Vaazhai (Tamil Movie)
The portrayal of socially oppressed (and exploitation of those by the powerful) in cinema presents a minefield of double-edged challenges around ethics. How can filmmakers attain and maintain a respectfully realistic, emotional tone without indulging in ‘miserablism’ or condescending to their subjects less fortunate than they are?
Tamil filmmaker Mari Selvaraj has shown, that he could successfully walk that tightrope through his three previous movies — Pariyerum Perumal, Karnan, and Maamannan. In Vaazhai, (which Mari Selvaraj in his recent interviews has said is the movie he has been wanting to make and now that he has, he feels his job as a moviemaker is complete), Mari Selvaraj makes a film about how a childhood comes to a stop in its tracks — not just any childhood, to be precise, his own childhood.
In Mari Selvaraj’s films, the politics isn’t just personal — it’s deeply intentional. His stories aren’t some loose ideas left to chance to evolve into screenplays, but they are meticulously crafted narratives where every beat serves a purpose. Every natural element — the sun, the moon, the darkness, paints a metaphor. Every animal, every bird, and every insect and worm narrates an emotion. And Vaazhai maybe his most atmospheric film yet.
There is green everywhere. Green dominates the frame, swallowing its characters until they’re nearly lost in the vastness. The people become like the flat millepedes we glimpse in a few scenes — small, nearly invisible against the sprawling fields, plantations, hills, and endless banana fields. The whole setting feels sso erene, a place where you’d imagine only a beautiful life could thrive. But that tranquility masks the underlying violence and injustice, hiding the loss of innocence and an entire childhood beneath the lush greenery.
Vaazhai is a visually compelling film with cinematography by Theni Eswar. You realize a few minutes into the film how Mari and Eswar have used wide shots of sprawling fields to blur the harsh realities of the characters’ lives. The filmmaker masterfully uses these lush greens to reveal how fertility can be deceiving. Mari Selvaraj’s signature connection with animals remains a constant in all his films and more so in Vaazhai— a dog, a cow, the worms, a hen, the goats, the birds, and a chameleon — all reminding us of a life intertwined with nature. Suriya Pradhaman, the editor is equally remarkable. With cuts between black & white and color, and smooth transitions, he seamlessly enhances the film’s gradual development of our attachment to the characters.
The warmth and camaraderie of the first half, filled with boyhood playfulness, puppy love, cinema, and the taunting Rajini-Kamal rivalry between friends, naturally give way to a tense and brutal climax. The last 20 minutes may be one of the best payoffs I have seen in Tamil movies in a long time. It’s shocking, saddening, and ironically cathartic — all at the same time.
Vaazhai opens with young Sivanaindhan (brilliantly played by Ponvel) frantically searching for something and our minds race in different directions. I grew up not so far away from the villages of Puliyankulam, so I could guess right away what the call “Mbaa” was and what he was looking for. That is the call of cow herders. They use that phrase to specifically call out cattle who have separated from the herd or when it is time to pack up. But for most who are not familiar with the call of cow herders, the question would be..What’s he looking for? Why toss banana stalks into the water? We start to imagine the themes we expect in a Mari film.
At its heart, Vaazhai is a striking portrayal of resilience. Sivanaindhan is a natural-born rebel, resisting the burden of hauling plantains like his poor family does and like many of his neighboring families do. He is one of those children who finds refuge at school, not only because he is the only kid in the class who passes his exams, but also because it keeps him away from the job in the fields. He is determined to break free from this monotonous cycle and he keeps finding clever ways to escape. Despite being warned by Sekar (R Raghul) to steer clear of his crush on their beloved teacher Poonkodi (Nikhila Vimal), he keeps returning to her, evoking memories of our own innocent childhood. But will this defiant spark be enough to help him escape the fate looming over his life?
In Vaazhai, the heartache of the underprivileged who are exploited is on such interminable display that you feel an emotional pain and the physical hurt in your bones when you witness these boys with wry necks and sore shoulders. But the manner in which the filmmaker renders these pains somehow doesn’t feel exploitative or gratuitous — there is a nuanced matter-of-factness even in Mari Selvaraj’s empathy that prevents it to ever become pity. If anything, writer/director’s choice to unveil the story to us through Sivanaindhan’s point of view makes the whole experience “lived” as opposed to forced upon us.
Vaazhai revolves around the forces of nature, the depth of love, and the harshness of human cruelty. We get to witness through Sivanaindhan’s eyes how the innocence preserved and gained during his childhood is gradually lost to struggle at an uncomprehending age. In a film that showcases Mari at his most commercially accessible, Vaazhai essentially raises many existential questions — from normalizing child labor to fighting for rights and so on. While this film may feel like a lighter watch compared to his earlier works, it still centers on the systemic oppression of a community and the swift suppression of any resistance. Yet, the film takes a different approach by primarily unfolding through the eyes of children.
The songs of Vaazhai worked for me before I watched the film. But while watching the film, I felt that the songs in general, especially a couple of them, did slow down the narrative. Santhosh Narayanan’s background score was brilliant overall, but maybe it could have been muted in parts, and they could have let silence and brilliant performances of these actors convey the needed emotions to us. Some stretches of the movie could have been less melodramatic but that is a compromise Mari Selvaraj chose to make in order to make this film more commercially viable. But these are not complaints. Just minor gripes. The performances of all other actors are also spot on — Janaki as the mother, Dhivya as Vembu, Kalaiyarasan as Kani — they all do a lot of heavy lifting of the right emotions throughout the movie when the camera is not on Ponvel and Raghul.
With Vaazhai, Mari Selvaraj has cemented his place as one of the premier documentarians and filmmakers in Tamil cinema. The more I listen to him in interviews, I see him as a writer with a wealth of stories in his heart and a passionate mind to tell them. The question in future will be, if the director in him can continue to do justice to the writer in him.
Vaazhai, in my opinion, is Mari Selvaraj’s own Children of Heaven, or perhaps Children of Puliyankulam. But if you ask him, he would not agree. For him, Vaazhai is simply a cathartic process of digging deep into a dark corner of his mind, which he needed to flush out of his system, and give it an artistic form and shape.
