Penbugs
Cinema

Ponmagal Vandhal[2020]: An affecting drama that garners a brave feat

Courtroom dramas have a way of piquing one’s interest. It arrests the attention of people who are so eager to see who wins and who loses in the verbal swordplay. Tamil cinema has seen quite a good number of satisfying courtroom dramas in which women were at the helm. Sujatha in Vidhi (1984), Radhika in Paasa Paravaigal (1988), Anushka in Deiva Thirumagal (2011) are to name a few. Even when the greatness of these films is hugely based upon the share of work that these women do, they are still reduced to “great segments” of a whole and never really their dues are completely credited to them. Udhayanidhi Stalin starer Manithan (2016) and Ajith starer Nerkonda Paarvai (2019), in the recent times, worked in a course to raise the fame of the actors who posed themselves as the saviors of the helpless. Victims and victimization is either pitied or reduced to small bits in the vastness of dominance. The fact that these movies are identified by the actors or the characters who played the saviors roles, prove how little the victims voices are heard. The whole purpose of the crux in such movies is diminished into something you spot in a far-off distance.

Ponmagal Vandhal (Precious Girl Arrived) is an exceptional attempt that’s sincere in its try to bring in the discussion of sexual abuse towards children. The dynamics with the courtroom drama works well and stays anew while being familiar too. Jothika steers the movie so gracefully with the help of a great crew of supporting actors who stay as the characters they vowed to play and not as the actors. Bhagiyaraj, Parthiban, Pratap Pothan, Pandiarajan and many more actors are there not to manipulate the story but only to cruise the course of the film in its charted course.
After two long months since the COVID19 lockdown, it is refreshing to catch a new release on OTT, the new normalcy. Jothika never disappoints. She leaves no stones unturned and becomes a pioneer to release her new film directly to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

Ponmagal Vandhan, not only warns but also instigate the people to ally with the victimized, against the peril that lies ahead for the female children in the unsafe society that’s deteriorating everyday. The bewildering exposition of the film communicates visually too. Venba (Jothika) lives in a cold, all-the-time gloomy place while the person she goes against, Thiagarajan, lives in a place where it’s always sunny. The warmth in his place doesn’t allow his mind to think about the unfortunate ones who could only wish for that kind of life. Not only her place, her life seems to be sogged with all the rain of sadness. Thiagarajan, as a powerful man who recoils in the face of fear, a fear that could reduce him to ordinariness. Parthiban, with his quick-wit and delighting banter, fills the air of life that needs for the show to go on.

It’s not that Ponmagal Vandhal doesn’t have any faults in its storytelling. It starts as great and then completely moves into a predictable territory. The courtroom scenes doesn’t witness any such genius arguments enough to tie us to the plot. Even the major evidence they bring to the light seems like a rip-off from a courtroom scene in Rajini starer Padikaathavan. The film starves due to lack of brilliance. But the message is too important to poke the film for its amateur attempt. If the mother in the film seems melodramatic, I can’t help but to think, after all, what the mother could do.

Debutant director J.J. Fredrick doesn’t try too hard to conjure a superhero in his movie. He feeds the will to the ones who think there is not life left in them to live to fight anther day. It’s an elevated feeling to call Ponmagal Vandhal a slow burn film, a term that’s always associated itself with some macho, action films. The final act of the film hits hard to make the just it deserves. It doesn’t come off as a vain try to cloy with soaking sentimentality. And that’s the strength of Ponmagal Vandhal. It doesn’t urge to query the technicality of how the film is staged. Instead, you’re just content to have got the chance to hear the story from someone who has the will to speak up. To walk their shoes who has gone through something you never have or the most adjacent/freedom feeling you get when you see someone out there who has experienced the exact same thing you have, Ponmagal Vandhal is about such an liberating experience in a most heartrending form.