The other side of Police brutality

For the first time in life I’m seeing a movie mentioning ‘Bibliography’ in the end credits explicitly. Writer, the latest movie by Neelam productions starring Samuthirakani, written and directed by Franklin Jacob, a debutant. There was a mention of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment' and another book, which I couldn’t note because I was awestruck by the former mention.

Films like Visaranai, Karnan and Jai Bhim talk about police brutality. But here is Writer which tries to dig deeper into why police brutality exists in first place. There are only a couple of scenes from Tamil Cinema that I could think of, which discusses the effects on a person who punishes someone to death.

In the movie ‘Purambokku enum Podhu Udaimai’, Vijay Sethupathi who plays hangman talks how much of a punishment it is for a person to perform hanging as a a job on a day to day basis.

In ‘Vikram Vedha’, Madhavan who plays police officer Vikram says to Vedha “Do you know why I sleep peacefully every night? Because I know I shoot criminals who deserve death”. Vedha played by Vijay Sethupathi tells stories to Vikram to make him realize he had once shot an innocent and tries to ‘guilt trip' him.

Even when a Custodial Death happened last year in Sathankulam, ‘authority’ and ‘casteism' were the topics of discussion behind that police brutality. While I wouldn’t deny these could be the primary reasons for police brutality, I happened to listen to a podcast that discussed the other side of police brutality too.

Police is an age old system and government or authority never bothers about their mental health. Understaffed police stations, excessive work hours, lack of vacations, lack of authority to be doing things that would make them live with integrity between their thoughts and actions, guilt driven lives, every person in the police hierarchy being terrified and disgusted about their immediate supervisor, targets to keep their crime resolution ratio optimal, rising police suicides, amidst all these, deep rooted casteism within the system… These are the areas that Writer movie tries to explore.

I wouldn’t tell much about the plot of the film. But to keep it short, it’s the story of a Police Writer named Thangaraj who is known for:

• Running a case for more than 4 decades to get approval for forming a police union so that working hours and workload of people in the lowest of hierarchy would be regulated
• Mentoring junior Writers who imagined that they’ll get to serve the nation by joining police force but to their disappointment realizing they’re just servants who does what is commanded by their graded officials, that it is sufficient if they learn to be kind to people and to make their fellow policemen human.
• Like you and me, he also has a ‘retirement plan' to serve in the police training academy and educate young trainees on how to be kind to people.

I love the scripts that Neelam (of Pa. Ranjith) chooses to produce. Next to Pariyerum Perumal directed by Mari Selvaraj (who studied law, later joined as Director Ram’s assistant, an avid reader and a writer too), Irandam Ulagapporin Kadaisi Gundu directed by Athiyan Aathirai (who used to work in scrap shop before), Writer by Franklin Jacob (I’m sure this person would also be from some humble background, details not known yet) also turns out to be an unavoidable movie in the history of Kollywood.

Congratulations Franklin Jacob for a good debut. And hats-off Pa. Ranjith for producing such films and releasing them noticeably.