Paradise: Darshana Rajendran’s thrilling Malayalam gem exposes the micro-aggressions of toxic men
paradise
Roshan Mathew and Darshana Rajendran star in Prasanna Vithanage's Paradise.
“When someone shows you who they really are,” said Maya Angelou, “believe them the first time.” But as pessimistic as this fortune cookie philosophy might sound, it points to the inherent optimism of human beings. We’re happy to offer second chances, often at the cost of our own principles. We’re programmed to forgive bad behaviour, convinced that it is probably an aberration and not the norm. The deeply empathetic Amritha, played by Darshana Rajendran, has been married to Roshan Mathew’s Kesav for five years when we first meet them in Sri Lankan director Prasanna Vithanage’s Paradise. But you can tell from minute one that she isn’t the sort of person who'd heed Angelou’s advice.
A thrilling investigation of an imploding marriage, Paradise frames their relationship against the backdrop of political turmoil. Amritha and Kesav visit Sri Lanka to celebrate their fifth anniversary with a tour of the Ramayana’s most important sites, but are essentially held hostage in the country because of their own misdeeds. Vithanage deliberately declines to provide any insight into who these two were before the vacation, but drops enough hints to suggest that theirs has always been a marriage of inequality. Paradise is a gripping thriller on the surface — a movie whose metaphors are about as pointed as a Lasith Malinga yorker — but it is also a masterclass in examining (and exposing) male micro-aggressions.
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A still from the film Paradise. (Photo: Newton Cinema)
Before providing, in a rather blunt fashion, an insight into Kesav and Amritha’s personalities, Vithanage effectively explains everything we need to know about them in a quiet scene just ahead of the film’s inciting incident. Ecstatic after having secured a lucrative Netflix deal — Kesav is some kind of filmmaker — he cuddles up against Amritha in bed. She responds willingly, but demurely. But you can see from their body language that he’s accustomed to being the dominant one. Kesav lords over her, sneaking in a bite here and there; it’s aggressive enough for you to raise an eyebrow. But Kesav’s idea of self comes crashing down not too long afterwards.
When their belongings are stolen on the first night itself — they’d found a spectacular bungalow at the top of a misty hill — Kesav’s first instinct is to blame Amritha. “Did you lock the windows?” he asks, as if it is inconceivable of him to have made the same mistake. On their way to the cops the next day, he declares Sri Lanka to be a ‘sh*thole’, and demands to know from her why they chose it as their anniversary destination. “You said it’ll be cheap at this time,” Amritha replies, immediately exposing his false accusation. And he doesn’t even deny it. “We’re doing them a favour,” he says with a snarl. Even before we met for the first time, the movie suggests, Kesav was already showing signs of arrogance, and Amritha was giving in.
And this is when you begin, perhaps like Amritha herself, to re-litigate seemingly innocuous behavioural patterns. Of course it was ungentlemanly of Kesav to ignore her for the entire duration of their drive from the airport to the bungalow. Who does that? He was on the phone the whole time, celebrating the Netflix gig with his colleagues, leaving Amirtha to appreciate the stunning landscapes by herself. Later, he casually told her that she needn’t continue blogging any more, undermining her profession and failing to acknowledge the joy that it probably brings her with one sweeping statement. This, the movie declares, is what Kesav was like even before life threw him into a high-pressure situation. As he realises in real time that he cannot control everybody like he has probably been controlling his wife, he begins to unravel; his true self — the one that Angelou warned about — rises to the surface amid the simmering tension.
Kesav initially operates under the delusion that he is in some way superior to the disenfranchised Lankans around him. He would’ve probably felt this way even if their government hadn’t kneecapped them. He struts in and out of rooms, passing orders with the expectation that they will be fulfilled, having convinced himself that being a foreigner has earned him a level of… immunity. He threatens the local police captain, Sergeant Bandara, with a call to the Indian embassy if the stolen goods aren’t returned, completely oblivious to the fact that Lankan society is collapsing around him. “I need my phone and laptop,” he says, and Amritha has to remind him that her phone and laptop were stolen as well. Kesav has made it all about himself.
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Roshan Mathew and Darshana Rajendran. (Photo: Newton Cinema)
In a rather telling scene, he storms into the kitchen at midnight, unable to sleep because of the racket that the bungalow staff — their driver Mr Andrew, the cook Iqbal, and the housekeeper Shree — have been making. Having resolved to scold them, he barges through the door, but stops in his tracks. They look at him quizzically, perhaps aware of why he’s there. But before they can begin to apologise, Kesav meekly backs off. “Please continue,” he says pompously, before spotting some local hooch on the kitchen counter, and asking for a peg. They warn him that it might be too strong for him, but Kesav insists that he wants to try. “I always drink my single malts neat,” he brags as he takes a swig of the liquor, and nearly chokes to death. He puts on a brave face and slinks out of the kitchen with his tail between his legs. It’s a magnificent self-own, committed by a man who doesn’t really need anybody to put him in his place. He’ll do that himself.
In addition to setting fire to his own relationship and attracting eye-rolls from everybody that has the misfortune of being in his company, Kesav commits graver sins in Paradise. He falsely identifies three local Tamil men as the thieves, despite Amritha’s silent concern. When one of them dies in custody, he doubles down on his ‘instinct’, while Amritha stews in second-hand guilt. She was, of course, complicit. And the movie doesn’t entirely absolve her either. But literally surrounded by aggressive men on all sides, there’s only so much that she could’ve done.
In an alternate version of the Ramayana, Amritha tells their driver Mr Andrew in an early scene, Sita is the one who violently kills Ravana. She raises questions about female agency and deference, leaving Mr Andrew to sheepishly gaze at his shoelaces. But Paradise takes this thought a step further; not only does the movie reframe the narrative through Sita’s perspective — Amritha is an obvious stand-in — but it blurs the lines between Rama and Ravana as well. Every man, Paradise says, has darkness and light within them. And as it cuts to black after a jaw-dropping climax, the movie leaves you with an even more radical idea — Sita was fully capable of saving herself from the clutches of the Rakshasa king of Lanka, but nobody asked if she needed rescuing from her own husband.
Post Credits Scene is a column in which we dissect new releases every week, with particular focus on context, craft, and characters. Because there’s always something to fixate about once the dust has settled.
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