Directed By: Shahi Kabir
Screenplay By: Nidhish G; Shaji Maarad
Cast: Soubin Shahir; Sudhi Koppa; Jude Anthany Joseph; Jithu Ashraf; Vincent Vadakkan; Girish Mohan; Jineesh Chandran; Rajesh Kumar
Language: Malayalam
Genre: Crime; Suspense
Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes
Set on a lonely yet beautiful hill, Ela Veezha Poonchira opens with the disquieting image of a severed foot found by a stray dog.
The hill has a police patrol cum wireless station which monitor the place since it is frequently hit by lightning strikes and yet because of its beauty there are always visitors trying to climb up. Since the officers need to stay for a few days at a stretch, they have a cabin with radio equipment as well as a kitchen and sleeping arrangements.
The loneliness of the place and the isolation of their situation does take a toll on the officers stationed there. Madhu (Soubin Shahir), an officer stationed there, has the resigned energy of someone used to the quiet, unmoving landscape of his life and yet maybe feels some frustration at it. As the story progresses, we realise that his frequent absences have caused tensions between him and his wife. We then see the hidden costs of the profession.
Married life being impacted by the profession is reiterated, when we are introduced to the bad-tempered senior officer Jithu (Jithu Ashraf) who comes in for an inspection, we understand that he is going through a formal separation with his wife ever since she had an affair with their driver and eloped. The police personnel driving the officer around confides in the others that since the incident, the officer has been less than cordial to him because he too is a driver.
The story seems so deceptively ordinary that the viewer begins to feel that they imagined the severed foot. It seems to become about the ordinary, strange, upsetting and frustrating incidents that police personnel stationed in a lonely spot might experience. Such as when the civilians who come to visit the patrol station end up caught in a lightning strike and one of them loses their life or when they catch young lovers trying to make out in the bushes.
Each of the officers take a different approach to the events they experience. Madhu is shaken by the impassive violence of nature and it makes him doubly strict with the tourists. Sudhi (Sudhi Koppa) on the other hand, takes a voyeuristic approach to the sneaky lovers, something Madhu disapproves of.
But, once the police find another severed body part and discover that it is a woman’s body, the story changes. The energy of the narrative becomes dark, murky and yet goes into unexpected places. It is practically Greek in its tragic proportions and also echoes the feeling of a psychological thriller like a locked room mystery.
Ela Veezha Poonchira is a story that misleads its viewers into thinking that they have the story figured out and they walk in naively. The title after all translates into the valley where the leaves don’t fall so it seems pretty straightforward. However, even a leafless hill can be a mask for depravity.
The eeriness of the film depends on its simplicity. Ela Veezha Poonchira does not require dramatic fervour to reach a thrilling yet poignant crescendo.
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