Munnariyippu: The lone sailor, a bridge construction, and a dead albatross

A short piece on Mammootty’s 2014 thriller Munnariyippu. Spoilers alert! Do read the piece after watching the movie

Bhuvanesh Chandar

Could a tender teen heart ever understand the weight of the Albatross’ corpse that hangs on the neck of the mariner in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’? What if the mariner’s voyage was longer than the years that teenager lived? Venu’s 2014 film Munnariyippu, which is nothing like Coleridge’s poem, strangely brought up a visual akin to what I had after reading that poem in my school: A lonely mythical sailor sailing forever on a vast open sea. It’s a mirage of a reality I would dare not step into. Not even a lockdown-enforced social hiatus could bring us closer to that reality.

In Munnariyippu, Anjali Arakkal (Aparna Gopinath), a journalist, inadvertently attempts to bridge two such drastically different realities when she meets CK Raghavan (Mammootty), an inmate who is imprisoned for over 20 years for double homicide. Intrigued by his peculiar poetry and philosophy, Anjali writes a feature on him. Until now, Raghavan is the hero, to both us and Anjali. This changes when Anjali (who for the sake of an analogy is, say, the reader of the poem) decides to bring Raghavan (the sailor) out of his 20-year jail life (the ocean) to publish a book on his life. Anjali’s quest to write the book, or rather her actions towards Raghavan, is akin to a bridge on the ocean – a bridge from one world to the other. Also, a bridge from the world of a ‘reader’ to that of the sailor. From here on, Anjali is the protagonist of this story.

Every course of action Anjali takes in Munnariyippu feels unmethodical and driven by impulse. One can’t blame her either. How do you build a bridge on the ocean, if you are oblivious to the vastness of it? In fact, Anjali’s ineptitude in understanding the life of a man who is kept away from society for 20 years comes across much earlier, when she intrusively reads his diary and even shares them with others without his permission. Anjali’s obsession with the very nature of Raghavan’s existence only reestablishes that both the sailor and the land have constantly been moving away from each other. This quest to tell the stories from unreachable pockets of life is something that has built the fabric of how media picks the stories it tells. It is only through people like Anjali that we now can imagine, at the least, what might happen to someone like Raghavan psychologically. Victims of solitary confinement are now looked at as victims due to clinical works done through such bridges between realities.

In Anjali’s case, however, she never attempts to look beyond the clouds, and her impulsive, insensitive approach only keeps her far from Raghavan. There is a nonchalance with which she asks him not to delay his release, even when she knows that the prison has become a home for Raghavan. When a man who spent 20 years away from the land comes back to it, he is bound to roll down the windows in a car, venture out to the streets and beaches, try a dish he hasn’t tried in decades, and so on. Anjali doesn’t let him do any of these. She puts him in a closed space and asks him….to write a book. Just that, and nothing more. The poor man doesn’t get to even keep his doors open, to protect Anjali’s interests. Moreover, even Anjali seems to have stopped herself from indulging in conversations. Barring a window frame for a grill, Raghavan’s life hasn’t changed much.

Let’s not pin it all on Anjali either. Some bridges have cracks on the edges. Anjali’s bridge is like a river on its own. She too is imprisoned by pressures of modern life, a competitive corporate system, and if none of those, her own mind. She has no other way to go but forward. Every time Anjali loses her composure or acts impulsively, it only hints at a hidden prologue for her character that we aren’t shown. Maybe this bridge had a footpath once? We never know.

Now, major portions of the film delve into this clawing friction between these two because Raghavan simply doesn’t put his pen on paper and write the book Anjali has promised to her publishers. What Anjali never gets to understand is that time leaves no stress marks on Raghavan’s neck. He lived for 20 years in prison! Like how Anjali couldn’t figure out how to step into his world, Raghavan is justified in being hesitant towards stepping on the bridge. However, as Anjali keeps pushing for it, the sailor and the shore, who have always moved away from each other, begin to come closer. They collide when the friction hits the peak. Incidentally, it happens when Raghavan is shifted to a house near a flowing river. I believe that it is at that house that Raghavan decides to go back to his old life. What the land is to the sailor, the vastness of the open air is to Raghavan. And so it happens: the unimaginable final act of the film. We realize that, like Anjali, we too are manipulated by our notions of the nature of a sailor. We too have been ignorant. Didn’t I tell you not to pin it all on Anjali? Raghavan loves biriyani, chats with strangers with ease, holds the pictures of his alleged victims close to him, and immediately we start looking at the image of an innocent man shackled by the flaws in the system. We were wrong. Anjali becomes another Albatross that hangs from the neck of the sailor. After all, from the eyes of the sailor, bridges can look like obstacles to be shattered. Or like a dam that needs to be taken down to reach the ocean. Maybe, the sailor isn’t just any other sailor. Pirates sail too.