Who tells her story?

‘Aattam’ frames a woman’s loneliness after she complains of sexual harassment

CAN A WOMAN tell the unvarnished truth about what happened to her? This is the central question at the heart of Anand Ekarshi’s Aattam (The Play), the 2023 Malayalam film that was recently adjudged the best film at the 47th edition of the Kerala Film Critics Awards.

The film takes its structure from the iconic Twelve Angry Men (1954), a teleplay that has inspired multiple films since, including the Hindi film Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (1986). A bunch of men weigh in on what appears at first to be a matter of outright criminality, and must decide the fate of the accused. However, what makes the creative twist in Aattam particularly successful is that it has freed the “judgement” from legal institutional frameworks and moved it into a creative workplace. The “case” in question is sexual harassment. Anjali (Zarin Shihab), the lone female member of a small drama company, has been molested and the other members must decide whether or not her alleged abuser should continue working with them.

Like “jurors”, the troupe’s actors are ordinary citizens (the husband of a civil servant, a plumber, a chef). The troupe has tasted a small degree of success after film actor Hari (Kalabhavan Shajohn) joined it. The crime occurs on a night when Hari’s friends offer the troupe a night’s free staycation at a resort. Like many real-life victims, Anjali initially doesn’t want to complain. When she tells a colleague Vinay (Vinay Forrt), with whom she is romantically involved, the narrative quickly slips out of her control. The group is ridden with jealousy, aspiration, thwarted rage, debt, and besides, they are all men. They make the right noises but have no grasp of what it means to be molested by someone with whom you share space, eat, laugh, make common cause. What makes things more difficult is that Anjali is not the perfect victim — an untouched (therefore untouchable) teetotaller. Like many young women, she has been misled into thinking that she has the same rights and freedoms as her male colleagues.

It is significant that this story has emerged from Kerala, a state where women enjoy unprecedented levels of education but where sexual harassment remains rampant. The state has also witnessed multiple cases of sexual harassment and rape, involving actors such as Unni Mukundan. The film has evidently been inspired by the Metoo movement but, wisely, Ekarshi chose not to set the story in the glamourous, high-stakes world of movies or politics. In turning the lens on a small, struggling theatre group comprised of freelancers with day jobs (and therefore no prospect of a formal sexual complaints committee), he allows us to view the crisis with much less cynicism.

Few Indian films have contended with workplace harassment. Most dramas focus on rape and on women being gaslit and retraumatised in the courtroom. Inkaar (2013), co-directed by Sudhir Mishra and Jay Dev Banerjee, explicitly dealt with an accusation of sexual harassment. That film, too, was modelled on courtroom dramas to the extent that a formal complaint was lodged by the victim and an impartial female “judge” invited to take a decision. While it adopted a he says/she says approach, Inkaar’s plot slyly suggests that nothing is quite what it seems on the surface. Ajay Bahl’s Section 375: Marzi Ya Zabardasti (2019) also takes a similar approach. Filmmaker Rohan (Rahul Bhat) is falsely implicated after he ends an “affair” with a costume assistant. The film’s title stresses the potential for misuse of Section 375 with its provision that a man in a position of power over a woman is deemed guilty if she testifies to a sexual encounter against her will and consent. Conveniently, the film glosses over the obvious lack of will and consent even as it offers clear visual testimony. Rohan admits to inappropriate advances, despite his colleague’s reluctance; he even threatens to fire her if she refuses sex. Where does the question of marzi (will) arise? Yet, by falsifying the rape case, the makers of Section 375 appear to be arguing that such complaints by women are not to be taken at their word.

In marked contrast to these Hindi films, Aattam reveals the complexity of group dynamics (we may interpret them as “industry” dynamics too) when colleagues must act to disempower a powerful man. The power imbalance is obvious and while all the drama company members want to be seen as good and moral actors, they are sharply aware of Hari’s economic and cultural power. It could have been a very different story if Anjali had gone straight to the police, or made a public accusation. Instead, the film focuses on a woman’s experience of complaining and confronting the possibility that her colleagues and mentors are not on her side. A final question thrown up by Aattam appears to be: How do women respond to toothless and/or compromised processes of judgement? While justice is another matter, the film does offer an alternative by way of taking control of one’s own story.