Spoilers ahead…
The film plays like a revenge story mixed with a mockumentary, and. The eco-issues spoken about are all too real. But the treatment is surreal.
The best thing about Krishand’s new film, Aavasavyuham, is its English title: “The Arbit Documentation Of An Amphibian Hunt”. It describes so well what’s about to follow, the hunt for an amphibian that is told in a deliberately arbitrary way. The basic template is one that we know from popular cinema: this is a revenge story. One man kills another. The latter’s family sets out to kill this killer. But the template of the narrative is what we know from non-mainstream cinema: this is a kind of mockumetary, filled with narrations of people who knew the killer, and this lends the film a loose sort of Rashomon effect. The eco-issues spoken about are all too real. But the treatment is surreal. The result is a brilliant subversion of both form and content.
You can read the rest of the review here:
https://www.galatta.com/malayalam/movie/review/avasavyuham/
And you can watch the video review here:
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Baradwaj Rangan 
ItsVerySimple
August 8, 2022
Thank you for writing about this film, BR, would have missed this otherwise.
It is rare, for me, to be this excited about a film while watching it. The strengths, weaknesses, what works, what doesn’t work – all can be analyzed in leisure but the sheer adrenaline rush of watching this film, its terrific actors, how it unfolds confidently defying any sort of category – a very unique project. Glad this film won the state award – you could see what Adoor was ranting about.
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