Fazil Razak’s award-winning film Thadavu narrates an affecting tale of a middle-aged woman, who is chased by misery and misfortune. A humble Anganawadi teacher, Geetha (Beena R Chandran) is toughened by several harsh experiences in her life.
In this 90-minute film, we see her being suffocated by a string of crises, yet she hardly breaks. We first see her trying to pledge an ornament to meet the legal expense of securing her child’s custody. Though she fails in it because of her mental illness history, Geetha isn’t shattered. She digests it by sipping a cup of steaming hot black tea, all alone at home.
Fazil unravels Geetha for us gradually. We learn that she is a twice-divorced mother of two girls. Though the exact reason for the separation from her family is never spelt out, we learn that Geetha had postpartum depression, which ‘allegedly’ led to an attempt to kill her first child.
Her second husband is shown to be abusive, which probably led to her walking away. Since there are only suggestions and no explanations, it helps us connect the dots and participate in the storytelling. Like a typical arthouse film, the film moves at a snail’s pace, capturing life as it is without any embellishments.
Geetha’s character is deftly sketched and portrayed without ever pleading for our sympathy. There’s also no melodrama-inducing music to enhance the grief. We are organically drawn to her life and struggles, which are aplenty. Whenever her heart gets too heavy, we see her taking a swim in the river. It’s perhaps the only time she feels light and relieved.
Once, when her school-going daughter asks her to teach her swimming, Geetha says, “later”. Maybe she doesn’t want her daughter to follow suit. In another scene, we see Geetha happily spending time with her daughters by the riverside.
When the young child tries to get Geetha to join them, she says, “I don’t feel like swimming now.” Swimming is her escape mechanism from everyday harsh realities, and on that rare pleasant evening, she prefers not to escape but embrace the reality. It’s further underlined when she takes ‘colour’ prints of pictures from that day.
Right from the beginning, Geetha comes across as not too expressive, but whenever she is cornered to display her true emotions, it’s hard not to be moved. Her desperate efforts to meet her second child or the rare tearing up after learning about her terminal illness are all deeply impactful, also courtesy of Beena’s finely measured performance.
Staring at a desolate future, Geetha’s eyes are often dead and hopeless, but they occasionally glimmer with life while she’s around her friends and children. Beena beautifully embodies all these complexities of the character. It’s her arresting performance that keeps us invested, even amidst all the misery.
Geetha’s story would have been even more depressing if not for her heartwarming bond with Hamza, a bank employee, and Uma, a pregnant schoolteacher. We never know about the origins of their friendship, but it feels like they have been there for each other for long.
Even though Geetha, weighed down by her never-ending struggles, shuns them often, they continue to stand by her. Such adult friendships are rare in our cinema and Fazil neatly captures it without any tall claims. PP Subramanian and Anitha MN also impress with their life-like performances.
Even while focusing largely on Geetha, writer-director Fazil also pays attention to the other supporting characters, like her first husband, the elder daughter, and Sujith, the auto driver. It is ensured that these characters are there for a purpose with well-defined arcs. With such judicious scripting choices and the ability to extract good performances, Fazil makes a promising directorial debut.
(Thadavu won Beena R Chandran the Best Actress award and Fazil Razak the Best Debut Director award at the Kerala State Film Awards 2024)
Film: Thadavu (The Sentence)
Director: Fazil Razak
Cast: Beena R Chandran, PP Subramanian, Anitha MN, Ishak Musafir, Haritha, Sreedhu, Sukumaran MN
Rating : 3/5