Kalimannu (Blessy, 2013)

by Maia Collins

Artificially inseminated with her dead husband’s sperm, Meera (Shweta Menon) must not only face the natural challenges of pregnancy and burgeoning motherhood, but must also contend with pushback from men, the media, and the public in Malayam film, Kalimannu (dir. Blessy, 2013).

Before becoming pregnant though, before marriage even, Meera performs in a club as a dancer. Wanting more than to be treated poorly by men, she aspires to become a film actress. Eventually, she achieves this dream, taking the lead female role in two films. Tragically, during the premiere of one of those films, her taxi-driver husband, Syam (Biju Menon) gets into a car accident and is pronounced brain dead. This forces Meera to rethink what she values and wants the most for herself. Through this turn of luck, Meera becomes known throughout the world, not because of her dancing and acting skills, but because she becomes the first woman in India to become impregnated by a dead man’s sperm. This sacrifice of herself to mass criticism carries with it some of the larger messages of the film as it doubly represents the difficulty of being a woman today and the questionable steps a woman must take in order to gain empowerment.

Once Meera decides to undergo insemination, she first petitions the Indian Medical Ethical Board for consent to receive the procedure. After receiving permission and leaving a meeting with the board, she, in her first interaction with the press, tells swarms of cameras exasperatedly, “I want to become a mother. I want justice.”

Her desire for a child, which begins as a longing to remain united with her husband, quickly becomes a political act, and from this point on, motherhood and justice become intertwined in Kalimannu. At first, what justice is for is unclear, but once Meera decides to share a video of her birth publically it becomes clear that justice is for women. Her intentions in releasing the film are to “open the eyes of human males.” She and her advocates within the film believe that if boys and men become more educated on what giving birth looks like, they will stop seeing women only as sexual objects, but as mothers who are worthy of respect. Meera’s pregnancy then becomes a pregnancy not only for herself, but a pregnancy on behalf of women all around India—both in and out of the film.

When Meera takes up this cause in the latter half of the movie, it at first seems like this kind of political action is out of character for her. Still, the film takes steps early on to depict the physical and unspoken violence Meera receives from most of the men she encounters. In one scene in the club where she used to dance, she alone entertains a room full of men and is cut on the arm by an old man who reaches out and grabs her. Distraught afterwards, she decides she must leave the club behind and begin a film career, yet still on the streets and in the songs she performs for her movies men grab at her, leer at her, and speak to her as if she were their own sexual treasure. Her relationship with Syam is a breath of fresh air in light of these other interactions, but to some extent, even he is guilty of looking at her and loving her before she really sees or acknowledges him. Not once, until the final scene of the film, does Meera escape the condescending scrutiny of men. She is either a woman to try a new medical procedure on, a woman performing a “seductive” dance, or a woman who a taxi-driver might—in order to better see her—adjust his rearview mirror for.

Because of the forms of assault that Meera has been forced to deal with as well as more violent crimes such as domestic violence and particularly rape, Meera in Kalimannu and Kalimannu itself seek to affect social change with their actions. The film integrates familiar news media networks, cites specific incidents of crimes against women, and most importantly includes actual footage of Shweta Menon giving birth in order to make clear that these issues do not exist only in the film, but more importantly, in the physical world.

Even in Meera’s relationship to being filmed, we see the shift Kalimannu makes to emphasize grounding oneself in reality. Meera’s attempt at representing herself and controlling her own image through filming her child’s birth is completely different from the Meera who in the first act of the film, performs in front of cameras according to the whims of directors, producers, and an audience. Her transition from dancer to actress to activist signifies the film’s valuation of the roles women fill. It’s not enough to be a dancer, a movie star, or even to be married. In order for women to be happy and liberated, they must become empowered. In Meera’s case, this comes about by lifting up other women and asserting that womanhood is dignified because of motherhood or the potentiality of motherhood. To some, this may be a hard pill to swallow in that to a large extent it suggests that either to be more worthy of respect or to be deemed worthy of respect by society (and subsequently feel safer), women must present themselves to men as supremely desexualized mother figures.

Whether or not this is what the film purports, that we have to sometimes turn women into symbols in order to keep them safe is a hard pill to swallow in itself.

Kalimannu is a delight as a love story, as a success story, and as an intriguing piece of work when it comes to it’s political notions.  It examines what makes us human and who makes us who we are, and in almost every way, it explores “the clay” which serves as both title and hypothesis as often it becomes the question: What can be made? From what we’re left with, what can we control, what can we change, what can become new again?