PLEASE DON’T FAIL THIS MOVIE!
LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!
I DID NOT KNOW THIS MOVIE EXISTED UNTIL FRIDAY. I DID NOT KNOW WHAT IT WAS UNTIL I WAS ALREADY SEATED FOR MARTY SUPREME. BUT ONCE I KNEW, I SIMPLY HAD TO WATCH IT EVEN IF I WAS DOG TIRED.
I AM GLAD I DID!
IT’S STILL REAL TO US DAMMIT!
Okay, I’ll try to tone it down. But my excitement for this film was off the charts when I got to know it was about professional wrestling. I bought into the film the moment a chokeslam was landed and the bed these kids were wrestling on broke. Inside my mind, Michael Cole’s commentary started playing already describing the events. And then when they revealed their pet bird’s name as Brandy Orton, I couldn’t help laughing!
These kids were enthusiastically watching what I could make out as a Bret Hart match. I can’t say for sure, as they probably did not have the rights, so they had to blur the TV. For the uninitiated, Bret Hart was the best there was, the best there is, and the best there ever will be!
Heels // Faces
I started watching professional wrestling only after I got to know it was scripted. To me, it was fascinating to see these stories unfold and the wrestlers create larger-than-life moments and get you invested in them. Trash-talking promos, grand entrances, and vibrant lights. Professional booking and play-by-play commentary, coupled with one for color. And behind these smokes and mirrors, it’s a dance between two people, which makes it nothing short of operatic to me.
In wrestling, the villains are known as the heels. And the good guys are called babyfaces. Think Randy and Cena, respectively. And the holy grail of professional wrestling is – The Heel Makes the Face. People will only love the good guy as much as they hate the bad guy. In any story, you need the hero to face overwhelming odds and rise to ocassion and slay his demons.
Wrestling is no different. It takes two to tango. And in my personal experience, I can attest that its easier to knock someone out than to make it appear as if you’re knocking someone out and working with them to put on a show.
Chatha Pacha explains all this without being this verbose and telling its own story. And more.
A tale of three brothers
Three foster brothers grow up watching wrestling, beating the shit out of each other. Years later, decide to start their own indie wrestling promotion in Fort Kochi. Would this business even work? I’ve been wanting to try something like this for quite some time, and I imagine it would go exactly like it did in this film. I’ll not dive deep into the storyline here because it is thinly spread.
The film itself is more spectacle than substance. And that’s what makes it special to me. It is bound to have left polarizing views to people who don’t get wrestling, and the story might feel dated. But I believe that is set so by design here to focus on the meta-aspects of wrestling.
A love letter to Pro-Wrestling
From the first show they put on in the film had their biggest babyface dropping down the ring like Shawn Michaels. It had a plethora of the usual suspects finishing moves – RKOs, 619s, Jackhammer, and Attitude Adjustments. And more, Suplexes, Spears, frog-splashes, and clotheslines. And the Sweet Chin Music.
While all those moves made an appearance and were paid homage to, among others, you can feel the passion the makers had for wrestling and the nostalgia they felt with how they treated the Chokeslam.
A finishing move is something that needs to be protected by the bookers. If you keep using it for false finishes and two-counts, they lose their shine. If you overuse them, it gets repetitive. This has what has happened mostly to the Chokeslam move today. We rarely see it anymore, or it’s just used as a signature move as a precursor to set up a wrestler’s finishing move.
In Chatha Pacha, the chokeslam is the ultimate finishing move, and they’ve tried to hype it up as much as the days Kane and Undertaker used to perform it. I marked the fuck out when it was performed in the climax!
I love how the mallus always take concepts and matter-of-factly present them through their films. DQ, the producer, continues to invest in niche areas that reap dividends. I hope this film paves the way to a new crop of wrestling fans.
because, even with kayfabe gone, it’s still real to us, dammit!
