A huge appreciation to Shyam Pushkaran for taking the play, “Macbeth” and making it into an intense and gripping story. The movie begins with giving credits to Willam Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The plot of the play is simple, “how greed can turn bad.’ The play, “Macbeth” takes its title from the character who turns greedy for becoming King, similar to that, “Joji” also takes its title from the character who turns greedy as the film proceeds. In literature, taking the title from the title character is known as eponymous

“Joji” is mainly focused on the happenings within a wealthy house in Kottayam. Joji (Fahadh Faasil) is considered a loser by everyone. Not just him, his elder brothers Jomon (Baburaj) and Jaison (Joji Mundakkayam), are all scared of their dad, Kuttappan (P N Sunny). While Jomon is a divorcee, Jaison is married to Bincy (Unnimaya Prasad).

When Joji’s father collapses, his youngest son, Joji, seeks permission to take the car keys for taking his(Joji’s) father to the hospital. Those scenes create a peal of slight laughter, but the truth behind these scenes are horrifying. A strict father who controls the entire family at age of 74 becomes a burdened soul in the entire home. The family is eyeing the share of the wealth that is waiting for them, whenever Kuttappan decides so or when he dies. The family’s reaction when Kuttappan suffers a stroke reveals their true colours.

Spoilers

1. Bincy has the shades of Lady Macbeth. Even after knowing Joji is pursuing his act, she stays calm without informing anyone. In the play, Lady Macbeth motivates Macbeth to kill King Duncan. Here, Bincy just knows what Joji is doing.
2. Instead of Dunsinane Hill, we have a Kerala plantation house but ‘haunted’ enough to breed dark thoughts and darker deeds.
3. There is a symbol flying in the movie. We know white is a symbol of purity. Joji has a white horse. He plans to sell his horse while his father is admitted to the hospital. He successfully sells the horse and earns a hefty amount. The white horse going from him to another can also signify that Joji has lost his innocence. After these scenes only, we find him beginning to be greedy for his father’s wealth.
4. The criminality in “Macbeth” was invoked by the Three Witches Witches’ prophecy and manipulation of Lady Macbeth. But Joji is completely submissive to his father and never has an idea of power until his father becomes bedridden due to a stroke and he sees a chance of fulfilling the dreams.

In the end, Macbeth is stripped of “honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,” all the good things of life that we expect to “accompany old age”. There is a kind of sympathy we feel for Macbeth, even as we know he is wrong. But Joji wants to make another point entirely. In the end, he is vegetative, in a hospital bed, able to respond only with blinks of an eye. The sentiments Joji felt for his own father when he was vegetative, paralyzed. How the murderer begins to look like the murderer; a cruel twist of fate.