Anantham review: Imperfect but heartfelt stories about acceptance

‘If only these walls could talk’

It’s a common phrase, often used to speak of unknown stories. In Priya V’s series Anantham, they do. Well, not literally, but in spirit. Anantham is about the eponymously named house, and the various people and their families who have inhabited it over five decades. It’s a bouquet of stories — a mosaic of emotions. There’s a bit of everything — grief, loss, love, romance, fear, discovery, anger, etc. For some, the house heaps fortunes. And for others, disasters. Its inhabitants are mostly people who society raises their eyebrows at — blind people, unemployed debtors, three single women living together, a gay couple… But the cornerstone of Anantham is acceptance.

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Ms Representation: The honour that kills

Paava Kadhaigal (stories of sin in English) is quite the appropriate name for the new Netflix anthology, helmed by Sudha Kongara (Thangam), Vignesh Shivan (Love Panna Uttranum), Gautham Menon (Vaanmagal), and Vetri Maaran (Orr Iravu). In all of them, sin is at the centre, with the characters placing honour above love, family, and humanity. Another similarity here is that the victims are all women or those who identify as women. Honour and honour killings are usually associated with casteism, but I found Paava Kadhaigal to interpret honour in a different, more inclusive manner. It touches upon the complicated relationship women have with ‘honour’, and this goes beyond caste. The patriarchal society has saddled women with the responsibility of ‘honour’ for centuries, censoring their lives and choices. Ironically, Paavam is also an expression of sympathy in Tamil. There’s another layer then to this title, about stories that reflect the unfair universe that our women are bundled into.

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Sila Samayangalil review: This Priyadharshan film conveys its message in a non-preachy way

Sila Samayangalil (Sometimes) is one of the rare films that creates awareness in the most non-preachy way. Seven people, who all have reasons to believe that they could be infected with HIV/AIDS, wait for their results together. But except for the ‘message card’ at the end (I will come back to this), the film’s writing is organically fluid. It takes its time to set-up and during this, there is a lot of ‘show and not tell’. We are first-hand witnesses to the discomfort our characters face to even admit that they are there for an HIV test. Continue reading “Sila Samayangalil review: This Priyadharshan film conveys its message in a non-preachy way”

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