I watched the 2012 Malayalam movie "Shutter" (ഷട്ടര്), a directorial debut by Joy Mathew [1]. It is a good movie. I loved the movie neither because it was completely shot in my home-town Kozhikode nor because the characters speaks the Kozhikode dialect of Malayalam. I loved the movie neither because the direction was excellent nor because all the actors acted very well. I loved the movie not because it uses the sound diligently; not for creating any dramatic effects that is actually not present in the scene. Of course, these are some of the elements that makes a good movie. And there are plenty of movies like that. There are other additional reasons why I loved this movie. This post is about that.
A non-spoiler summary of the plot : Rasheed is a conservative moralist within his family, who cannot approve of his teenager daughter interacting with the boys studying with her. He wants to stop her studies and marries her off. That does not deter him from bringing a prostitute to his empty shop during one night after getting fully drunk. Due to some circumstances, he gets locked up along with the prostitute inside the shop for one whole night and a whole day. From inside the shop, he can see things happening around the shop through a slit on the shutter that closes the shop and a ventilator window that opens to the front side of his home. Caught up there, listening to the outside world, he realizes that everyone around him wears masks and only thing that is true and dear to him is his family. Finally, he becomes free from the shop without having any harm done to his life, pride and family honor. Afterwards, he becomes more liberal and understanding towards his daughter and allows her to continue her studies, scrapping off his plans for her marriage. I do not want to describe how he gets free although it is very important for this discussion, since I do not want to spoil your suspense element.
What we see here is a man living in a corrupt society, which in turn corrupts him too. To say that he is honest and not corrupted at the outset is but foolish. It is also foolish to say that he was not aware of the deception and corruption around him. A post-modern man is clearly aware of the corruption, deception, illusion, and ideology prevailing in the society and he also more or less know why all this is happening. But the common nature of the post-modern individual is denial and cynicism. He denies the reason. Then he cynically says that things around him are indeed corrupted and he does not believe in the society and its justice, but he cannot do anything about it, and thus he justifies his submission to it. This is what we call ideology or bad faith.
If you look again, you will notice that nothing has happened to his order of life at the end of the movie. His family life and social life continues as it were. But now he has realized his mistakes and has a good understanding about things happening around him. His understanding of the world has changed, but the world did not itself change. To make it a bit complicated, I would say that the whole series of incidents did not affect his Symbolic order, but just expanded it a little with a clearer understanding. The formal familial relation with ones wife and daughter exist largely in the Symbolic order. Rasheed is a conservative moralist. Any relation between man and woman is sexual for him. That is why when he saw the prostitute on the street, he immediately thought about the possibility of taking her with him. That is exactly why he does not like any contact between her daughter and her male friends. He fears that such a contact leads to sex and cannot approve of it. Clearly, this is the double standard that he retains.
An important question is why Rasheed was not satisfied with his wife. Why is he seeking sex outside of his marriage? It is in this question that we confront the otherwise nonconfrontable fact of human psychology: the Real order. The sexual urge exist in the Real order, since it is instinctual and natural. The Symbolic order explicitly prevents sex outside marriage. But there is still a possibility. There are prostitutes available. Prostitutes lives in a corner of the Symbolic order. The prostitute is inside the Symbolic order since the word prostitute exists and since they are available and since sexual intercourse with a prostitute is possible. Not necessary to have a prostitute, but the possibility of sex outside marriage exists even with a stranger. It is this possibility that ultimately tempted Rasheed to invite the prostitute, Thankam, into the shop. While the Symbolic order explicitly prevents the-outside-marriage sex, there still exists a possibility and a phantasmagorical temptation. The latter is in conflict with the first. This explains the existence of the Real order and the fact that sex exists in the Real. That which exists in the Real is undeniable. Therefore, sex outside the marriage is undeniable.
If sex outside the marriage is undeniable in the Real, but unacceptable in the Symbolic, what can one do? Keep such a hope in ones Imaginary order. In the Imaginary order he creates an alter ego or alter egos who can have sex with anyone in any manner. This creates the fantasy and at times crops into the real world and thus threatens the Symbolic order. To have sex with the prostitute whom he meets on a night is a fantasy that Rasheed kept in his Imaginary order. Therefore, when an appropriate situation came, despite the sense of guilt, he gave into it. Any fantasy, however dear that may be to us, when happened in reality turns out to be a horror, since it ultimately threatens the Symbolic order and hence ones life itself. That is what happened to Rasheed. He is unable to copulate inside the shop. After a while he tries again. He approaches the sleeping prostitute and touches her. Suddenly he senses the presence of a non-existent snake inside the room. He is scared by it and moves away from the woman. That snake is nothing but a proper representation of his guilt and the horror that he was experiencing throughout the affair. However, it is interesting to note that the woman had no fear of the snake. She dares to check the room thoroughly for the snake. This is because she does not have any guilt. Sex with a stranger for her does not happen in fantasy or Imaginary, but in the Real as well as the Symbolic. The Symbolic because she is able to talk about it and even argue about it over phone without any sense of shame or guilt. She is in a way more exalted a human being than any other in the movie.
The whole movie is about the moral corruption of a man, who finally gets some moral education. At the end, he appears to have become a good human. But the irony remains. If sex outside marriage is undeniable, what morality does he learn? In what sense does he become good? Good is simply a word that signifies a concept. He does not particularly become good. He just become good according to the Symbolic order in which he lives. He was not actually corrupted and now becomes un-corrupted. He is a post-modern individual as he is before and now. He just learned the morality of the world and accepted it. That is all. Is that a great transformation? Yes, indeed, psychologically. But not spiritually, since he does not still realize anything about what happened to him and what he has learned.
During my visit to Las Vegas last year, I have seen men passionately kissing each other on the street. No one even noticed them; so it seemed at least to me. In Las Vegas streets such an act does not threaten anybody's Symbolic order. Thus those men do not become particularly bad or evil in that Symbolic order. That is how the word changes its meaning and position according to the Symbolic order to which it is tied with.
It is interesting to notice how Rasheed gains his "enlightenment". He is simply locked up in a dark room from which he can see the life outside, the Symbolic order, through a small slit on the shutter. The title of the movie "Shutter" is very suitable and nothing is more important in this movie than the shutter and what it covers. Obviously, it is not the first time that we hear such a thing. All the saints like Buddha, Sankara and so on and prophets like Muhammed and Christ disappeared for a while into solitude before attaining their spiritual enlightenment. We can forget all the saints, but only consider the philosopher Rene Decartes, who famously said "ego cogito, ego sum" ("I think, therefore I exist": That is, I am thinking. I am able to think. Therefore, no matter how many illusions exists here, but what I call I exists. Otherwise, it will not think. Therefore, I exists beyond any doubt.) [If you have been deceived by the more popular translation "I think, therefore I am", then I am sorry for you. Please consider to learn more about the Decartes' cogito argument]. Decartes understood the existence of cogito (the thinking I) when he secluded himself from the outside world and shut himself inside an oven to escape from the unbearable cold outside. He had nothing else to do but think about the possibility of knowing the objective truth of the outside world. In the movie, Rasheed gets locked up inside the shop not out of his will. His seclusion was somewhat forced. Yet, he is able to rethink of his life and actions. He is able to understand his mistakes that conflicts with the Symbolic order and correct himself.
Possibly, what every man needs is such a dark, secluded place. Where one can directly encounter the fantasy and its horror and realize ones alienation with respect to the Symbolic order. Unless a man is able to get along well with the Symbolic order, his life will be miserable. He becomes an criminal or just a degenerate drunkard or rapist or a great artist with profound creativity. The late Malayali poet A. Ayyappan was such an artist. He was unable to cope with the society and its order. He lived in the streets, outside the social order, and created extremely honest and creative poetry. In the movie also, we can see such a character: a drunkard old man who always sings poetry that other characters cannot understand. That character lives outside the social order. In fact he is even a threat to the social order. That is why everyone hates him and drives him away as soon as possible after getting any service from him.
The Symbolic order that comes under the threat in the movie is clearly a male-dominated one. Females have only secondary position in that order. That is why it tried to protect ones daughter from illegible sex. That is also why it allowed the girl to continue her studies. In doing so, we might first feel that it is giving a higher position to the girl that she deserves. On the contrary, it just integrates the women's need to get educated and be more free in their life into the existing social Symbolic order, without reducing the man's importance and dominating position in it. In this aspect, the movie is not too revolutionary, I claim.
This paragraph contains elements that spoil the suspense of the movie. Safely you can skip it : I want to prove the above point. That the movie does not particularly elevate the status of females. In fact, the shop is opened by one of Rasheed's daughter's male-friends upon her request. She instructs the friend not to look inside the shop but merely to unlock it. Thus, she saves Rasheed's pride and honor even from her own friend. By this act, she proves to Rasheed that she is an intelligent girl, having a stronger moral standard as compared to Rasheed's. What is her moral standard? To keep such a shame from the outside world and thereby saving ones status. This proves that she believes sex outside marriage is a sin. Thus she subscribes to the values of the Symbolic order and is not particularly spiritually elevated. This makes Rasheed confident that she will not get involved in illegible sex. So, he allows her to continue her studies. Clearly, the male-domination continues.
This movie is the director Joy Mathew's debut. And it is excellent. I hope we can see more good movies from him. The stellar performance of Sajitha Madathil as the prostitute is unforgettable. In fact, every actors acted very well in this movie. This again implies that this movie is really a director's movie.
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