Thadavu Review: Beena R. Chandran Is A Revelation In Fazil Razak's Measured Debut

Director: Fazil Razak

Cast: Beena R Chandran, P P Subramanian, Ishak Musafir, Vappu, Anitha MN

To obliterate is to re-create, perhaps. 

A 51-year-old playschool or Anganwadi teacher in Fazil Razak's debut finds herself in the most debilitating state of her entire life. She is married and divorced twice and neither of her two children, each from the two marriages, live with her. The second child, much younger in age, yearns to be with her mother but the court has just decided that she cannot. The reason insinuated is the woman's "track record" as a mother because apparently, she tried to kill her first child many years ago owing to postpartum depression. We don't know if she did or she did not.

On top of that, this woman is also enduring an illness which may or may not soon manifest itself to be life-threatening. She has many friends to her name, luckily, who pull out all the stops, pause their own respective lives to help her through all this. Geetha teacher (Beena R. Chandran) the said woman, may not have any money or family to boast about but all the love from her friends must suffice, one could say. And yet, it almost feels like she wants to escape it all - her friends, her family, her doctors, the world - and maybe swim away to a lonely corner. We do spot Geetha taking a dip in the lake more than just a few times, quite unbothered that she is dressed in a saree.

At first glance, Thadavu has the cadence of a 'plight' story of a woman. Everything in Geetha's life goes wrong or rather, everything that she touches crumbles almost instantly. It is as though she is her own liability. When she goes to the bank to pledge some gold, the same bank is robbed and her own daughter is, in fact, briefly held hostage by the robber. When she extends help to a friend, a new mother, things go awryt to such an extent that she almost finds herself behind bars. Geetha cannot catch a break and perhaps what makes it worse for her is knowing that she will need someone, again, to step in to help her out. And even though she is extremely indebted to those people, she probably feels that they all secretly hold her responsible for everything anyway. 

But Fazil Razak surprises us. In a Dardenne Brothers-like manner, Thadavu gradually becomes the portrait of a flawed character who, although dealt a bad hand, isn't the typical paavam character we get to see in popular cinema. I don't want to use the term 'grey', considering the connotations it carries in cinematic language, but it is safe to say that Geetha is one of the most refreshingly original and authentic female characters written in Indian cinema. And when I say she isn't 'paavam', I don't mean she is sly or scheming. No, not at all. 

At the heart of it all, it is highly likely that Geetha is fighting for her autonomy and that she has always done that. It just could be that she never found the right channel to express herself, or maybe she didn't know the right way to do it. Mistakes were made, sure, but she is paying a higher price only because she is not apologetic.

It must be said at this point that Beena R. Chandran (theatre artist, teacher) as Geetha is simply stunning. As a woman who is consistently disparaged and attacked - both by the world around her and those who know her - she carries the weight of her grief with such efficacy that despite the heaviness of the moment, your eyes light up every time she enters the frame. There's this incredibly endearing, almost heartrending smile that she breaks into whenever she is around children, including her daughter Sreekutty, and the same sentiment, almost every single time, turns into despair in a heartbeat. Beena emotes so much and more just through her body language and her eyes that the sudden shift in mood strikes us like a proper punch in the gut. 

It helps immensely that Fazil Razak's script doesn't force her to surrender and cry her problems away either - instead, there's a fierce physical demonstration of her state of being, that ranges from dancing her problems away over some booze to throwing a temper tantrum (the latter, normally, involves shoving her dear ones out of the house whenever she is overwhelmed with life). What's truly fascinating, though, is that Razak allows his protagonist so much room to freely express herself without ever casting judgment on her. Geetha is subject to so many claims and accusations but Thadavu isn't interested in quashing them - who knows, some of them might even be true. The film is a lot more curious about Geetha's peculiar inward journey that nobody else is aware of. 

The title, therefore, and in my opinion, then becomes ironic in this context. The logline of Thadavu, which means 'imprisonment' or a prison sentence, reveals that Geetha hatches a bizarre plan to tend to her illness. But what Fazil Razak alludes to with the title is that, quite perhaps, she has been in shackles all her life. And in the quest to find solutions for her actual problems, she must finally take charge of her own life, put the actual Thadavu behind her. Even if that means to forsake her reputation. 

Thadavu might be a tad simplistic in its approach but the film asks several questions of us and then lets us be to figure out the answers. Is Geetha plain rude and volatile or is she both dogged and tired? Why didn't either of her marriages work? And where does patriarchy fit in all this? All this and a lot more is subtly underlined in a 90-minute drama accentuated and enhanced by some measured and some superb performances. Beena R. Chandran receives great support from the ensemble cast including P.P. Subramanian, Anitha M.N. and others. The film is part of the Asian Cinema Competition at the 15th Bengaluru International Film Festival.