The Great Indian Kitchen (2021): One of the best films of the year and why you should watch it.
The Great Indian Kitchen talks about or rather shows the patriarchal behaviour being conducted in millions of households in India. It is conveyed through magnificent cinematic moments and filmmaking. Jeo Baby is the director of the film and has not only made an important film for our society but one of the best films of the year. Jeo baby is showing us how patriarchy still presides in our country by how a women must be chained to a particular set of work. The heroine played by Nimisha Sajayan is chained to this particular work and it is pitiful to watch. She at first is not opposed to this patriarchal situation, that is she is not the type of women to be rebellious in nature. But when her freedom or choices are chained to the ground it only creates problem’s. The film starts with a conventional arranged marriage and when all the festivities and joyous ceremonies are over the chaining of the character starts. The director shows the patriarchy and misogyny through scenes that are not fictionalized but rather through the occurrence of what it will be like in real-life. When viewing these scenes, we can easily connect or rather feel to what is being conveyed on the screen.
The first example I would like to say right off the bat is when both the husband played by Suraj Venjaramoodu and his father make a mess on the table after eating which makes our heroine squirm when she eats (she is only allowed to eat after the men are finished). She has to get rid of the waste created by the men first. Another scene is when our heroine wants to go to work as a dance teacher as she is passionate about it but is first rejected by her father-in-law because he says “It is something that won’t suit us”. Even though her husband agrees to do something about it, it is eventually thrown away due to ego and male chauvinism. One more fine example the director shows us is when some guests arrive and our heroine is asked to make tea but she now must make two types of tea because it must cater to their likings and immediately after that scene, we are shown how the men do the cooking for once leaving rest for the women but after all the cooking and eating our heroine must clean all the waste and mess made in the kitchen. The director is telling us that does it really matter if the women don’t do the cooking eventually, they have to clean all the mess created by the men. The whole film is filled with these patriarchal instances, it even deals with topics of religious conventionalisms and misogyny. I would like to address one more situation where there is a reoccurrence of how the father-in-law is seen just scrolling on his phone slacking and how her husband is seen doing yoga every morning but the wife is seen just cooking and doing this endlessly.
Many of the scenes have been taken from Jeo Baby’s life experiences like for example in an interview to the Scroll.in he told “There’s a scene where Nimisha smells her fingers and just cannot get rid of the kitchen smell,” Baby said. “That was my experience. You use as much soap or handwash, but the smell of cooking, mopping the house, cleaning the washbasin won’t go. Hiring a house help was a luxury even then and it is still a luxury.”
The technicality of the film is great and that is not a surprise. The shots with the kitchen and the dishes with all the mess are mostly shot in top angle and due to this we see a clear angle of how much of waste and mess she must clean. It is brilliant because of that top angle shot we get sympathy towards her and that is just wonderful filmmaking. Another great technical aspect that I would like to point out is that there are only two long shots in this film. One is where when she sees her husband fall down from his vehicle and she rushes to help him out but is shoved away by him saying “go away” “Don’t you see you shouldn’t touch the pilgrims during this time!” she becomes perplexed and just walks back with a single shot. And the other scene is at the climax where her rebellion finally takes place and breaks her chains from the patriarchy. Here it is just a single shot of her walking through the streets of her town. The greatest beauty I would like to say is that there is no re-recording for this film and when you think about it if this was some other mainstream film in another industry then a huge background score would have been placed in both those scenes but here it is just the natural sound. And this natural sound brings the authenticity and real environment of the household and kitchen. It is a technically wonderful film to watch with its fantastic cinematography and editing.
Jeo Baby has managed to create a scarring tale of women rights, patriarchy and male chauvinism that exists in a country like India. It is one of the best films I have watched this year and I highly recommend this film as it is also a very important film to watch.