The Demure Revolution of Kaathal: The Core’s Queerness

The romance in Jeo Baby’s Kaathal: The Core lies in subtleties — shy glances, barely touching fingers, a photograph on an election poster and the pouring rain — but it is nothing short of a revolution in Malayalam cinema. Kaathal is about a middle-aged man coming out of the closet and embracing his gay identity, with superstar Mammootty playing the lead role of Mathew Devassy. Others in the cast include Jyotika, Sudhi Kozhikode, RS Panicker and Anagha Maya Ravi. 

Vyas, 35, who is an activist, gay and has been out for a decade said the film has come at a time when the queer community in Kerala is being subjected to extreme harassment, particularly on social media. “Many of us who are out have had our numbers leaked on social media. I keep receiving calls mocking me and even issuing death threats. When we organised the Pride march in Malappuram this October, there was a lot of opposition to it,” he said. A large section of society still believes in pseudoscience and misinformation about the queer community, said Vyas. “Using slurs against queer individuals and targeting them is so normalised here. The police are very slow to act on complaints,” he added. 

Considering the widely prevalent homophobia, Vyas isn’t surprised that Kaathal doesn’t show the two men in intimate scenes. “I feel that if the film had had such a scene, many would have stayed out of the theatre,” he said. “Mammootty was able to articulate the helplessness of a gay individual very well on screen.”

Pride and Kaathal 

The film has been written by Adarsh Sukumaran and Paulson Skaria, and director Jeo Baby approached IT professional and writer Kishor Kumar to ensure the script was sensitive to the queer community. Kumar said his suggestions were mainly to do with the courtroom scenes in Kaathal. The events in the film follow from Omana filing for divorce from Mathew on the grounds of cruelty since she has been denied her conjugal rights in the marriage. The case unexpectedly enters the public domain because Mathew’s name has been put forward in a by-election.

“I didn't wish to alter the main story as per my sensibility. My suggestions were primarily to do with the terminology used for homosexuality, especially in the court scenes,” said Kumar. “I also requested the director to end the movie on a positive note, giving hope and inspiration to the Kerala LGBTQ community. I’m happy with the climax.”

For Vyas, it was Sudhi Kozhikode’s performance as Thankan that outshines even Mammootty. Thankan is Mathew’s secret lover and a man from a less privileged background who works as a driving instructor. “He played the role of a man who has to suppress his love beautifully. He was able to move the audience. To me, it appeared that Mammootty’s character, Mathew, looked more compassionate and loving towards his wife Omana (Jyothika) than Thankan,” said Vyas. 

He expressed some reservation about how Mathew is shown at the end of Kaathal to be wistful about his now ex-wife moving on, but said he also wished the film had shown more of Thankan and Mathew’s shared past. “It was possible to depict a lot more emotions in the film through cinematic language. I feel it’s a lost opportunity,” he said. However, there is no doubt that the film has managed to communicate the struggles of a gay person to a wide audience, he added. “The reason for that is Mammootty doing this role. He has also produced the film, and this has made people understand that the gay identity isn’t something they can easily dismiss. Just for this, we can forgive whatever flaws the film has,” he said. 

Showing Queer Love

While the film has been hailed unanimously by critics and is doing well at the box office, Mammootty has come under a slew of abuse on social media for playing the role of a gay man. The film has also been banned in Kuwait and Qatar. “If a star of his stature can be subjected to this, I hope the public realises what ordinary people like me have to undergo on a daily basis,” said Vyas. He noted that some of his family members, colleagues, friends and acquaintances had reached out to him and apologised after watching the film, realising how their homophobic attitude had hurt him in the past. 

Anagh, a research scholar at Mahatma Gandhi University, plays a small role in Kaathal as a representative of Queerala, a now defunct support group for the Kerala queer community. “I’ve known Jeo Baby for a long time now. I also have friends in the film’s team. Jeo chettan had come for the Pride march in Kollam, 2022, along with the film’s writers and editor. After a few days, he called and told me about the film. He asked if I could play the role of a queer person,” said Anagh. At the time, Anagh was reluctant to do the role since he had no significant acting experience. But when he was told that he would be acting with Mammootty, he did not want to miss the opportunity. 

“Since I’m a queer academician, they told me the whole story in detail. I thought the script was fine and I was willing to come on board,” he said. Commenting on how the gay romance has been portrayed in Kaathal, Anagh said the film hasn’t been made for queer people as such. “It has come at a time when there are organised attempts to thwart the progress made by the queer movement in Kerala. There are people who’ve told me that they’ll visit my house and slaughter me. Given this context, I don’t think it’s necessary to show queer love in Indian films in the exact same way as foreign films,” said Anagh, noting that despite not having any sexually explicit or violent scenes, Kaathal has received a U/A certification.

He further pointed out that intimate scenes between queer protagonists in Malayalam films like Prithiviraj’s Mumbai Police (2013) and Nivin Pauly’s Moothon (2019) were not accepted by a large section of the audience. “When Mumbai Police was released, I remember a lot of people saying that it was a very good film, barring that one scene,” he said. “Of course, we can’t call Mumbai Police a pro-queer film, considering how queer love is vilified in it. Moothon had a much better portrayal but it didn’t do well at the box office,” he said.

Rosshan Andrrews’s Mumbai Police was the first mainstream Malayalam film to have a major star (Prithviraj) play a gay character. But the plot uses his sexuality in a negative way. In the film, Prithviraj plays a police officer who suffers from partial memory loss following an accident. He ‘forgets’ he’s gay, beats up his lover when the latter visits him, and later realises that he’d murdered his best friend because he was worried about being outed. Geetu Mohandas’s Moothon features a kiss between characters played by Nivin Pauly and Roshan Mathew, and is an action thriller about a teenager’s search for an older sibling. Though the film received good reviews, it failed at the box office. 

Dreaming of Acceptance

If a filmmaker has to reach an audience that isn’t already empathetic to the LGBTQ community, they have to work within these constraints. “I’m very sure that if Kaathal had featured an intimate scene between Mathew Devassy and Thankan, it wouldn’t have received the acceptance that it is getting now,” said Anagh. “In my reading of the film, though Mathew and Thankan are in love, they’re not in constant touch with each other. Thankan has to solve his problems on his own while Mathew has the support of his family and his political party.”

Kumar, too, highlighted the difference between Mathew’s struggle and Thankan’s. While there is a tendency to paint everyone in the queer community with the same brush, Kaathal takes the effort to underline intersectionality. When Mathew finally comes out to his family, political party and social circle, the support he receives almost seems utopian. Not so for Thankan. “Mathew comes with a lot of privilege, and also has a wife and daughter. He is a well-known public and political figure, and this makes him immune to bullying and harassment. But his lover Thankan, who does not have the same social privilege, gets harrassed,” said Kumar.

When Anagh came out, his situation was nothing like Mathew Devassy’s in Kaathal. He faced rejection at every turn and was even forced to undergo the pseudoscientific practice of  “conversion therapy”. The empathy and acceptance that Mammootty’s character receives has a fairytale quality to it. “Such a society doesn’t exist in Kerala as of now. Maybe we will have such an idealistic society a few decades down the line. But for me, it is Jeo Baby asking the audience – why don’t we behave like this? It is the society that we must aspire for. Can we make it happen?”