‘Puzhu – The Worm’: Representation of Patriarchy, Caste, and Toxic Masculinity
Abstract:
Ratheena’s Puzhu (2022) offers a rare critique of
caste, toxic masculinity, and authoritarianism in Malayalam cinema. This essay
argues that while the film foregrounds caste violence through Bharathi and
Kuttappan, its narrative centers on Kuttan, a figure embodying fascist
obsession with purity, order, and patriarchal authority. Through performance,
dialogue, and visual motifs of food, cleanliness, and silence, the film exposes
the insidious codes of caste elitism. By casting a superstar as an irredeemable
villain, Puzhu challenges Malayalam cinema’s star system. Yet its choice
to resolve Kuttan’s arc through death narrows systemic critique to individual
pathology. The essay contends that an open ending could have better underscored
the persistence of caste structures and the impossibility of easy resolution.
Keywords: Puzhu; Malayalam cinema; caste critique;
toxic masculinity; fascism; patriarchy; film narrative
1.
Introduction
Ratheena’s Puzhu (2022) is a striking entry in contemporary
Malayalam cinema, confronting how toxic masculinity, caste hierarchies, and
authoritarian consciousness intersect in everyday life. Cantered on the fraught
dynamics between Bharathi, an upper-caste woman, and Kuttappan, a Dalit theatre
activist, the film explores the pressures of family honor, elite elitism, and
systemic violence, while portraying the personal consequences of these
entrenched hierarchies. At the same time, Kuttan, the central male figure,
embodies the persistence of oppressive social structures, reflecting historical
and cultural patterns of patriarchal dominance. Drawing on literary and
cinematic echoes from works such as Sairat, The God of Small Things, and
Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, this essay situates the film’s critique
within broader cultural and narrative contexts. It argues that while Puzhu
vividly exposes these systems of oppression, its narrative risks reducing
systemic violence to the pathology of a single individual, even as it
illuminates the structural persistence of caste and patriarchal
authoritarianism. In the discussion that follows, the essay examines Kuttan’s
fascist embodiment, Bharathi’s tragedy, symbolic motifs such as food and
ritual, cinematic techniques, and the implications of the film’s ending.
2.
Caste, Masculinity, and the Villain’s
Body
The first thing to note about the 2022 Malayalam film Puzhu,
written by Harshad, Sharafu, and Suhas and directed by newcomer Ratheena, is
that it is a significant work. Its significance lies in the fact that it is a
Malayalam film that explores how toxic masculinity lies at the core of
casteism, elitism, and fascist attitudes in their many forms. The situation
faced by Bharathi, an upper-caste woman, and Kuttappan, a progressive Dalit
theater activist, is one that could easily lead to social ostracism.
The power of the film, and perhaps also its shortcoming, is
that it reduces this larger social question to the toxic attitudes of a single
individual. To illustrate this, one can recall Nagraj Manjule’s Marathi film Sairat
(2016). The central theme of both films is the destructive force of casteism
culminating in honor killings. In Sairat, the love and elopement between
Archie, an upper-caste Patil girl, and Parshya, a Dalit/Mukkuva youth, triggers
deep turmoil within family and society—consequences that haunt them years
later.Archie, raised in the affluence of her family, is portrayed as remarkably
courageous: she not only rides horses but also drives a Bullet and a tractor.
She takes charge even in extreme situations—for example, seizing control of the
police station where Parshya and his friends are falsely accused of kidnapping
and rape. Her defiance extends to fighting off attackers, and she does not
hesitate to fire a gun if necessary. Archie largely assumes the role of agency
in the film. Significantly, when she too is overpowered by sexual predators in
the city, it is another woman who comes to her aid—an important detail from the
film’s feminist perspective. Their means of survival are cunning and solidarity
rather than bravado, which effectively challenges the cliché that gender
equality ignores questions of physical difference or strength.While Parshya
occasionally slips into male pride, harsh living conditions partly shaping his
behavior, such lapses never dominate the narrative.
In Puzhu, however, Bharathi never occupies a position
of agency comparable to Archie. This shift in characterization affects the
film’s overall impact. Whereas Sairat leaves viewers shaken by the impersonal
and pervasive darkness of caste oppression, Puzhu personalizes the problem in
its repulsive protagonist, who is drawn with traits of an arch-villain. The
difficulty with such concretization is that it underplays the fact that
perpetrators themselves are victims of the same system in which they are trapped.
Perhaps this is the director’s deliberate point of view. Yet
it is worth noting that most discussions after the release of Puzhu
centered on the actor who played the central role, rather than on the urgent
question the film raises: Why did the debates around the film, instead of
confronting the urgent fact that caste violence—hypocritically dismissed as a
‘North Indian’ problem—ravages Kerala too, get sidetracked into safer
discussions?
Crisis of Upper-Class Male Hegemony?
One reason for this shortcoming seems to be that Puzhu
ultimately becomes, in cinematic terms, a film that establishes patriarchy in
reverse gear. The narrative is saturated with the masculine figure, even though
cast in an ultra-negative role.
The problem can be illustrated with an example. In the
Hollywood tradition, even when the evils of the Vietnam War are being
portrayed, the story is told from the perspective of American Marines, embodied
by Hollywood stars. When indigenous people in Vietnam—or in any land under
imperial occupation—appear in these films, their presence is marginal. Their
voices are muted, reduced to whispers, monosyllables, or animal-like grunts.
The result is that, however critical the narrative claims to be, it remains a Hollywood
version. This reproduces a larger commandment of representation, raising the
famous question posed by Gayatri Spivak: “Can the subaltern speak?”
With Puzhu, one wonders whether the star’s body
exerted too much influence on the film, overshadowing the treatment its theme
required. Details that could have remained subtle are spelled out, while
aspects needing deeper exploration are left underdeveloped. For instance, the
caste-based traumas experienced by Bharathi and Kuttappan are rendered more in
a ‘telling’ than in a ‘showing’ mode. Meanwhile, in an effort to grant Kuttan,
the protagonist, a kind of “despite-all” ‘loner’ grandeur, the narrative dwells
at length on his strained relationship with his son. This has the effect of
humanizing, even justifying, his suffocating personality. The repetitive
emphasis on his military-style discipline and obsession with cleanliness inside
the flat raises the question: why this imbalance?
To dismiss this as merely the director’s discretion is
inadequate, for the imbalance seems tied to the dominance of the upper-caste
male figure. When male-dominated interactions—casteism, elitism, toxic
parenting—are shown through a primarily male perspective, the caution required
in characterization is compromised. Take, for example, the scene in which
Bharathi leaves home. She holds Kuttappan’s hand and raises her head,
performing political correctness. Yet the narrative overlooks the mother’s
helpless grief, reducing it to a manipulation by the elder brother, who
persuades them, “Mom’s still angry, come see her later.” Such lapses feel
inconsistent with Bharathi’s intelligence. She is, after all, the kind of
person who can respond incisively: “Why are we trying to change others—aren’t
we the ones who need to change?”
The symbolism implied in the title Puzhu (“worm”) is
apt; that is indeed what the film seeks to convey. But the problem lies in the
narrative emphasis. Was the intended perspective compromised? Instead of
speaking about the worm, did the ‘worm’ itself monopolize the speech?
While the film incisively shows the links between toxic masculinity, casteism,
and elite consciousness, it falls short in rendering the
counter-perspective—the one it sets out to uphold—in a credible,
three-dimensional way. This shortfall emerges most clearly in Kuttappan’s
characterization. Despite Appunni Sasi’s excellent performance, the character
often comes across less as a figure of lived experience and more as a
“reflection,” even a literary device. If this stems from the lure of stardom,
then the question must be asked: has the unconscious weight of conventional
cinematic tradition—celebrating the upper-class male figure—shaped the film?
Yet even with such reservations, it cannot be overlooked
that Puzhu has achieved something historic in Malayalam cinema. The film
dismantles a long-standing assumption: that no matter how vile a character is,
if performed by a star, his actions must be celebrated. For perhaps the first
time, Malayalam cinema makes the point, powerfully, that stardom should never
shield a figure from moral scrutiny. This does not diminish the contributions
of earlier films such as Vidheyan (1994) with Patelar, or Paleri Manikyam:
Oru Pathirakolapathakathinte Katha (2009) with Murikkin Kunnath Ahmedaji.
But Puzhu asserts the principle more explicitly than ever before.
Echoes
Complete insensitivity toward others reflects a rigid
conviction that one is always right and that nothing beyond one’s own feelings
is relevant. In this sense, fascism is an extreme form of self-righteousness.
Consider the scene in which Kuttan is first introduced: his car, moving in
reverse, nearly crushes a stray dog. He steps out without hesitation, not even
glancing back, and in that moment reveals the essence of his personality. The
“reverse gear,” coupled with his casual indifference to the near-death of a
harmless creature, links to the broader theme of the film and its
contemporaneity.
The social stance Kuttan embodies seeks to turn history back
toward the Manusmriti. It is a worldview that treats the “other” as a
pest—an inferior life form, alien, undeserving of recognition. The echoes are
global: Jews described as “rats in the alleys,” Tutsis as “cockroaches,” the
victims of the Gujarat genocide as “dogs to be crushed under a lorry.” Later,
Kuttan actually kills the dog, with a chilling lack of remorse, to erase
suspicion that he himself had been targeted. He drags Paul Varghese (Kunchan),
a helpless old man, to his death on the flimsiest suspicion. Fueled by
anti-Muslim prejudice, he falsely accuses Amir’s father and drives his family
into catastrophe. Even after the truth is revealed, he shows no regret—because
to him, they are mere pests who deserve destruction.
This logic governs his every act. Even as he lies fatally
injured by Amir’s blow, he smiles arrogantly, as if to say: “It is my right to
finish you.” The same survival-of-the-fittest mentality underpins casteism at
its ugliest: the belief that a man “destined to clean toilets” is not worthy of
loving his sister. This is the philosophy of Chaturvarnya—that contact
with a lower-caste person “pollutes” the higher-caste body. Even something as
ordinary as washing his hands and wiping them on a towel in Bharathi’s flat
disgusts Kuttan. He embodies the persistence of this hierarchical
consciousness, directly opposed to democratic ideals, yet alive in subtle and
overt forms.
This obsession with “purity” drives him to slap Amir simply
for helping his injured son. He even teaches the boy elitist lessons: “We can
give what we have to others, but we cannot take what they give us.” For him,
the lower classes represented by Kuttappan or Amir are merely “puppies” who can
be exterminated at will to affirm his own worthiness.
The film offers other glimpses of this arrogance as it
surfaces in social life: the “crow and coconut” joke at the sub-registrar’s
office; the casual “know-it-by-sight” remark from a landlord whom Kuttappan
mockingly calls a “progressive lion.” The parallel to Indian politics is hard
to miss—it reaches all the way to the highest levels of power.
Yet despite his ability to assert himself in the registrar’s
office or before the landlord, Kuttappan cannot withstand the deeper, more
naked hostility that Kuttan represents. When the “big gods” enter the arena, The
God of Small Things must retreat in defeat. Like Velutha in Arundhati Roy’s
masterpiece, Kuttappan pays the price for daring to cross the lines enforced by
millennia-old laws of love. His tragedy recalls the parrot trapped and
fossilized in Chacko’s old Plymouth car in Roy’s novel—this time reimagined in
the suffocating space of a flat that, in Kuttan’s language, belongs only to
“our friends.”
‘Puzhu’ and Pan’s Labyrinth
The character of Kuttan recalls Captain Vidal, described as
“fascism personified” in Guillermo del Toro’s Mexican film Pan’s Labyrinth.
Both men exhibit a fixation on cleanliness, order, and time, coupled with toxic
parenting practices, an inflated sense of self-importance, and a rigid
conviction in their social superiority, further reinforced by the glorification
of masculinity and extreme self-righteousness. In Kuttan’s case, these traits
take on their Indian form as caste discrimination. He is, in effect, everything
an Indian fascist could be.
The scene in which nine-year-old Ofelia first encounters her
foster father Captain Vidal is strikingly similar to the moment when little
Kicchu recounts his day at school to his father. Ofelia, clutching her beloved
books in her right hand, offers her left hand in greeting—a gesture that
infuriates Vidal, the soldier who tolerates no deviation from protocol.
Likewise, Kuttan’s act of clasping both of Kicchu’s hands in a threatening
manner conveys the same authoritarian impulse. Kicchu’s bewilderment mirrors
Ofelia’s confusion. Both children soon enter a phase of disobedience.
The difference, however, lies in the outcome. Ofelia’s
resistance matures into permanent defiance, but Kicchu ultimately repents to
his father. Does this repentance suggest the cycle of history repeating itself?
If so, the answer lies in the Indian context. Whereas del Toro’s film is set
during a dark historical moment that eventually came to an end—General Franco’s
dictatorship, spanning from 1939 until 1975—Puzhu portrays a social
climate in which repetition is perpetual, and closure seems impossible. There
is always the danger that, tomorrow, the son may become the reincarnation of
the father. By the time Pan’s Labyrinth was released in 2006, Franco’s
rule had long passed into history. In Puzhu, by contrast, Kuttan’s
legacy hovers unbroken over the future.
The Callous Degenerate
Kuttappan, a Dalit activist with a strong sense of identity,
represents an ethical worldview that Kuttan’s vicious personality cannot
tolerate. In this sense, Kuttan mirrors Iago, resenting the effortless grace in
Cassio’s life that highlights his own shortcomings. Fascism, too, is not a
dialogue that accommodates the other, but a drive toward annihilation. For
Kuttan, eliminating K.P. Kuttappan is imperative.
Even when he kills his beloved sister, the pain he feels
never matures into guilt. This is why he can, in Pontius Pilate fashion, tell
his son not to believe anything he might hear about him the next day. He will
never rise to the tragic grandeur of an Othello. At the same time, he cannot be
granted the status of a guardian of tradition, bound by inviolable constraints
of which he himself is a victim. Unlike Unni Namboothiri in Agnisakshi,
who embodies an ascetic protection of tradition, Kuttan is driven solely by
violence—violence enabled by official authority on one hand and sustained by
elitist arrogance on the other.
Bharati – The Outcast in the Kulastree Narratives
Bharati’s tragedy may be read in the context of Ghar
Vaapasi (“return home”) campaigns and the 'crow-pecking' paranoia embedded
in Kulastree narratives. Within these discourses, girls—especially those
from caste Hindu families—who attempt to grow into independent, vibrant
individuals are treated as “treasures” or “fragile objects” whose ownership
cannot be relinquished. They are reduced to victims and property, bound to the
hangman’s hook of the honor code, burdened with the task of safeguarding the
family’s “reputation.”
This is the bait Kuttan pretends not
to see. Upper-caste societies, grappling with skewed gender ratios, often
sanction the acceptance of women from other communities—of equal or nearly
equal caste, of course—into the fold through prescribed rituals. But the
inverse is never allowed: a Dalit man who marries an upper-caste woman will
never gain recognition in her family, regardless of ceremony. Bharati refuses
to operate within this logic—not because she misunderstands it, but because it
is beside the point. Her fleeting hope that her brother might repent is
shattered by Kuttappan’s clear-eyed realism.
Her brother exacts punishment for her “treason” through an
act so demonic she could not have conceived it even in her darkest imaginings.
In this moment, Parvathy Thiruvoth’s luminous face gains heightened
resonance—more than in her earlier appearances at the sub-registrar’s office or
before the landlord. The ideology underpinning upper-caste honor killings is
inseparable from casteist hierarchies of complexion: those with darker skin
tones bear the constant brunt of body-shaming rhetoric.
Yet, in that final moment with his sister, Kuttan’s
brutality is briefly pierced, stirring a buried trace of affection. Even as he
regards Kuttappan with apparent indifference, a flicker of pain emerges—for his
sister, if only for an instant.
‘Kyaa’
The politics of “veg–nonveg” prejudice, which the film
subtly dramatizes, is crucial to the revelation of Kuttan’s personality. While
the younger generation eats freely—whether plant-based or meat-based—such
“choices” are closed to him. He embodies a version of the Pullutheeni
(“grass-eater”) in Kadammanitta’s poem Kyaa (written in the aftermath of
the Gujarat carnage), the figure who tears open a pregnant woman’s belly and
devours the fetus. It is no accident, then, that when Kuttan murders his
sister, another life is still beating inside her womb. That fact drives his
decision that he can wait no longer.
The film also contrasts two modes of eating that reveal
larger social truths. In Kuttappan’s household, food prepared by his own hands
is shared in a festive atmosphere, filled with noise and conviviality. By
contrast, the boy’s meals in his father’s flat—and in the ancestral home—are
consumed in ritualistic silence, so still that even the faintest sound in the
anteroom becomes audible. On one side, eating is an act of social togetherness;
on the other, it is reduced to a rigid, emotionless procedure.
The Structure, the Camera, the Dialogue, the Music
The debut director’s achievement lies in weaving together
the strands of narrative, imagery, and performance into a coherent whole. The
play staged by Kuttappan at the beginning provides the structural key: the
allusion to the Takshaka story sets the tone of the film’s moral universe. This
circular design returns in the first scene of Kuttan, where Amir intervenes to
save the creature endangered by Kuttan’s callous reverse-driving. On a deeper
level, Amir is both the one who has lived through the fate of the “poor
creature” and the one who ensures that its tormentor will ultimately be held
accountable. Parallels like these—between people, places, and moments—recur
throughout the film. Food, mentioned earlier, becomes one such metaphor.
Likewise, the mechanical rhythms of life in Kuttan’s flat and ancestral home
stand in stark contrast to the vibrant, if precarious, lives in Kuttappan and
Bharathi’s flat, in Amir’s humble dwelling, and in Paul Varghese’s dark and
lonely space.
The casting of Mammootty as Kuttan gains added depth through
Theni Easwar’s cinematography. The camera captures nuances of performance that
only cinema can register: fleeting glances, suppressed gestures, subtle shifts
in tone. One iconic moment stands out: after Kuttappan’s fate is sealed, two
straight shots juxtapose Bharathi’s face—etched with disbelief and despair—and
Kuttan’s demonic visage, bearing the historical filth of caste arrogance. It is
a duel of presence between two actors at the height of their powers, a moment
that justifies both Mammootty’s towering role and Parvathy Thiruvoth’s casting
in a part that, in lesser hands, might have seemed unremarkable.
The screenplay by Harshad, Sharafu, and Suhas provides
another crucial layer. While Mammootty’s presence risks overwhelming the
narrative, the script’s precise, restrained dialogue restores balance.
Kuttappan’s lines, in particular, have the sharp brevity of epigrams—his
observations cutting with understated sarcasm, never loud but always piercing.
A line like “This is all that humans can change…” epitomizes the film’s
literary quality.
Music (by Jakes Bejoy) is integrated seamlessly into the
narrative fabric. The score underlines Kuttan’s taut body language and
simmering violence without lapsing into excess. Even the music Kuttan listens
to—Carnatic classical—becomes an emblem of his elitism. By contrast, the
dramatic, amplified sound accompanying Kuttappan’s stage performance
underscores its theatricality, pulling the audience into its heightened mood.
Ending – A Disagreement
While one must avoid the trap of prescriptive
criticism—that a film “should have been” a certain way—the ending of Puzhu
does invite debate. Kuttan’s downfall provides closure, yet closure is not
always what a film needs. His past haunts him, and the Takshaka metaphor
introduced at the beginning offers a structural justification for this
resolution. Still, there are reasons to argue that it undercuts the film’s
larger thematic weight.
Kuttan, after all, is not merely a character but a system
incarnate—a nexus of caste elitism, fascism, and Islamophobia. Systems of this
kind cannot be undone by the death of a single man. Reducing them to an
individual’s downfall risks diluting the film’s critique. The same logic
applies to the undercurrent of Islamophobia: it is not a “problem” that
disappears with one character’s death, but a pervasive social force with no
easy closure. In this sense, the ending narrows the scope of a film that could
have sustained an open-ended refusal of resolution.
The crime-thriller template embedded in the narrative may
seem to demand retribution: every criminal must eventually confront their past.
Yet Puzhu had the rare opportunity to move beyond genre conventions and
affirm its critique through inconclusiveness. A truly open ending—where
“solution” remains elusive—might have elevated it into a genre-breaking
contemporary classic. By offering finality, the film overlooks this
possibility.
References :
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ക്യാ. (poem(2016). )Kerala:
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& L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture.
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