‘Jallikattu’ and India’s Approach to Choosing Oscar Entries

At the end of November we learned that the committee appointed by the Film Federation of India has chosen a movie called “Jallikattu” as the country’s official entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. To put this in fewer words: “Jallikattu” will be India’s 2020 entry for the Oscars. 

Bullish About Different Perspectives…

“Jallikattu” is a 2019 movie directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery and made in the Malayalam language. The idea for its story, and even more for the way it is told, is rather unconventional – at least by the standards of mainstream cinema. The movie takes us to a little village in the state of Kerala and the story is built entirely around one event: A bull’s narrow escape from the butcher’s knife. Over the course of the film, the bull runs around the village wreaking havoc and spreading fear. As the men gather to capture it, the threat of the elusive wild animal and the tense social relations in the village gradually set off a chain reaction of aggressive acts.

The moral of the story is simple: Men are not that different from beasts. 

As Lijo Jose Pellissery said in an interview, he saw his work as having just two characters: the bull and the crowd. What I did enjoy was the way of telling the story – for instance, some of the shots were taken from the bull’s perspective, and a dummy animal with a man inside was used for this purpose – and the camera’s long focus on Kerala’s rural landscape and lush greenery. What did not convince me was the very straightforward way of putting the moral of the story through to the viewer. “Jallikattu” is a simple message in a very original package. But despite its shortcomings, it is still much more original than the typical Hollywood blockbuster – or, for that matter, the typical Bollywood blockbuster. 

…or Comfortably Numb?

The Academy Awards are thoroughly U.S.-centric and English-centric. Non-English foreign movies are usually crowded into a single contest – the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film category – and usually do not hold much of a chance in the palette of other categories (“Parasite’s” historic Best Picture win last year being the exception that proves the rule). Being the official submission of various countries, they are not chosen by the popular vote of the box office but by commissions that often reach for more original, more artistic, and less commercial and less mainstream works. The downside is that governments may strive to sideline certain titles for political reasons.

This makes the competition incomparable across categories. For instance, in the past, the award in the coveted Best Picture category was sometimes won by a work that was just it – a best picture: a beautifully made painting with a simple story and no novel solutions in terms of storyline. “Gladiator” or “Titanic” are cases in point. Had the same film been a foreign non-English work, there would have been a good chance a selecting commission of a given country would not even pick it as their Oscar entry. 

In India, for instance, the two parts of the movie “Baahubali” achieved some of the biggest financial successes in the history of the country’s cinema. At the same, however, their story was utterly naïve and the mood escapist – and given this, naturally, they were not sent to the Oscars.

Despite their American origin, the Academy Awards long ago become an event of international fame and repute. Furthermore, the global cinema is a constantly circulating system of recurring themes and stories, as well as remakes. It is not only that movie-makers of various countries have been borrowing heavily from Hollywood – the reverse flow takes place as well. Thus, an American film may be inspired in many ways (or even be based on) an earlier foreign work, but the latter would have much less chance to win an Oscar in its time than the former.

Under Bollywood’s Shadow

As far as the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film category is concerned, the same goes for Indian entries. These are typically a review of the country’s original ambitious films rather than of box office hits. “Jallikattu” is no different in this regard. It represents the rising trend of more experimental and original movies in the Malayalam language. More generally, while a typical Bollywood blockbuster is often (even if not always) a love story with songs and dances, most of India’s Oscar entries have not belonged to the genre.

Over the past 20 years, only 11 of India’s official 20 Academy Award submissions were Hindi films. Even this number alone shows how the nominating body, the Film Federation of India, goes against the commercial flow. The southern states (such as Kerala, from where “Jallikattu” came) have their own, strong movie industries, each producing in the dominant language of the state. In most of the north of India, however, the Hindi movie industry – Bollywood – reigns supreme. Films made in other Indian languages struggle for viewership in Hindi’s shade. Thus, submitting as much as three Marathi movies (“Shwaas,” “Harishchandrachi Factory” and “Court”), a Gujarati film (“The Good Road”), not to speak of an Assamese picture (“Village Rockstars”) as Oscar entries are by themselves commendable acts that could promote them in other regions of India as well as present different perspectives from that country to the outside world. 

“Harishchandrachi Factory,” for instance, was movie about a movie – a story of how India’s first feature film, “Raja Harishchandra” (1913), was made. “Village Rockstars,” true to its name, told the story of Indian rural youth dreaming of becoming rockstars.

Even the choice of the Hindi flicks was often not a reflection of commercial trends. True, over the past 20 years some of the entries were well-known Bollywood movies with nationally recognized stars, such as Shahrukh Khan (“Devdas” and “Paheli”) or Aamir Khan (“Lagaan,” “Rang De Basanti” and “Taare Zameen Par”). But while some of these indeed belonged more to the “popular,” rather than “ambitious” category, some of their stories were by no means typical. “Devdas” and “Paheli” were certainly escapist love stories (though both with a certain twist), beautifully shot but not deep. But there was also “Rang de Basanti” with a very controversial question asked in a very radical form: Can citizens use violence against a government that was clearly inept and corrupt when dealing with certain issues? 

The Hindi movies also included “Newton” – the complete opposite of a typical Bollywood hit. While some probably found it dull, the film asked a significant question through a very cleverly chosen example: How to convince citizens that despite all shortcoming of the state, voting in a democracy is vital? The story followed an election official sent out to a remote tribal area and his effort to convince the locals to vote, despite the fact that they either had little contacts with the government altogether or were in a hostile relation to it.

Thus, a question about whether “Jallikattu” deserves an Academy Award is tricky. In its own category, it perhaps will not win, especially if other contenders are as strong as in the previous years. Then again, this category is the preserve of more ambitious and carefully chosen works while pictures with banal stories had sometimes won in other contests. This is not to say that American films cannot be ambitious and original, but this is about the wide space they are given as compared to the non-English films considered. However, last year’s success of “Parasite” at the Academy Awards – the South Korean movie won four Oscars and became the first non-English film to win in the Best Picture category – is seen by some as a sign that things are changing.