Freedom movie review: Sasikumar’s film with stirring real-life story gets lost in brutality with no emotional depth

Freedom movie plot:

When Sri Lankan refugees seek shelter in Tamil Nadu camps, the infamous Rajiv Gandhi assassination takes place, leaving many of them as suspects in the high-profile crime. After a bunch of refugees, including Maaran (Sasikumar), are held captive at the Vellore Fort for further investigation, they are subjected to brutal harassment and torture at the hands of the Tamil Nadu police. It is at this time, Maaran, along with others, try to escape the fort by digging a tunnel from within their cell. Do they succeed? Freedom is based on true events.

Freedom movie review:

In what was a turmoil period nationwide in the aftermath of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, Sri Lankan refugees, suspected of crime, were held captive for investigation at the Vellore Fort. The place even now stands as the site which birthed the first revolt against the Britishers for Indian Independence, in 1806. Vellore Fort is also that very same place where even the greatest, like Tipu Sultan, was held captive by the colonisers. So, the concept of freedom is not new to its walls that stand tall and high even today. In Sathyasiva’s film, the fort multiplies itself as a place of both torture and escape for Sri Lankan refugees. But the curtain walls stand as a barrier for the story that seems to lack redemption after showing the raw agony of the oppressed stripped of emotions, for the sake of the visual narrative.

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Maaran is one of the people taken by the Tamil Nadu police for the investigation. He leaves the camp when his wife Selvi (Lijomol Jose) is pregnant, and years pass by as his daughter gets older to the stage of being aware that her father is not around. The walls of investigation rooms at the Vellore Form reek of brutality and oppression, and we are shown how a non-Tamil inspector is put in charge because a Tamil one would share similar linguistic sentimentality, and perhaps be a little more humane? 

But what Freedom lacks is clarity in what it wants to say. After sequences and episodes of showing visuals of brutality, and milking the traumatic events through visuals of physical torture, it takes a slow start to get to what the story is about--- about how the refugees seek to build their own escape. And just as when the film begins to take the survival thriller route, very little concentration on the execution fumbles the storyline back to basics.

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Freedom relies on the source material, and that is fine, for it is a story of resilience and humankind. But had it purely concentrated on earning some empathy for its characters in the process, the film could have been a much better watch. The slow take off into the story, in this case, how the refugees rely on each other to build an escape route, is pushed far later into the film that the episode does not get its deserved space within the narrative. 

It is also a shame that a talented actor like Lijomol gets seldom space within the movie. It doesn’t restrict with only her, as we see in the inability of the characters to get beyond their one dimensionality, like that of Sudev Nair, who plays a ruthless Malayali cop and that is all we know of him, or Malavika Avinash’s Nirmala, the lawyer who fights for the justice of the refugees but seem to be as incapable to do anything more than the inmates themselves. Freedom lacks a punch, an honesty in its storytelling, and a gripping narrative, thus getting boggled by elements that are unwarranted to the film.

Freedom movie verdict:

Freedom is supposed to be a story that may not have been on people’s memory or radar for long, but definitely one that belongs to a big-screen adaptation. But the film with little to less understanding of its gravitas, missteps into a wrong genre that did not warrant an overdose of physical torture onscreen, but an empathetic portrayal of a story less told. Freedom makes little to no impact with its forced storytelling, unimpactful characterisations, thus making it a forgettable film on an important incident.