‘Freedom’ movie review: Sasikumar’s socio-political thriller is bleak and exploitative

In the long list of Tamil films that substitute nuanced storytelling with noble intentions comes Freedom, a socio-political prison-break thriller starring Sasikumar and Lijomol Jose. Director Sathyasiva ambitiously adapts the real-life story of how some 43 Sri Lankan refugees (allegedly members of the LTTE) made a daring escape from their ‘special camp’ at the Vellore Fort — after allegedly suffering police torture for over four years in the investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi.

Any story pegged around the Sri Lankan Civil War or the LTTE can still send ripples across Tamil Nadu, making such endeavours a tightrope act. In that regard, both Sathyasiva and Sasikumar (a consecutive role as a Sri Lankan refugee, after the acclaimed Tourist Family) deserve credit for their conviction in the story and the strive to speak out against oppression.

But good intentions are never enough to make thought-provoking cinema, and except for the aforementioned intriguing outline, there’s very little going for Freedom.

We begin in the early ‘90s, following Maaran (Sasikumar) as he gets pulled into a quagmire just hours after reaching the shores of India. He meets his pregnant wife, Selvi (Lijomol), for the first time in months, but as fate would have it, the Indian Prime Minister is killed shortly by an LTTE suicide bomber at a rally in Chennai. A political turmoil ensues, and in a desperate attempt to nab the criminals, the police begin rounding up men and women from different refugee camps. Maaran is amongst those hauled away from the Mandapam camp in Rameswaram. Selvi laments how she couldn’t even offer a meal to her weary husband, who had just come out of a Sri Lankan prison, and you begin to feel a lump in your throat — the disturbing event on-screen is one thing, but there are hints throughout the first act of Freedom that would make even a passive follower of Tamil cinema expect the worst.

The subsequent sequences are blood-curdling to say the least. At a special makeshift camp (read: prison) inside the Vellore Fort, the refugees endure agonising torture and assault in the name of interrogation. The cops at this prison are under the tyrannical thumb of the sadistic, megalomaniac IPS officer Sudev Nair (naming the character after the actor reveals the shallow design), a non-Tamil who is charged to interrogate the prisoners because “a Tamil cop might show some remorse.”

It’s evident that the harrowing display of police brutality is meant to manufacture shock — and to evoke an emotional response that justifies the characters’ actions later — but the point is repeated ad nauseam. Those who suffer along with Maaran include an elderly man, Singeni (Mu. Ramaswamy); Chandiran (Boys Manikandan), a young man with a speech disability; and a young woman who we had seen — in a disturbingly protracted sequence — be subject to sexual abuse at the hands of a Sri Lankan cop. It’s as if sensitivity and restrained portrayal of such disturbing acts find no relevance in Sathyasiva’s school of filmmaking. This over-fixation on violence ensures we check out of the film’s hyperreality every now and then, hoping for something nuanced to pull us back in.

Alternating between the plight of the prisoners and their family members at the camp, Freedom ends up becoming so tunnel-visioned on selling the sentimentality of the story that it removes any scope for pointed political commentary. This is despite the arrival of Malavika Avinash’s lawyer character; we hardly know the legal recourse she is claiming to be taking. Even Ramesh Kanna’s CBI officer character, whom Sudev reports to, vanishes. In fact, a lay watching the second act of Freedom may not even get the film’s political context or the backdrop.

With little material to hang on to, the film picks up pace only after the prisoners hatch an escape plan in a last-ditch effort. Even then, we have to endure some tedious stretches before we get to the escape itself.

Freedom is a disturbing attempt at exploiting the empathy of the audience. It is neither nuanced, nor does it dig into the larger narrative of the plight of Sri Lankan refugees, nor factors in anything concrete about police brutality — a social evil that has become a major talking point in Tamil Nadu (the film is releasing when the state is reeling from the shock of the custodial death of Ajith Kumar).

It’s exhausting to watch filmmakers repeatedly train an insensitive lens on an important topic in the guise of being well-intentioned. Perhaps it’s time filmmakers who claim to speak for humanity start believing in the audience’s capacity for empathy.

Freedom is currently running in theatres.