By Vishnu Mahesh Sharma @ Vishnumahesh Sharma@gmail.com
We’ve seen a lot of movies where the hero meets the heroine while she’s committing theft.good example Amar Akbar Anthony, Parvarish and Tupari Varan. In this kind of film, apart from giving the heroine a melodramatic reason/motivation for the theft, this part also serves as love at first sight for the protagonist. However, other than this, nothing special happens. This scene remains one of Masala’s tropes where a bit of comedy, a bit of romance, a bit of melodrama, and (sometimes) a love song can be incorporated into the script.
While watching Virupaksha, I felt the same about the scene where the hero meets the heroine. Again, the hero turns to the chicken-stealing heroine. Upon meeting her eyes, he instantly falls in love with her. But by the time the movie reached the final part, I realized how different (read: creepy) the scene actually was, even though it looked a lot like the conventional cute encounter scene. I was.
Note: The rest of this article contains major spoilers. So if you haven’t seen the movie yet, I suggest you don’t read any further, just watch the movie and then come back.
In the middle of the film, we learn that the first person to witness a death (corpse) becomes possessed. The spirit leaves the corpse and enters the eyewitness’s body through the eyes of the eyewitness. Now, scratch the surface and get the rogue layer. Because when the protagonist sees the heroine for the first time, the only facial features of her that the protagonist sees are her eyes, and the rest of her face is covered with a scarf. Scrape the surface again. And what is the color of the scarf!- it’s red!!!.
So, after scratching the surface twice, we see that this very scene serves as a prelude to the bloodshed that this very eye will cause in the village. The genius of the script is that Sheen is not content with this symbolism and foreshadowing. We went one step further. This means more points to scratch and more subtext to discover.
So what did the girl steal? No money, no bread, no double roti, no jewels. She’s stealing – cock. Moreover, if she hears noises behind her, she knows that the thief has been stealing chickens for some time. The question arises as to why the village lord’s daughter indulges in such petty deeds. We see this in the final part of the film. It turns out that sacrificing a rooster (decapitating it with its own teeth) is an integral part of the occult (black magic or siddhis). When the hero meets the girls, at this point she is still trying to master the occult. She’s still experimenting with practice to master it. That’s why she needed all those cocks from time to time until she perfected the occult.
Let’s scratch the surface one last time and reflect on it after watching the movie. We find that the seemingly romantic scene is now no longer the same as before, filled with shades of dread and spookiness. The death scene is very rich in color symbolism, foreshadowing, and metaphor. It thoroughly follows every formulaic trope in its body. Nevertheless, in its spirit, the work functions not only at the macro level as a scene of encounters, but also at the micro level as red herrings and intentional loose ends (that will eventually be tightened). By doing so, it is very different from those everyday scenes. climax part). One of the best examples of giving a necessary masala demon (pronounced succubus) a purpose and soul and incorporating it into the script.
