Kottukkaali (‘The Adamant Girl’) unveils yet another tale of gender violence, very much an Indian reality, while depicting a uniquely Indian tool of resistance: nonviolent disobedience. The heroine, Meena, wields silence as her weapon; non-cooperation is what makes her invincible.
Like the South African authorities who were baffled by Gandhi’s Satyagraha, Meena’s relatives seem to say: “You reduce me to sheer helplessness… what am I to do with you” (Making of the Mahatma, directed by Shyam Benegal). She is vilified for falling in love with a presumably lower-caste man despite being betrothed to her maternal cousin, a tradition in place to ensure caste endogamy. Her relatives believe that it is all a rather unfortunate fallout of her being sent to college before marriage. Such nuggets of information are not presented on a platter but gleaned from the conversations happening throughout the movie, captured in sync sound and static framing for a considerable length.
At their wits’ end, concerned family members take Meena to an exorcist. He can ritualistically ‘cure’ any woman from an all-consuming love for the “wrong” man if presented with a rooster to be sacrificed. But Kottukkaali is not about whether Meena indeed gets her way, but about the road trip taken in a decrepit autorickshaw and three two-wheelers to the exorcist, through the verdant but dusty roads of a Tamil Nadu village. It is deliberately self-paced, revealing each little detail until the very last frame. In the course of this journey, the audience are exposed to a world of superstitions and social systems steeped in deep-rooted rituals and rites.
There are women characters who are flag-bearers of patriarchy, reminding us of the complexity of being human, nevertheless choosing to speak their minds. There are policemen, supposed to be upholders of law and order, turning a blind eye to people visiting shamans negating a woman’s right to freedom. There is a humourous sequence where an outraged bull turns into the plaything of a scrawny little girl as if to demonstrate the famous quote from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex: “One is not born, but becomes, a woman”.
A stoic yet suppressed Meena is repeatedly shown in the same frame as the rooster with both legs tied up: too apparent a symbolism for a movie that otherwise respects its viewers’ ability to recognise subtlety. For example, the debasing manner in which a “possessed” woman is being exorcised sharply harks back to the way the tied-up rooster is roughed up by the men to ensure that it is energised enough to be handed over for the ritual. We see not only people from backward or lower classes there but visitors in luxurious cars, with bewildered girls in tow, drawing attention to the universality of women’s oppression.
When Kottukkaali concludes by posing an open-ended question to the audience, at least a few among us may wonder why there is no neat denouement. But it is this plot device that cleverly continues to play on our minds long after the end-credits roll and turns this road movie into essentially an inward journey.
Like director P.S. Vinothraj’s debut movie Koozhangal (‘Pebbles’) that was India’s official entry to the Oscars in 2022, Kottukkaali details women’s trauma vicariously through scenes encountered on the way. But he has ruffled a lot more feathers in the latter, attacking a culture that treats woman as an object, at best a womb. It was the first Tamil film to have premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and has won critical acclaim at many other prestigious festivals.
Mollywood actor Anna Ben has done an excellent job as Meena, the woman who remains unfazed by violent masculinity. She is silent, but her gaze is never vacant and is at times even playful. Soori feels every bit the raw village man, Pandi, his fragile ego injured by the woman who was destined to be nothing but an inferior wife. While all the cast members have rendered their parts with efficacy, especially poignant are the characters of Meena’s parents. Their repressed emotions as the parents of a problematic girl child are portrayed quite sensitively.
Interestingly, the theatrical release of the film coincides with the re-release of Manichithrathaazhu, the 1993 Malayalam psychological thriller that was remade as Chandramukhi (2005) in Tamil and Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) in Hindi. The film employs exorcism as a plot point to purge the heroine of a possessed spirit. However, this time the film has sparked discussions about suppressing a woman’s natural urges by way of archaic rituals and Kottukkaali perfectly complements such conversations.
The film comes at a time when an official report to study the condition of women in the neighbouring Malayalam film industry has been raking up a storm. Movies like Kottukkaali, leaving no ambiguity about the gender debate, have to be celebrated for raising the right questions.
