Despite some “Tamil-film compromises”, Mari Selvaraj’s ‘Vaazhai’ is a work of terrifying cinematic beauty

The buildup to the climax is simply extraordinary. This is one of the best passages of cinema I have seen in recent times. 

There’s a remarkable “short story” in Mari Selvaraj’s Vaazhai, and it begins in the second half, when a school teacher named Poongodi (Nikhila Vimal) asks a boy named Sivanaindhan (Ponvel) to come for dance practice on a Saturday, for a programme during the annual day. The way this seemingly innocent incident builds and builds – and builds and builds towards the climax is simply extraordinary. It has the happiness of skipping daily-wage work at a plantain farm. It has the sadness of hunger that goes on, because every time the boy finds food, he is not allowed to sit down and eat. It has irony – because the daily-wage labourers eat heartily, and had Sivanaindhan gone with them, as his mother asked him to, his stomach would have been fed, especially as his mother packed two meals for him. He is caught stealing and is punished. Then there’s death, lots of death. This is one of the best passages of cinema I have seen in recent times.

The story of Vaazhai is based on true events, and it opens with Sivanaindhan in distress. Something is terribly wrong. He’s weeping. He’s limping. He keeps yelling, and we don’t hear human words – all we hear is an animalistic sound. Usually, when a film opens this way, it’s the writer or director’s way of starting with a high, on a heavy dramatic note so that we are instantly hooked. That is certainly the case here, but this is also a “false climax”. The resolution to this drama occurs around midpoint, and some people in the audience may say: “Is that all?” But a couple of things are happening here. One, Sivanaindhan’s family is being pushed deeper into poverty. (This is the gentlest, most humanistic interval block in a while.) And two, being poor means that the boy has to spend his weekends as a daily wage earner like his sister and mother, carrying plantain loads on their heads between the farm and the truck that will take this produce to the market.

This is the 1990s, in a village named Karunkulam, and the period is marked by references to Ramarajan, Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, and Vijay’s Poove Unakkaga. Normally, kids look forward to weekends. But Sivanaindhan likes school, and he is a good student. He does not want to be a daily-wage earner. We have heard of kids playing truant, skipping school – but here, it is the reverse situation. Sivanaindhan wants to go to school and play truant at the banana plantation. This is a story told through Sivanaindhan’s eyes, and he sees everything. He sees how much in debt his mother is. He sees how much like his father the character played by Kalaiyarasan is. The young man is named Kani, and he speaks of oppression and exploitation and low wages, and we see that Sivanaindhan’s father was a card-carrying Communist. Even the conflict between Kani and his employer is introduced to us through Sivanaindhan, and soon after, when he is chased from the scene, we move to another scene instead of returning to what happened in that conflict.

There is one part of Vaazhai that some of us may never fully understand, because it is so autobiographical. A constant sense of guilt hangs over the film, and a part of it may be survivor’s guilt. Also, Poongodi is a reincarnation of the kind teacher from Pariyerum Perumal. Like in Karnan, we get a constant sense of the local gods watching these happenings. So the film is autobiographical even from Mari Selvaraj’s cinema point of view. We get the many shots of nature, the many insects and birds and animals, the shifts between black and white and colour, the symbolic use of a door (like the symbolic use of the bus in Karnan). Theni Eswar’s cinematography is so attuned to the mood of the movie, so harsh and realistic, that when we get a “composed shot” – like two boys being reflected in a puddle, or a soft sunset – it looks like it belongs in a different film.

Vaazhai is a good movie, and the world-building is fantastic. But what holds it back from becoming a truly great film is the melodrama, and the typical Tamil-film elements that seem to have been inserted to make the story a little more mainstream, a little easier to swallow. Santhosh Narayanan’s songs are excellent – it’s his best album in a while. But on screen, the songs are big speed-breakers. His background score is huge, when a minimalistic approach might have been more appropriate. Like Theni Eswar’s cinematography, I wished the score had been “invisible”. It’s fun to see Sivanaindhan and his best friend Sekar (Raghul), but the scenes with Poongodi teacher go on and on. This takes away from the film’s intensity. Take a stretch involving a handkerchief. This bit is spread over six or seven scenes: between Sivanaindhan and Sekar, between two teachers, between Sivanaindhan and his sister, between Sivanaindhan and Poongodi…

These scenes may have worked better had these characters been less one-note. I loved how Sivanaindhan’s mother (Janaki) was written. She is a multifaceted woman. We see her grief in front of her dead husband’s photo. We see how she resolves a money situation using her earrings. We see her body weakened with fever. And we see why she wants her son, her eighth-standard son, to carry loads of plantains at the farm. Yes, his neck is getting bent because of this labour. But she says, “He needs to know how to work.” These lines sound more powerful in Tamil: “Uzhaikka theriyanum.” Janaki is excellent, as is Ponvel as Sivanaindhan. The boy has deeply expressive eyes, and his performance is so lived-in that “acting” seems an inadequate word for it. There is a fantastic edit when Sivanaindhan is lost in his black-and-white frames, and we cut to his mother and sister carrying their loads at the farm. The cut says so much about the emotions the boy is feeling. Even if Sivanaindhan is not physically present, we see his “point of view” through such cinematic decisions.

The love angle between Kani and Sivanaindhan’s sister has no flavour, but the biggest flaw in the film is the depiction of a  major tragedy. We have already seen the results of this tragedy – and it’s a brilliant, brilliant stretch where death and hunger and guilt and agony all seem jumbled into one giant existential mess. So when this tragedy is actually shown – as a cut-away – it violates the rule that most things are what Sivanaindhan has seen or felt. This takes us away from his point of view. And two, the huge (and very typical) melodrama diminishes the pain of the moment. But if these are the commercial “Tamil film” compromises needed to bring this story to screen, we really shouldn’t be complaining. The “short story” in the second half of Vaazhai is a thing of true power and terrifying cinematic beauty. Most people in the theatre I saw the movie in sat through the sad song that plays over the end credits. It isn’t easy to get up and go. The film stays with you, and you want to stay with it for as long as you can.