Do not read this post about Mari Selvaraj’s Vaazhai

 

It has spoilers. Since you must see the movie, there is no point in reading it before you see it. Read it after you see the movie. If you are disturbed the way I am, these words cannot do any justice to the intensity and depth of the feelings that you will experience. If you are not touched by the movie, these words won’t matter. Therefore, on second thoughts, don’t read this. You can ask me, then why have you posted this. I am writing this post because I am feeling helpless. I am feeling sad, angry, frustrated, happy, elated, and all other emotions. Long after I left the theatre my mind is still playing those visuals. I won’t be able to work, sleep or do anything else unless I get these reels of emotions and thoughts that are running in my head as words on this post. That is the only reason I am writing this. 

 

Throughout the movie, I had this nagging sense of helplessness and paternal feeling for young Sivananaindhan. I wanted to run into the screen, hug him tight, and bring him back with me to this world, far away from his neck breaking work, poverty, and a miserable childhood. When Sivananaindhan hides below the cot early in the morning begging his sister Vembu and his mother to allow him not to go for work that day, when he wets himself due to the extreme stress and anxiety, when he expresses his adolescent rebellion when forced to compromise school to go to work, Mari Selvaraj showed me so bluntly what a privileged childhood I have had. And Mari Selvaraj has said that this is his younger life and his story. I couldn’t stop the heavy tugging in my heart whenever I could see how the painful childhood has transformed a young boy into this intense creator, writer, artist, director. In one scene where young Sivananaindhan stands all alone atop a cliff and lets out guttural cries of “baa…baa…” in search of his cow, the loneliness, the sorrow, the desperation on the young boy’s face, reflected the intensity with which Mari Selvaraj makes movies today. 

 

I have been a teacher, of course, to a much older bunch of people in a medical college. I have had my own share of young students who have loved me, adored me and given me loving presents. Sivananaindhan’s love for his teacher Poongodi was innocent, beautiful and pure. He tells his teacher that she is beautiful. In one particularly important juncture in the movie, the teacher asks him why he is saying that she is beautiful now, wasn’t she beautiful earlier. To this he replies, “You were beautiful like my mother earlier, now you are beautiful like my sister”. These lines spoke a million meanings to me. Sivananaindhan was a young boy brought up by two loving women, his mother and elder sister. He knows to respect women. He received love from this teacher and it reminded him of the same warmth of his mother’s and sister’s love. Every time Mari Selvaraj showed this heart warming student-teacher love, he would immediately contrast it with a heart wrenchingly painful incident. The contrast was so hard to take each time. Mari Selvaraj, you are indeed a cruel man! 

 

Mari Selvaraj has made several inanimate objects and props emote and express feelings in the movie. Be it the large vaazhai thar that is fully green except a few yellow ripe ones on top, the pink ladies handkerchief, the tiffin box full of marudani leaves, the Kamal Hassan and Rajinikanth lockets, the torn uniform, the untouched plate of boiled rice, Mari has made each of them occupy screen space and my mind space, filling it with feelings and emotions remaining tenaciously etched in the mind refusing to leave it. If he could make even these inanimate things evoke so many feelings, you can imagine how he could have made his actors perform. Each one of the artists in the movie including the young boy Sivananaindhan, young Sekar, the teacher Poongodi, sister Vembu, the mother, the young rebellious laborer Kani, they all remain unforgettable. 

 

I am more of a book reader than movie buff. I enjoy my books more because they give me a unique experience, which I do not have to share with anyone. I can experience it inside my mind space, privately. I have usually disliked almost all the novels and stories that have been adapted into movies. But when I saw Vaazhai, I got the experience of reading a book. The objects, props, people, animals, even the earthworm, were all there and let me take my own meanings and experiences from each frame. In some brilliant pieces of writing, like Aram collection of short stories by Jayamohan, I have experienced flashes of brilliance which have frozen my mind in the moment of the story. I got a similar experience while watching Vaazhai. That is when I realized that Mari Selvaraj is a writer who captures his writing on the audiovisual medium. 

 

The movie which runs roughly 2 hours 30 mins, is nothing short of a classic. I have seen it only once and it has changed something deep within me. That is what good cinema does to us. I am immensely grateful to the entire team of Vaazhai for giving me this wonderful cinematic experience and I hope to watch this movie a few more times to understand it better. I suggest you do too.