Kottukkaali Movie Review by Sucharita Tyagi
Kottukkaali Movie Review by Sucharita Tyagi -
Anna Ben is Meena, Soori Muthuchamy is Pandi. The two are betrothed to each other, we are told for a while, but something seems to have gone wrong, and the marriage cannot proceed. What has happened, you don’t know. The reason behind the halt is then revealed gradually, as both Meena and Pandis familys set out on a road trip, to go to a seer, a Babaji, and rid Meena of the evil spirits that obviously seemed to have possessed her because she refuses to talk or participate in the clownery around her. Clealry she has spent enough time trying to speak her mind, and after all of it falling on deaf ears, you assume she has nothing more to say.
What follows is a wonderfully strange and messy road movie, a format where, by design, the people who depart from the origin point of the journey aren’t quite the same when they arrive at their final destination. The men of the families ride motorcycles, while the women sit inside a rickshaw with Meena, a young boy, and a temperamental rooster piled on top of each other.
Kottukkali then proceeds to explore the intricacies of patriarchal norms not just in rural India but also in our minds. You’re invited to an unhurried, and occasionally laced with-humor exploration of power dynamics, and the struggle for individual autonomy. It quickly morphs from being a simple story about Meena's refusal to marry, into a study of human rigidity – both resilience and stubbornness.
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The Berlin International Film Festival (German: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europe's "Big Three" film festivals alongside the Venice Film Festival held in Italy and the Cannes Film Festival held in France.
Two Indian families are planning the wedding of their daughter Meena and son Pandi. The trouble is: Meena is in love with someone else – what’s more, from a lower caste. The film opens when all is said and done, and the family’s will has left Meena cold. She has lapsed into a monumental silence. Her family can find just one logical explanation for this state of affairs: Meena must be possessed. Once exorcised, nothing can stand in the way of happiness. So the double family party rattles and creaks their way to see a vanquisher of demons. It is a dark tale that gradually unfolds on the side of the road. With all his senses and sharp wit, P.S. Vinothraj’s The Adamant Girl relentlessly retraces the steps of the families’ supposedly righteous violence towards Meena. Again and again, the film shows just how physical the natural order of things really is. Morality, superstition and misogyny are inextricably linked. Who owns whom here seems to have been a foregone conclusion since time immemorial. Only when Pandi realises that magic has no power over Meena, only over him, does the “natural order” fall apart. Folklore-free, hard-hitting and up close.
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