‘Declaration’ Review: A Compromising Video Exposes Patriarchy and Corruption in This Standout Indian Drama

The COVID-19 pandemic serves as backdrop for filmmaker Mahesh Narayanan to explore the fragile male ego in “Declaration,” an austere Indian drama that’s as far away from the macho posturing of the country’s robust commercial film industry as one can imagine. Set in the dead of winter, the film spends most of its time at a factory in India’s National Capital Region (Delhi and its surroundings) where medical latex gloves are manufactured, following married couple Hareesh (Kunchacko Boban) and Reshmi (Divya Prabha) as they go about their respective tasks of driver and product tester.

A video with footage of Reshmi intercut with an unidentified woman performing a sex act emerges, spreading rapidly in the closed world of the factory, and the hitherto pleasant facade of Hareesh rapidly alters as he loses faith in his wife’s fidelity. The couple are already strangers in a strange land, being emigrants to north India from the southern state of Kerala, who are looking to move abroad, and the video puts further pressure on them. Adding to their discomfort is their discovery of a scam in the factory, where used gloves are substituted for real ones.

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Narayanan, a veteran editor with more than 60 credits, explores seemingly different genres with each new outing, ranging from survival thriller “Take Off” to human trafficking drama “C U Soon” to mafia epic “Malik,” though each of these projects shares a focus on themes of personal struggle. Narayanan hails from Kerala, where a division exists between the rampant patriarchy that permeates society and the attitudes of a more sensitive film industry, reflected in so many of the movies made there, from Narayanan’s own work to that of his contemporaries, including “How Old Are You?,” “Uyare” and “The Great Indian Kitchen,” to name just three. Here, the director presents yet another personal struggle, powerfully interweaving that with a critique of the sexist system at large.

Boban, a marquee star in Kerala who has evolved over the years from romances and comedies to dramatic roles, also serves as producer. Unlike in other Indian film industries, where star-produced films are often vehicles to further an actor’s image, Boban has no hesitation in portraying an increasingly unlikable and conflicted character as he grows convinced that his wife is the woman in the video. In this, he is perfectly complemented by Prabha, whose character is shown as morally superior to him and in that sense has the more sympathetic role, despite being every bit as conflicted as her husband with her own share of human frailty. The vein of corruption depicted in the film serves to highlight Hareesh’s moral ambiguity and Reshmi’s resolve, while the alien (to the protagonists) and foggy environs of wintry northern India add to the sense of the characters’ physical and mental dislocation.

High drama this isn’t. “Declaration” is a sober piece of cinema that lays out its themes gradually without judgment, even while depicting corruption in the manufacture of vital personal protective equipment that could potentially result in more deaths in a country already devastated by COVID-19 deaths. The film makes a virtue of routine and gradual variations from it, with the only constant being the mesmeric images of latex gloves on the assembly line, which goes on moving inexorably as the people around them diminish.

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