‘Members of the Problematic Family’ movie review: R Gowtham’s explosive Tamil funeral drama

As R Gowtham’s debut diagnostic rolls out, you wonderment if you are successful another Ee.Ma.Yau. (Lijo Jose Pelliserry) or Shavam (Don Palathara) ride. Here is yet different ceremonial film, but dissimilar thing 1 has seen before. Gowtham’s Tamil roller-coaster family-drama, Members of the Problematic Family (Sikkalana Kudumbathin Uruppinarhal), goes each Paul Thomas Anderson successful Chennai’s Red Hills suburbs.

Gowtham’s movie — developed astatine the NFDC Film Bazaar, produced by him and his friends astatine Library Narratives and different friend’s outfit Potato Eaters Collective — conscionable premiered successful the Forum conception of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival. It is the 4th Tamil movie to surface successful this segment, aft Mani Ratnam’s Alaipayuthey (2001), Ameer’s Paruthiveeran (2008) and PS Vinothraj’s Kottukkaali (2024).

Members of the Problematic Family defies definitions, ceremonial straitjacketing and adjacent cinematic structure. Gowtham throws the crippled retired of the window. The taste mounting is familiar, but the filmmaker surprises you by sewing images and eking retired a singularly riveting non-linear narrative. Raw, absurd, and with a chaotic vigor bubbling over, the movie volition daze you successful each aspect. It upends antecedently held notions of cinematic formalism. Here is simply a self-assured debut that unfolds backwards, from a ceremonial and into a quality survey of Prabha (A Ra Ajith Kumar) and done him, of others, each quality wretched successful their ain way.

This is besides a mother-son story, an upending of the Oedipal complex, of Shanthi and Prabha. One is arsenic busy, moving the household round-the-clock, arsenic the wayward different whiles distant his clip and seeks her attraction and mislaid emotion for him. Their outbursts and frustrations boomerang disconnected each other. It possibly draws from 1 operation Nietzsche wrote successful his Wahnbriefe (“madness letters”), earlier his death, aft his intelligence illness to his mother: “Mutter, ich bin dumm (Mom, I americium a fool).” That fragile intelligence authorities Prabha embodies, but helium couldn’t accidental those words to his ain mother. Prabha is an alcoholic, but his needs are not illogical.

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Structurally, this movie is similar a novella. Divided into 4 incomplete chapters — with Wes Anderson-like titles — the movie begins with Prabha’s ceremonial and ends with his last dream. Gowtham eschews the Aristotelian structure, avoids enactment and reaction, and alternatively shows fragments. Each quality is incomplete and doubtful.

The fabrication diagnostic looks similar a documentary, with electrifying acting by its ensemble cast, astir of whom are non-actors, besides two: the uncle Sellam, present played by Karuththadaiyaan, who was the begetter successful PS Vinothraj’s Koozhangal (Pebbles, 2021), and Ajith, who is from a theatre background. An opprobrious tribunal jester, Prabha shows america the world of our satellite hidden beneath masks of civility. More than alcoholism and portrayal of a dysfunctional family, the movie is besides astir a man-child, misunderstood, emotionally and mentally trapped. Gowtham’s movie scratches astatine a festering coiled but from a steadfast distance. Characters are liberated from some judgement and empathy.

Shot successful a precise cinéma-vérité style, the movie is idiosyncratic and lived successful arsenic it is poignantly observational. It lays retired the micro- and macro-dynamics of Prabha’s spot successful his household and the family’s spot (especially the parent and son’s) successful this society. Through the tropes of alcoholism, household dysfunctionality, familial carnal violence, trauma and intelligence distress, it delivers a masterpiece. Prabha’s adjacent ones don’t shed a teardrop astatine the funeral. That performativity is eschewed. The 16-day-long ceremonial is simply a ritualistic matter that culminates successful a feast. The extended household goes done the motions. Grief comes to them aboriginal — successful little moments of regret and adjacent suppressed love. Tears rotation down the mother’s cheeks erstwhile she looks astatine the decapitated caput of a goat amid her laundry.

The jobless, wayward irritant but afloat of youthful goofiness, Prabha is simply a thorn successful the broadside of everyone around. He can’t thrust the scooter consecutive without astir making his parent fall, and past bumping into a rod himself and blaming her for his misery. He volition marque his gramps consciousness emasculated and suicidal by forcibly taking him to the salon to shave disconnected his moustache. The parent is stuck betwixt 2 insane men: her begetter and her son. He doesn’t similar that his parent cares for his aunt’s small lad much than her ain grown-up one. His uncle, for whom helium works, gives him a thrashing for not doing his occupation sincerely. He is simply a mess, but his dreams and desires are precise basal — to beryllium respected and loved, and to commencement his ain household that loves him backmost — and these dreams dice with him. But however does helium die? That’s untold. It remains mysterious. The filmmaker reveals much by not telling, by digressing, by leaving 1 series to drawback different seemingly unrelated one, but each the parts of this gestalt travel together.

But what bash the beingness and nonaccomplishment of nobodies similar Prabha mean to their community? Prabha is the filmmaker’s lens to zoom successful connected and heighten the ironies and hypocrisy of a nine that creates the likes of him. Everyone knows a Prabha, possibly not an alcoholic but an ill-tempered being, often a misunderstood one. Members of this society, portion drinking themselves, blasted Prabha’s alcoholism for ruining the prospects of a could-have-been athlete; others constituent fingers astatine his mother’s upbringing.

Gowtham deftly films processions, whether a ceremonial oregon a spiritual 1 — the latter, arsenic seen successful his Vancouver-premiered documentary, On the Trails of Aandi: The Runaway God (2023), co-directed with Saravana Siddharth (who plays the relative member Mugil in MOPF). In large close-ups, helium presents a pilgrim’s procession of Murugan devotees connected Thaipoosam, an eve of Tamil taste value with a 400-year-old heritage.

In MOPF, the camera stands and observes, from a alert connected the partition to trailing a character, mid-length to close-ups, but ever astatine oculus level, neither looking up nor looking down astatine them. Shot successful 1.66:1 facet ratio, the lens is helmed by SRFTI postgraduate Siddharth Katir, who assisted cinematographer Jayanth Mathavan connected Tamil indie Revelations (2016).

FTII dropout Ganesh Nandakumar has deftly handled the dependable signaling and edit and the film’s editing, which holds an unorthodox movie similar this 1 together, hiding and revealing conscionable enough. A bid of non-sequiturs marque up this film.

The aural is besides visual. The movie borrows the euphony of the Dravidian stalwart Nagore E.M. Hanifa, a Tamil Muslim devotional singer, known for his governmental songs. That dependable is simply a throwback to euphony of yore, of tiny towns and engaged streets.

Despite its Marquezian ensemble of extended household and relatives — with a emblematic Tamil socio-linguistic specificity, wherever everyone is simply a brother, whether one’s own, a relative oregon a neighbour — the satellite of Prabha isn’t a hard 1 to follow. From each representation to the intent down it, the movie remains authentic. It is that honesty that makes the localised universality of this indie gem link with the European audiences successful Berlin, galore of whom admitted that this brainsick thrust of a movie was 1 of the champion they saw astatine the festival.

Members of the Problematic Family premiered astatine the Forum sidebar of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival