Narivetta: They won't let you watch the shadow-banned Santosh, so you should watch Tovino Thomas' blazing new film 10 times as revenge

Indian Express

16-07-2025

The Central Board of Film Certification's screening process can often be arbitrary. Only recently, Indian audiences complained about the CBFC's decision to have a 30-second kiss shortened in the film Superman. A person on social media pithily observed that the scene would've made the cut had Superman been slapping Lois Lane instead of making out with her. There is an element of truth to this, of course. It wasn't too long ago that the CBFC deemed Marco — a movie in which many children die cruel deaths — fit for public viewing. At the same time, they've stalled the release of films such as Honey Trehan's Panjab 95 and Sandhya Suri's Santosh. Sometimes, however, this chaotic approach to film certification allows certain movies to slip through the cracks. Narivetta is one of them.
Directed by Anuraj Manohar and starring Tovino Thomas, the mere existence of the Malayalam-language film is enough to suggest that the movie gods have a sense of humour. The CBFC can block Santosh, but while they were abusing their power, Narivetta snuck under its nose. A more populist cousin to Santosh, the film fixates on many of the same themes. Narivetta is about the systemic oppression of minorities, and mass corruption in organisations meant to serve and protect; but more than anything else, Narivetta dares to raise objections about police brutality at a time when Rohit Shetty's cinema has basically coated the concept in Teflon.
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Like Shahana Goswami's character in that film, Varghese Peter in Narivetta had no intention of being a cop. He stumbles into the position, and makes it clear to everybody around him that it isn't his cup of tea. Even though Santosh carefully avoids drawing any overt parallels to real-life incidents, and goes to the extent of setting its drama in an unnamed Indian state, the movie has been shadow-banned by the CBFC for a centrepiece sequence in which the titular character essentially murders a Muslim murder suspect in a blind rage. It is made quite obvious that the suspect was innocent, and that Santosh's actions were influenced by her prejudices and peer pressure.
Varghese goes through similar turmoil in Narivetta. When he raises his hand against a protester, he is told to rein it in. 'Don't be an action hero,' is the advice he gets from his bosses. One of them, a man named Basheer, offers kindness instead. Played by Suraj Venjaramoodu — the husband from The Great Indian Kitchen — Basheer takes Varghese under his wing, and advises him to do his job with utmost sincerity. Narivetta goes out of its way to highlight Basheer's Muslim identity. You wonder why; there has to be a reason. And there is. Not too long afterwards, a platoon of cops including Varghese and Basheer is deployed in a nearby jungle, where a group of tribal folks is protesting against the government's encroachment over their land.
Tensions are high; the peaceful protest could erupt into violence at any moment. Basheer instructs Varghese to remain calm and follow orders. Their superiors tell them that the tribals are, in fact, being used by Maoist terrorists as proxies in their war against the government. They've hidden caches of weapons in the jungles; it's a trap! Two teams are sent to locate the artillery; Basheer and Varghese are separated. Only one of them returns, and that, too, empty handed. A concerned Varghese begs the bosses to send out a rescue party for Basheer, and after a while, they do. He's found in a river, tied to a chair, dead for hours. This gives the police enough of a reason to launch an all-out attack against the tribal protesters, many of whom are killed mercilessly in the ensuing massacre.
Narivetta asks questions that perhaps never even crossed the minds of the people behind Kesari Chapter 2, a movie so blindly devoted to its masters that it was willing to manipulate the truth. Certainly, nobody behind the Cop Universe films would even want to consider the possibility of nuance. Why craft a real character when you can have them jump out of a car instead? In Narivetta, the police are shown to be no different from the stormtroopers in Star Wars, or the German infantry during World War II. They are the foot soldiers of authoritarian regimes built on the back of bloodshed. They are the villains who murdered one of their own — a member of the minority himself — just to find an excuse to commit an even more horrific crime. Varghese takes the role of a conscientious objector.
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Varghese is shocked by his discovery; Basheer was sacrificed like a pawn in the government's scheme to quell the protest. The reluctant hero, mocked in the first act for being an aimless loafer, finally finds his purpose. In his trauma, he has a moment of clarity. Varghese is ridden by guilt for his complicity in the crime. He resolves to blow the lid on the operation, which was covered up — quite literally — by the cops in charge. The tribal protesters did nothing wrong, and yet, they were murdered for exercising their democratic rights. Disillusioned by his experience, Varghese confides in his girlfriend, who can't believe her ears.
Not only is Narivetta critical of governments, it's also quite plainly suspicious of the institutions that serve under them. One of these institutions is the film industry itself. By dedicating thousands of theatres to slop, and by allowing the continued silencing of films such as Santosh, the industry is playing into the hands of power. It doesn't realise that by contributing to the erosion of basic free speech and by kowtowing to the crown, it is essentially dooming its own future.
Post Credits Scene is a column in which we dissect new releases every week, with particular focus on context, craft, and characters. Because there's always something to fixate about once the dust has settled.
Rohan Naahar is an assistant editor at Indian Express online. He covers pop-culture across formats and mediums. He is a 'Rotten Tomatoes-approved' critic and a member of the Film Critics Guild of India. He previously worked with the Hindustan Times, where he wrote hundreds of film and television reviews, produced videos, and interviewed the biggest names in Indian and international cinema. At the Express, he writes a column titled Post Credits Scene, and has hosted a podcast called Movie Police.
You can find him on X at @RohanNaahar, and write to him at [e-mail]. He is also on LinkedIn and Instagram. ... Read More