Paava Kadhaigal: Netflix’s intense anthology makes you emotional
Ever since I heard about this anthology, I was eagerly waiting for it. The combination of the directors Netflix collaborated with, and their theme made me excited about it.
Disclaimer: This content contains spoilers. Continue reading if you have seen the anthology on Netflix. Not recommended to sensitive people.
I have seen one interview of Baradwaj Rangan with the team during the trailer launch coming to the anthology. Vetri said he wanted to have his part as a conversation between a father and his daughter for 30min, which later turned out to be an intense story.
The anthology’s title song has depicted a human’s responsibility — We take birth, grow up, get married, have kids, and again they repeat the same, but of a girl child. We live in a society where people abort if the kid is found out to be a girl, command them throughout their life as if they don’t have a brain in every aspect.
I happened to watch Sudha’s “Thangam” first, followed by Vignesh’s “Love Panna Uttranum,” Gautam’s “Vaanmagal,” and finally Vetri’s “Oor Iravu.” If you take my suggestion, watch Vignesh’s part at the last and Vetri’s before Gautam’s part. You’ll know why, if you have already seen it.
Coming to Sudha’s “Thagam,” it is a story of love, sacrifice, honor killing, being inclusive, respecting people’s choices incredibly performed by Kalidas Jayaram. Kalidas plays a trans character who loves his childhood buddy, Saravanan, played by Shanthnu. Saravanan loves Sattar’s sister, who’s from a different societal community, and our Sattar takes the wrath for helping them elope.
Set in the 1980s in a village, this story looks like an emotional poem from Sattar’s heart to Saravanan. Like Shahrukh dies with Manisha at the end of Dil Se for his love, Sattar sacrifices his life for Saravanan’s happiness. The story is so organic, and we see the characters in the village to behave as expected.
Moving on to “Love Panna Uttarnum,” I underestimated the writer, Vignesh. Though he’s of less experience than other directors, he has made a good attempt in his way. The dark comedy and the twists (that was a good one, though!) with the characters played by Kalki and Anjali bring a laugh to our faces even though there’s a part of sadness in the story.
Do you repeat the same mistake by heeding blindly to others? Anjali’s father character says “NO” and prefers to take an appreciable path. Kalki nails her character with her dubbing (I think so), and she is the show-stealer here. As mentioned earlier, watch it at the end if you want to end the anthology with a smile.
“Vaanmagal” by Gautam — the story of a middle-class family that we all relate to. A happy living family gets in a situation that gets their spirit down. I was like, “Why did you give a spoiler to Vetri’s story, man?” but that point was also a fair justification of Gautam’s character being him in the film.
For an experiment, after watching a scene in Theri, I started bookmarking the crimes that happened against girls, especially minor girls, on the Inshorts app. Recently I went through most of them, and reading them was like hell. Think of the volume of stories that are unreported to the media and police. We don’t even know what a girl is going through in this society.
After watching/hearing news about crimes against women, most of us (or just me) react to the punishment given to the accused (like the death penalty, castration), but did I think about the mental trauma that the girl goes through for the entire life? What about a minor girl who just goes to school and feels family as her whole world happens to go through all these? Thanks, Gautam, you reflected on my thought process indirectly through your film.
I was like, “Gautam, you are not gonna do it. You should not do it,” after watching the trailer where apparently Simran is pushing her daughter from the cliff, and glad he didn’t do it but had a much better version.
Three parts are done now, and I went to have refreshments to prepare for Vetri’s story. I took some water while titles were rolling and paused to see “Directed by Vetrimaaran.”
“Oor Iravu” by Vetri Maaran. Though Gautam has a spoiler of this story on his part, it was disturbing to watch “Oor Iravu.” I am sorry, I will not be able to write about such an intense story. I was sweating throughout the short.
Adding two screenshots from his part and won’t talk anything about it.
Thank you, Netflix, for giving us this anthology. Thank you Sattar, Penelope, Satya, and Sumathi.
It would be good to come up with an anthology with directors like Sukumar, Vivek Athreya, Chandrasekhar Yeleti, and Krish in Telugu.
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Also, thank you for reading this blog. I have completed ten blogs in this calendar year with all your support and feedback and looking forward to writing more in the next year.
Happy New Year : )
