one film at a time.

Stories are a part of who we are. Be it in the form of folk lores, film scripts, or even just hearing someone talk about their day, we experience some form of a story each passing day. So it’s only normal to wonder how one actually does tell stories. But to answer that we must answer yet another question first. Who’s story are we telling?

Subjectivism, while not necessarily a core principle, is usually always at the heart of how a story takes shape on the big screen. It often helps us viewers identify who to root for, who to judge, and more importantly why we see, what we see.

The latest malayalam film Bramayugam does exactly this, and might I say, does it interestingly well. And perhaps it offers us, the most recent study of what subjectivism means to a story, and how we bend it and twist it to decide what the audience gets to see, and what they don’t.

The general meaning of ‘Subjective’ is to express the personal taste or opinion. In film the subjectivism portrays what the character wants the audience to see. Otherwise called as Point of View, makes audience, camera, and character to see the same thing that describes and narrates from one single person’s POV that can clearly depict the nature and the state of the narrator. — film theory.org

While we can start with examples like Alfred Hitchcock or the Watchowski Brothers’ Matrix, I would like to state that film theory concepts have a way of slipping into any form of visual media. And for that purpose, how about we start with something as random as a Taylor Swift video ?

In Taylor Swift’s All too well: The short film, there is a fight scene in the kitchen between the two leads played by Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien.

If the fact that Taylor herself directed this short film is not enough for you to understand that it is a subjective story that is being told here, the filmmaking in this scene does it well enough. It is clear that we are seeing the narrative from Sadie Sink’s view of the relationship and not Dylan’s. This happens throughout the video in multiple ways apart from the obvious fact that it is her singing about him in the lyrics. But to identify recreatable concepts, let’s just take one technique from this scene to look at — Framing.

Framing quite directly dictates what we see and what we don’t. In this case, it dictates when we see Dylan and when we don’t. We see him when he is closer to her, and we hear him off screen when he moves away. We quite literally are sticking by her side here. We move when she moves. We might not have any stake in this relation but we certainly have involuntarily taken sides here. We see him from a distance.

Another technique commonly used in Cinema is camera movement. Any movement, usually, requires a motivation. We don’t move without having to move. It’s either the character who triggers this movement or it’s a need of the story to show us more that triggers this movement.

We see this a lot in David Fincher movies as well. The character movements precisely dictate camera movements. This also aids in creating subjectivism. Note how in the Killer, very minute camera movements with respective to the room he is in, happens every time his body moves.

If it’s not obvious till now, what I’m saying is, apart from taking in stories as they are, and criticising them based on our own likes and dislikes, I feel there is another way to do this. To understand stories, we must make an attempt to understand how they are told. And one of the many ways we can understand it is, to question why we are seeing the story the way it is shown to us, and how it might change if we see it in any other way.

In Bramayugam, simply put, we experience what Thevan (Arjun Ashokan) experiences. We see what he sees, we hear what he hears, and in a world with better technology we might even smell what he smells. But the point is, when we start looking at the story this way, as if there is some hidden rule to the construction of it all, it starts to make a bit more sense as to how things turn out to be how they are. An obvious but very necessary spoiler warning for some specific points in the film I try to highlight below and having said that, here’s a few moments in the story where we see subjectivism in action.

We see the house for the first time when Thevan enters the vicinity of the house. A fun thought experiment with all these examples is to think — How different would it be if it’s the other way around? In this case, How would the story change if we see the house first and then we see Thevan enter the compound. Would it give us the feeling that he is coming to us and not us going with him to this strange mysterious house? Will it take away the mystery of that house itself ?

1. We see Kodumon Potti (Mammootty) through a specific order. We see his body and his walk, all before Thevan does. Does this break the rule we setup right now? I think it doesn’t. Because while we operate in the limited 2D space of a cinema canvas, there are only a few ways to give us the feeling of “presence”. We could hear just the sound of Kodumon Potti approaching. That would work too. But that’s not to say that seeing him without really seeing how he looks like breaks any kind of subjectivism here. It still gives us the feeling that we too have come to this strange house and that someone is approaching us, someone who we quite don’t know yet.

2. So when do we actually see Potti’s face? We see it when Thevan looks up. This is repeated again later on in the film to create a jumpscare. Note that camera movement plays an important role to guide our eyes as well. And we understand that jump scares work because they scare Thevan. It’s not enough to see him run away from the other side, we have to experience certain shocks, emotions and stillness from the side of Thevan for any of this to make sense, and to continue making sense.

3. I hope this explains why in some scenes you might wonder how conveniently Thevan ends up seeing certain events. For example, how convenient it is for him to be up at night when the Yakshi ( Amalda Liz) comes to visit the Potti. And how convenient it is for him to gather courage all of a sudden to go and investigate Potti’s room when the Yakshi enters, despite the same Thevan running away from the same Yakshi a few days ago. It is convenient yes, but it happens so we get to see what happens in that room.

4. This also explains why, as in every horror movie out there, Thevan has the unreasonable curiosity that overcomes the fear of death to go and check out the “Thattinpuram” or the attic. It is so that we get an introduction to the attic and the eventual twist related to its inhabitant.

5. The film holds this theory strong throughout the chaos in the final scene as well. We follow Thevan into the shrinking cube, and we follow him to the point where we don’t even notice that the cook has entered the final room, or that the goblin has actually found another body at the very end.

6. And even past the life of Thevan as we knew him, we continue to follow him or at least his body in the aftermath.

This also brings up a very interesting question. Something I would like you to think about and find your own reasonings for. Why exactly does the film break this rule in three specific scenes?

1. Why do we see the Yakshi killing Thevan’s friend? We see it happen long after Thevan has fled the area.

2. Why do we see the conversation between the cook ( Siddharth ) and Kodumon Potti which leads to him stealing the key?

3. And why do we see the cook die to the foreigners at the very end?

As with everything else in this Essay, I would like all of us to understand why something is a certain way, not by criticising the way it is, but by thinking about the changes that would happen if it wasn’t that way.

Thank you for your time, I hope it was worth this rambling essay and I hope it made sense, and If it did, I hope to ramble a lot more in the future.