The crux of Kuttram Kadithal , which was recognised as the Best Feature Film in Tamil at the National Awards this year, is the blurring of the line between religion and humanity — rather, the blind belief in a higher power versus the more rational belief that humankind is capable of many of the things (retribution, absolution) we often associate with God, and is therefore as worthy as being worshipped. The latter was the credo of some Communists, most famously Maxim Gorky — indeed, his Mother is explicitly referenced here.
It’s not just the number of long-suffering mothers in this movie — the wife (Durga Venugopal) of a school principal; the auto-driving mother (Sathya) of one of the children (Chezhiyan, played by Master Ajay, whose impishness is irresistible) at that school; the devout mother of Merlin (Radhika Prasiddha) who is first seen handing out religious pamphlets; or even Merlin herself, who has just married Manikandan (Sai Rajkumar). Our first glimpse of the couple is in a beautifully written romantic scene — he asks her when she’s going to give him children (put differently, when she will become a... mother). Consider Merlin’s profession too. As schoolteacher, she is, in a way, essentially a ‘mother’ to a number of children.
But more importantly, like the Gorky novel, this film is a call for revolution — the battleground, so to speak, is the school system. Or perhaps even the System. A key early scene belongs to Udayan (Pavel Navageethan; and what a coincidence that the actor’s name is that of a character in Mother), a hot-headed but fair-minded Communist who is Chezhiyan’s uncle. A car knocks down a spindly old man. Udayan, who witnesses the accident, refuses the bribe from the owner of the car. Instead, he demands another kind of compensation, that the ‘rich man’ drive the ‘poor man’ to the hospital, stay with him through the course of treatment, and bring him back to this very spot. This is a different kind of God from the one Merlin’s mother worships, but he’s doing some of the same things — meting out punishment for a kuttram (sin), and ensuring that justice prevails. And so that we don’t miss the Gorky connection, Udayan is seen reading Thaai , the Tamil translation of Mother.
These abstractions are rendered concrete through a story that revolves around Chezhiyan. The director Bramma takes his time to draw us in, and at first, we just see various people — Merlin and Manikandan; Merlin’s mother; the principal (Kulothungan) and his wife; Udayan — doing seemingly disconnected things. These portions are wonderful. And over the Kaalai nila song, all these threads (and all these people) converge. This is fine filmmaking. It immerses us in its world.
The other immersion is in the world above, signs of which are everywhere. It’s there in the words on a sticker on a truck’s windshield, and in the principal’s invocation of aandavan . It’s there in the image of the crucifix inside Merlin’s cupboard, and in the cross reflected in the mirror of a scooter. (In a rather overblown directorial touch — and there a quite a few, like one with a plastic bag — we see the ‘Objects in the mirror are closer...’ warning; God maybe closer than you think.) It’s there in Udayan’s threat to Merlin’s mother that he’s not the kind to “turn the other cheek”. It’s there in the physician who dismisses a nurse when she declares the outcome of a surgery as “miraculous” — as a man of Science, he is the healer, he is God. And it’s there in Merlin’s guilt, when she gets into serious trouble.
Up to a point, Bramma exhibits superb control. His reveals are slow; he trusts the audience. The actors are marvellous — it’s hard to single out anyone, but Sathya’s pinched face broke my heart. And Bramma is careful not to take sides. The film boils down to a battle between Merlin and Udayan (or the sides of God and Man-as-God), and Bramma keeps things on an even keel.
But somewhere in the second half, Bramma loses his grip and runs out of things to do. He keeps delaying the inevitable (it’s not hard to guess, given the religious nature of the film) — and we keep killing time with a koothu performance and a detour at a shady-looking lodge. There are surely better ways to portray the unravelling of Merlin’s mind than to have her run away and set a panic-stricken Manikandan in pursuit.
These melodramatic contrivances belong in a different movie. It’s almost as if these stretches were supervised by a different director, one who decided to abandon all the subtlety and restraint shown so far and get all message-y with a megaphone, with a solo violin sawing away in the soundtrack. A scene in a cafe between a journalist and an IT professional is a particular low point. For some reason, our filmmakers just can’t think of new ideas when it comes to depicting the media. The press-conference ending is a disgrace. It’s true that Mother isn’t just a story, it’s propaganda too. But novels have many, many pages and a lot of interiority. Trying to achieve similar ends in a couple of hours makes one look less like a filmmaker than a pamphleteer.
A version of this review can be read at baradwajrangan.wordpress.com
