Programme 5

The land of the mythical childhood is a village in Kerala after the monsoon, without cars, where the adults provide, they hold celebrations, stories are read by candlelight, there are trees to climb and fields to run in, the children and the dogs are unleashed. The children say over and over the word “Kummatty”, they sing it, get scared by it and end up invoking what it names, something they desire and fear, and do not yet know. Kummatty, who attracts like the pied piper of Hamelin and intimidates like the boogeyman, arrives at the village and settles in underneath a peepal tree. The children spy on him; Kummatty possesses them at a distance with his songs; the facts of the out in the open are mixed with those of the home and the school, the electoral system and the errands with the birds “which are of no use”. The days go by, wizard and apprentices meet, finally, and the naturalised antinaturalism typical of childhood and of this film triumphs. We give thanks to the editing once again, because a literally magical and literally transformative experience is going to convert Chindan, the child protagonist, into a being who is sensitive to the circumstances of the non-human. He will go out into the vast world, he will sneak into the house and the life (spoiler: both ridiculous) of some rich folks and, once transformed again, once change is changed, he will remember his former and weaker condition and he will act accordingly. We, spectators, will gain a widened horizon and the very sky itself.