The central idea around which this anthology revolves is easy to guess – ‘Honour’. Paava Kadhaigal explores four stories where the idea of honour is challenged when love traverses the boundaries of gender, caste and sexuality and how it has a toll on the lives of the people falling on either sides of the spectrum. This anthology streaming on Netflix brings four of the most sought after directors in present day Kollywood. The episodes directed by Sudha Kongara, Vignesh Shivn, Gautam Menon and Vetrimaran respectively, has a terrific cast who otherwise are forced to be in “commercial” zone.
Thangam
“Thangam”, directed by Sudha Kongara, touches upon the ill-treatment of trans people and how their lives have always been a struggle navigating through the insensitivity of the gender binary world. Despite the affirmative actions by the state, we keep hearing their plight that often goes neglected, where the society keeps discriminating and oppressing this section of people.
This short revolves around the life of one such person and shows how the feelings and voice of such people are equally important in today’s society. It is about the ‘honour’ of two families getting impacted by a trans. Kalidas Jayaram as Sathaar was shockingly terrific as a transgender. The body language, the voice modulation, the makeup and dressing, all made it look so believable and very realistic too. Shantanu as Thangam was very pleasant to watch, was a great support to Sathaar. Although ‘Thangam’ is central to the story, ‘Shantanu’ doesn’t have much scope to perform. The real ‘Thangam’ turns out to be Sathaar. Or probably that was the intention behind the filmmaker. The poetic justice that gets served at the end does leave an impact.
Love Panna Utranum
If it was gender that confronted honour in ‘Thangam’, this short, directed by Vignesh Shivan, is about sexuality and honour. Here the genre itself did not conform to the strict genre categorization of movies. It tries too much to be in a quirky, dark comedy category and a tragic drama at the same time. Anjali as the twins who fall in love with people who they are not supposed to leads to the father being invariably stubborn about the whole love thing happening in his own backyard. It was brilliant when they showed how the father was shown to be “accepting” inter-caste marriages on the outside but is also the leader of the group that kills them off due to the same reason.
The scenes could have been a bit more coherent with respect to their arrangement, the twin sister bonding did not come out well even after what happened to the first sister, probably did not have much time to establish it. The characters were not interacting with intent, and the father character was utterly non-expressive.
And, with Kalki Koechlin as Penelope being the person who sees the whole thing from the outside, she was shown to be the progressive and open in nature (which is the only character she has been playing all her life), but she felt completely out of place with respect to comfort and language. Just a couple of uncensored bad words, an uncensored kiss and a give-it-back message to the sinner doesn’t make this movie the best, it could have been much much better. The most ridiculous part is where the father becomes a rapper.
Vaanmagal
This short, directed by Gautam Vasudev Menon, is about the child rapes, and how much of a pressing issue this has been all around the country, and to see this horrendous crime affecting the person so badly that it puts them in an horrific state of mind is something that has to be taken very seriously. Also, it explores subtly how women are perpetuators of purity and the honour resulting out of it. But, it breaks the taboo surrounding the discourse about these subjects. There is no ‘oppressor’ vs. ‘oppressed’ dialectics in viewing patriarchy and honour.
Gautam Menon, as the father Sathya, looks to be brilliantly written on paper but failed to do so in the movie. The line “I feel naked in front of my own daughter” hits your gut so hard that you feel for all the fathers that would have gone through this particular situation. And, how the father feels impossible to face her daughter fearing that his girl would see all the men, including him, as monsters. The way whole setup to the “event” on how the elder daughter has become an adult through the natural course of life, but the younger one has been “forced” to become an adult was particularly brilliant.
Even though we see Gautam Menon exploring uncharted waters with respect to stories and characterization, there wasn’t even an ounce of expression on his face with all that was going on, and even worse his eyes were blank, pitch dark blank which brings out a fact about how comfortable he has been with that uber-cool urban guy in his stories and his characterization.
Simran as Mathi is at her best in this short. The mother’s obsession to cleanliness and how it affects her when her daughter has been made “dirty” was hard hitting, and how expressive she has been even after all these years was just brilliant to watch.
Personally, felt the “Althotta Bhoopathi” dialogue felt very disrespectful to the actress whose very song was one of the most celebrated ones in her career.
Oor Iravu
Let’s save the best for the last, and that’s what the producers and the Netflix people would have thought too. Vetrimaran’s “Oor Iravu” is as brilliant as the director himself. Probably, the only short that took the theme and sensibilities of the “Pavam” to the serious extents to leave us devastated. Even though the short is just around 40 minutes, it felt like the time was going slower than it was, which was probably due to the build-up and the tension that the scenes create. This was similar to how the “ticking” sound in Interstellar created a sense of unrest, here the scenes in itself cause a stir inside us, you could well cut the tension with a knife. We kind of know how this is going to end, but we do not want that “event” to come sooner than it is supposed to.
We feel a strange surge of morbidity on the face of Prakash Raj’s character as the father throughout the short and he does that with so much grit that he just has that one split-second to kind of regret the sin but immediately gets back to that morbid state inferring to the state he has been for the last two years since his most favourite daughter had left them all for love.
And, the other best part of the short is Sai Pallavi, to beat that “morbidity”, she brings out that “struggle” with a terrific performance. The “struggle” is just gut wrenching to watch and it even feels so close to us because of the dialogues during those moments. One cannot imagine someone going through those moments, cannot even watch on screen, let alone to see it with such “morbidity” in person by her own father. Sai Pallavi is an actress that we would need to protect by frequently giving her such intricate stories, and not give her stories that require her fighting because of an unusual perfume smell on her husband.
The fact that such themes have been taken due to the OTT platform allowing it is in itself a great step towards telling these realistic stories that the majority of the directors have not been able to take up. This opens doors to the parallel cinema that our industry has been devoid of all these years.