Religion vs content.
This is an age-old issue where film industries around the world have been fighting against various religious communities over the topic of content, for a century. In 2021 alone, thanks to Saif Ali Khan’s political flop series ‘Tandav’, we have been forced to wait over 3 months for the release of the much anticipated second season of ‘The Family Man’ after Amazon Prime Video took the show out to check for any religion “lashing”, which ‘Tandav’ apparently did with the Hindu religion. And now, the release of the Malayalam thriller, ‘Aquarium’ have been put on hold by the High Court of Kerala after two nuns filed a complaint about the film’s depiction of their religion.
The trailer for the aforementioned ‘Aquarium‘ dropped on multiple social media sites, last week which was done by Saina Cinemas and the film was expected to premiere on the Malayalam OTT platform, Saina Play. The trailer shows the arrival of a nun at an isolated Catholic church in a rural region. The nun loves her new church but soon finds herself clashing with the nun in charge. She’s told to find a “group” to follow as being alone in a place like this is not good for her. But she finds herself isolated and eventually starts to do all her rituals by herself. As time passes, she finds that there are priests and nuns at the church who are engaging in blasphemous activities. The film appears to be a thriller of some kind, an the the film looks interesting. The trailer mentioned is available at the end of this article.
The depictions of the priests and the nuns are what upset the two nuns who filed the complaint. Creative licence should be allowed when telling a story because of what movies are – just stories. Besides this movie and ‘Tandav’ series, films like ‘Jodha Akbar’ and ‘Padmaavat’ have all come under fire for hurting religious sensitivities, when they were coming out. Compared to the multiple atrocious acts done by (and in the name of) religion around the world in the last century alone, literary licences should be the least important thing people should be concentrating on when talking about atrocities committed against a religion.
The High Court for the time being has upheld the complaint and held the May 14th release of the film for the time being, as mentioned previously. The film cannot be released without the court’s verdict and that will likely put this film on hold for a few months, at least.
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