They’re essentially living in a world without a woman (their mother left the house after their father’s death).Īs evidenced from the Kabir Singh discourse, the problem isn’t that filmmakers seem to be competing against each other for telling more and more stories about violent men. According to Frankie (Mathew Thomas), the youngest of the four brothers, it is the worst house in the neighborhood because it is a metaphorical wasteland of conflict. The brothers are in a constant fight with each other as well as with their pasts.
Set in a fishing town near Kochi, Kumbalangi Nights is divided into two camps: One camp consists of four brothers – Bobby, Saji, Bonny and Frankie – living in a cramped, unconstructed house without a door. But I found my answer in Madhu C Narayanan’s debut feature, Kumbalangi Nights, a film that found a second life when Prime Video picked it up last week. I nodded my head in agreement, adding that Kabir Singh was perhaps, every incel’s wet dream.īut later, the question he asked, lingered in my head: Could movies really depict toxic masculinity without glorifying it? Over the years, mainstream cinema – take Tere Naam for example – has been insistent on making one believe that might not be possible. And they don’t comment on the consequences of this harmful behaviour.
My friend was vehemently against it he believed that under the guise of labelling these portrayals of dangerous men as “raw” and “honest”, these films get away by giving its “hero” alpha moments full of guttural, impulsive and violent reactions. In the aftermath of the Kabir Singh fiasco a couple of weeks back, I was having a conversation with a friend about whether or not a film should be allowed to portray and joke about “toxic masculinity”.