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Hi everyone, today, I am going to be talking about a Malayalam movie. This movie is set in the 19 century and shows a lot of Indian history. And by India I mean one region in India. Travancore. I am from Travancore, so it’s kind of important to me. Travancore on the 19 century wasn’t exactly the best place to be for the lower castes. Women had no rights. They had to pay taxes if they wanted to cover their upper body and men couldn’t wear mustaches without paying taxes. There were a lot of unfair taxes and everything was horrible.

The punishments were so horrible, the food was horrible, and the court was horrible. However at that point a person came into the picture: Arattupuzha Velayudha Chekavar. He became essentially a god to the lower classes as he helped them gain their rights. After that however, all of these rights got stripped away.

Chekavar set up temples and gave them money and food so they could all survive. However, after that he was murdered and violent riots destroyed the region. A decree was passed to stop the abuse, but the cruel practices still continued even in the 20th century. I’m not sure if they still continue now in the 21st-century but they might in some very isolated areas.

The main plot in the movie is that some ornaments were stolen from the temple the middle of the night by a thief. The name of the thief is Kochunni. He gives a bunch of starving people food so that they give him loyalty.

My favourite character in the movie is the king of Travancore.Most of the time kings are portrayed as a big strong leader of a country. However, the king of Travancore can lead his country well yes, but he is mentally weak so when the ornaments went missing he had a nervous breakdown, and the queen had to manage everything for him. In the end he became very just, and changed some laws so that it would benefit the lower classes. He still has to listen to the opinions of his ministers, but he tries to override them whenever possible. He’s the one who hired Chekavar to get the ornaments back. In the court everyone is trying to influence the king but he still makes every decision with no help from his court .

The king has nothing to do with the murders too. The ministers decided to do it themselves. After his murder and the suicides of two important figures in the lower class, riots happened all over Travancore.

To stop Travancore from becoming a ruined state, the king issued a proclamation that the lower class no longer have to pay these the unfair taxes and they can cover their upper body if they want too. A bunch of other unfair rules also got taken away, but the proclamation specifically had a part that said unlike old proclamations these are not to be disobeyed ever. However the cruel tactics continued into the 20th century.

This movie is different from others. It shows corruption, anger, brutal practices, inequality injustice, violence, and weakness in the royal family, and everywhere else. All of this is portrayed over the entire movie. That’s pretty much the end of it .

Even some upper class women tried to help the lower class people, they ended up not being able to do that because they were forced into a marriage with old men. It just shows that everyone’s suffering not just the lower caste people.

It is a great movie and on a scale of 10, I rate it a 8.9.