P.S. Vinthoraj’s second feature film, Kottukkaali (‘The Adamant Girl’) ends with a question for its audience, which reminded me of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Bawarchi. Starring Rajesh Khanna, the 1972 film ends with the narrator (none other than Amitabh Bachchan) saying: “And thus, Raghu (Khanna) left in search of the next quarrelling household. We hope it won’t be yours.” A social drama like Mukherjee’s, Vinthoraj’s film evokes the innocence of films from five decades ago (such prescriptive endings might be considered cheesy in today’s times). It also depicts the refinement in the form of these films. While Mukherjee’s contemporaries believed in dialogue, filmmakers like Vinothraj have embraced the visual form of storytelling.
Kottukkaali begins with a long wordless scene, where we see a woman praying at a roadside sanctum. Even through all the ambient sounds of a village waking up, asa woman walks back to her house with the camera following her around daybreak, we hear her whimpers. Why is she crying? Why was she pleading with God, a few moments ago? As she makes her way home — we see her daughter, Meena (Anna Ben), sitting like a corpse. It might seem like she’s been overpowered into submission, and yet a certain kind of defiance rumbles within her. Ben’s resigned death stare might just be one of the finest, single-emotion performances on screen.
With Meena in the red corner, we have Pandi (Soori) in the blue corner. Kottukkaali might not seem like a boxing match on the surface, but it’s a slugfest of ideals, conditioning and agency. As we saw in Vinothraj’s debut feature, Koozhangal (‘Pebbles’), the joys of his seemingly sparse, straight-forward films lie in the mundane revelations. Pandi and Meena were supposed to get married. He lived away from the village, and she fell in love with someone else. Not just that, the boy was from a different caste. From the looks of it, she’s been intimidated to the point where she has shut down. She speaks to no one, preserving every ounce of strength to fight for her dignity. Despite everyone around her pleading with her to ‘mend’ her ways, Meena resists.
An intriguing choice on Vinothraj’s part, is how the film never adopts Meena’s point-of-view — she’s always seen from outside like a foreign specimen. It gets closer into Pandi’s mind though — wrestling with the betrayal from his to-be wife, stewing in his unhinged rage that his possession (his future partner) doesn’t belong to him by default, and exhibits attributes of a free-thinking person. But Pandi’s misogyny alone doesn’t encapsulate him, he has a few more shades. Vinothraj emphasises these with slight touches, when he hides the cigarette as Meena walks past him – hinting at a man raised on values to not smoke in front of women.
During the film’s final stretch — when Meena and all her extended family are in front of a seer, who ‘cures’ disobedient women – we see Pandi wandering around with hurt in his eyes. Right before Meena, when Pandi sees the way the seer humiliates a lifeless, “morally corrupt” woman, shakes him. Despite his social conditioning, Pandi recognises what is happening in front of him is not right. This, despite Pandi having had a full-blown meltdown in the film [a shocking scene] when he beats Meena, her mother, his sisters, the men who try to shield them, and even tells Meena’s father to hang himself for giving birth to a ‘dishonourable’ daughter.
The film has some obvious symbolism, like when Meena sees a rooster with her feet tied to a piece of rock. Then there’s the sight of an aggressive bull, a mirror image of the ‘brave’ men trying to ‘cure’ Meena’s dissent. A stream continues to flow on the side as Pandi raises hell. One can almost imagine Vinothraj watching mother nature observe and judge human beings and their disingenuous codes and ethics. As Meena is taken to the seer’s retreat, another family exits the place in a luxury car. The symbolism might be a bit blatant, but I didn’t mind it because Vinthoraj’s film has the purity and idealism of a diploma film (I mean it in the best way possible).
In its final moments, Vinothraj film turns to Pandi’s point-of-view, almost trying to transport us into his shoes and see what the whole circus for the last 100 mins has eventually culminated into. It’s a masterstroke by a promising filmmaker, during which the screen ceases to exist and we’re almost standing in the film, just before Meena suffers the indignities at the hands of the seer. What would we do in such a situation? Remain spectators or intervene?
As the film fades to black and the end credits roll with no accompanying sound, I imagined Vinothraj expecting his audience to wallow in the question in the dark, for a bit longer. Unfortunately, in the multiplex where I watched the film, the lights came up only a few seconds later. There was already a commotion of ushers opening exit doors, awaiting the audience to leave the theatre in an orderly fashion. The phones started to ring, I heard a few giggles through what was supposed to be a quiet, solemn moment (at least, according to the director’s design). I’m afraid Vinothraj’s meticulous planning wasn’t as successful and not for a lack of trying.
We, as a society, aren’t ready to wrestle with films that reflect our unflattering selves. We’re not ready for the uncomfortable questions posed by the likes of P.S Vinothraj. So we’ll giggle at memes, disappear into our mobiles to read the latest celebrity gossip, run to the food court and buy some cheap dopamine. Anything that steers us away from having to stare into the abyss.
*Kottukkaali (The Adamant Girl) premiered at the 2024 Berlinale, and is playing in theatres now.