Kottukkaali Movie Review — Berlinale 2024 — Sucharita Tyagi
One of the most powerful performances I saw at the Berlinale was Anna Ben’s portrayal in the Tamil film Kottukkali.
You know how many lines of dialogue she has in the film? One.
Come, I’ll tell you.
Anna Ben is Meena, and 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 Pandi’s families 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. Clearly, 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.
Vinothraj’s sympathies lie definitively with Meena, the girl who is too angry to speak with anyone, defeated yet undefeated in her own way. When the people in Meena’s life fail her, the very flora and fauna of their surroundings begin to conspire to delay her eventual fate, if not permanently alter it. A little fly that goes into Pandi’s eye causes him to lose control momentarily, a giant bull stops them on the road, which on any other occasion would be seen as a sign of god’s blessings but today, in the face of man’s ego, is just another annoying animal, and the rooster itself tries to cause a dramatic diversion by pretending to die at one point. And mind you, none of this is magic realism; these aren’t anthropomorphic animals, just beings of nature who can hear Meena’s pain when she herself doesn’t have the words to describe it to humans around her.
The humans are more bestial. When Meena refuses to get out of the rickshaw in a scene, the men lift the vehicle and turn it around with brute force. The camera takes its time to focus on each yelling face, capturing the pervasive power of patriarchy wielded without restraint. The small rickshaw becomes the world is spun on its axis by systems created by men, for men, of which some women, who you can only see through the rear window once the rickshaw comes to a halt after the spinning, become the unfortunate foot soldiers. For the women of these families in particular, their training in caste oppression comes in handy, making them dig their own graves, one day at a time. Their compliance heralds their own downfall.
In another scene, the procession crosses another one. With huge pomp and show, a different family walks down the street celebrating a “puberty function”. In the eyes of Vinothraj, who by this point has become the eyes of Meena herself, it’s a grotesque display of the commodification of women’s bodies. A man is heard saying on a loudspeaker, “My rights as maternal uncle began the day my niece was born.” RIGHTS. There, of course, is no mention of the mother or the niece herself. No one questions. Meena continues to watch silently, as the rickshaw rides on.
Anna Ben’s portrayal of Meena is a tour de force, with her character’s only line of dialogue, “they’re not just beating me,” resonating long after the credits roll. Through her constantly watching eyes, we witness the relentless struggle for agency in a world where individuality is sacrificed at the altar of tradition. She is so devoid of agency, her body doesn’t feel like her own to her. She looks out the window and imagines herself as a lone woman with long black hair billowing in the wind, walking away by herself, a knowing smile on her face. Almost resigned to her fate, Meena’s hope lies only in disassociation.
Through Pandi, Kottukkali challenges the viewer to confront their own beliefs and prejudices. Pandi is an unpredictable character; you never know when his heart will soften and when his anger will burst forth, and Soori plays him with a deliberate air of mystery. What you do know, looking at this guy who himself doesn’t quite have the words to express how HE thinks he has been wronged, is that change is not just inevitable but essential, and that true liberation will come from the powerful challenging the status quo. These thoughts lingered in my mind long after the screen cut to black, and I can only hope that when you also get to watch Kottukkaali, you are also gripped by the same unsettling tension.
