Malli is a 19-year old girl who is trained in a jungle camp of a rebel group fighting against the government. When she was a child, her brother killed himself for the group. Now, Malli is selected by the group's leader to become a suicide bomber and blow up an important politician from the government. She is led by a boy, Lotus, across the river, from where she takes a boat to a port city. There, two men pass her off as an agriculture student to find her an accommodation in an apartment. They train with her how she will place flowers around the neck of the politician, kneel down and then press the button of the bomb hidden underneath her waist. However, Malli finds out she is pregnant, and her landlord is very kind towards her. During the official visit, Malli mingles among women and places flowers around the neck of the politician. She reaches for the button, but then gives up.
Excellent psychological drama gained a permanent reputation when Roger Ebert included it in his list of Great Movies, and it is a pity it is relatively unknown in the world cinema. The director Santosh Sivan removes any kind of context—we don't know what the rebel group wants (independence? Or some fight for ethnic, political or religious ideology?), we don't know who leads them nor who is their enemy (the face of the leader of the group is always outside the frame; the politician of the government, their target, is seen only out of focus in the ending)—in order to reduce the story to its essence, a psychological study about the heroine Malli (brilliant Ayesha Dharker) and her slow realization of accepting humanity, her personal outgrowing of a dogma. Sivan, a cinematographer, takes great care of the cinematography, and thus, despite a rather conventional visual style, the film is very aesthetic to look at, with numerous close-ups of Malli's face, especially her eyes, or the nature. The story is rather thin, but codified more than enough to form a coherent narrative, thanks to several subtle ideas, symbols and allegories—for instance, Malli discovers she is pregnant, while her two mentors strap a bomb belt around her stomach, the place where her fetus is growing. The birds in the nest of a tree, or the landlord telling a story about two seeds (one grew to become a tree; the other, cowardly decided to stop just being a flower, so it was eaten by an animal), all form a sort of thought experiment for Malli, teeling her that she may become something more: either live and start a family, or die in her suicide bomber mission. Throughout the film, the image of the old woman lying in bed, in a catatonic state, is repeated again and again, while Malli lingers watching her from her room. In the end, the old woman "awakens" and holds Malli's hand—she is a symbol for Malli, since both are passive and apathetic, and have to become aware to think for themselves. Despite a limited budget and minimalistic repertoire, "The Terrorist" is a valuable and intelligent example of Tamil cinema.
Grade:+++
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