In Naangal, a kid enters a library and takes in the smell of a book, as he flips through the pages. Another kid is marvelled by the array of colours that form an image on the screen of a theatre, as a film is about to play. While anyone can trivialise both of these acts, these are personal experiences that a kid curious about art and culture, goes through. For Avinash Prakash, the director of Naangal, the film can be expressed as a mix of memories and imaginative storytelling. “The idea of the film,” he recounts, ”was formed on the basis of the stories I read as a child, back in the 90s. To get access to books I had to go to a lending library in Ooty.”
The director’s rumination on the passage of time was also an important inspiration for Naangal. “My childhood was devoid of any electronics. But even then, my siblings and I had less time for the activities we wanted to do. We used to walk around the estate and play sports. Apart from that, books and comics were our only outlets.” Like a lot of kids, Avinash was influenced by comics such as Tintin, Mandrake the Magician, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Asterix and Obelix. The adventurous protagonists with their carefree lives, inspired him to form the story of Naangal, which was written from the perspectives of children. However, carefree and happy moments are cherished precisely because they can be few and fleeting. Showing the stark contrast between happy and intense moments was an important aspect of Naangal. And the director achieves this through his distinct visual grammar. “Lensing and cinematography are unique to the art of filmmaking. Adding expository dialogues meant that I was telling audiences what to think, instead of showing what can be imagined. I wanted to provide enough drive for the audiences to watch the film, and take something away from it,” he explains.
The term coming-of-age cannot be used fast and loose with Naangal. It isn’t your usual story of everything being fine for a character who encounters a momentary hurdle, and after crossing it, the state of normalcy is returned. No matter how grown a character is, everyone has their set of ordeals. Avinash asserts that Naangal is also a slice-of-life film. But that slice is not saccharine like the conventional films in the genre. It has a unique taste to it. He says, “Children from any kind of family have a transformational phase. Be it a perfect family, or an average family, or a toxic family, every family goes through a certain phase that propels their growth.” Amongst the different ingredients that went into the film, Naangal’s portrayal of parental relationships acts as the dough that brings the different ingredients together. On the uniqueness of portraying those relationships, Avinash chooses to answer from the perspective of his film’s protagonist: children. “When we are kids, we are very impressionable. The behaviours of the parents will influence the behaviour of the children. So, in a situation where the father is the only caretaker for the children, he chooses to be a strict disciplinarian.” While the mother remains in the shadows for most of the film, the director says it was to show her helplessness. He says, “Throughout the film, we show the children being under the strenuous environment created by the father. The mother acts as a ray of hope for the kids and for the audience. She shows us that the kids can grow up in a different kind of environment too. But a husband, who is imposing, causes an emotional strain. With this, it may seem like she doesn’t care about the fate of the children. Instead of verbalising her helplessness, she internalises it. She cares, but she is helpless.” Regarding the relationship between the kids, Avinash says there is no fixed pattern for such a relationship. “For the outside world, they are going through unimaginable circumstances. But for those kids, they are just surviving. To them that is all that matters,” he explains.
While the director made a splash by making his directorial debut with an intimate and personal story, he is indifferent to any labels to define his film. “Naangal can be labelled an independent film, an arthouse film, or a parallel film. But, for me, what matters is what it means to the audience,” says Avinash.