‘Angammal’ movie review: The change machine is seldom as brutal and tender at once on celluloid Latest Entertainment News

The winds of time are seldom as harsh and gentle at once on celluloid as they are in Vipin Radhakrishnan’s evocative work, Angammal. A generational wind called Uchimalai Kaathu — believed to carry the scent of the Uchchaani flower, along with a deathly wail and malevolence — bursts from the mountains and into the village once in every 25 years. This wind becomes an all-encompassing allegory to the storm that many, like the titular Angammal (a fantastic Geetha Kailasam), brave through as time sifts through her fingers like sand.

When we first meet her, Angammal is driving her granddaughter, Periya Nayagi aka Manju, on her moped to get her a tattoo of the Uchchaani flower, the same tattoo that her late mother had (the introduction shot is crafty camera work that entices your attention). The tattooing is interrupted by Manju’s mother, and Angammal retorts with a piece of her mind. From the word go, Vipin draws the faultlines of a fracturing reality with a voice and conviction you seldom expect from a novice filmmaker.

An intricate character study builds as we learn more of this sleeveless-wearing, beedi-smoking, foul-mouthed, hair-trigger moody widow, who is grappling with the tides of time. It had begun long before we met her — like naming her granddaughter after her mother, which one can safely assume is an existential effort to wind the clock back. Angammal, we soon learn, is stricken with fears of her world — her family, her town, and her place in it — slipping away. In the gaps between her generation and the next, she fills with solitude, in the windy fields, and a companionship with another elderly widower.

Her younger son, Pavalam (Saran Sakthi), a doctor, has found a good life for himself — a marital alliance with his girlfriend, a young woman (Mullaiyarasi) from an affluent, urban background. Angammal’s fears get most vividly spelt when Pavalam, along with her elder son Sudalai (Bharani) and daughter-in-law Sharadha (Thendral Raghunathan), urges her to wear a blouse and start behaving ‘cordially’ as Pavalam’s prospective in-laws are expected to visit soon.

Is Angammal losing her control over her own family, or is it her freedom and right to be who she is that are slowly withering away? Vipin Radhakrishnan lets his unconventionally conventional protagonist tread a thin line between both, as she seeks to retain her relationships as they are without losing her identity and sense of being. It’s a feeling that deepens when she looks around and sees a friend, who is struggling to make peace with an all-new reality in which they’re helpless and sidelined.

She is happy for Pavalam, for the life he is to enter, but keeps repeating that he isn’t who he used to be. She understands the need for change, which Vipin tells by weaving in a narrative thread about a new mother being urged to stop breastfeeding. For Angammal, it’s the changing relationship dynamics that are a matter of concern: so when she says “Your behaviour has changed,” she truly means, “You should’ve confided in me before fixing the marriage alliance.” In a way, it is she who is unable to stop weaning her motherly emotions.

This is also the thread that deepens her flaws. That she senses something amiss in Pavalam’s behaviour towards her is a concern she shares with Sudalai, the other son, idling away with a bottle of arrack and a nadhaswaram, whose plight she never truly asks about.

Vipin makes an astute commentary on individuality and nonconformity — yes, Angammal not wearing a blouse is a personal choice for comfort, but also a defiance against conformity. The soulfully rendered titular track goes, “Pazhakkam onna yesudho thannaala,” meaning ‘do social norms chide you,’ “Viruppam pakkam pesudho,” that still the desires of her heart are by her side.

Not wearing a blouse is a uniform; that and her mandala tattoo on her arm instinctively command respect from her fellow townspeople. When she considers changing her stance, we realise through her perspective that perhaps her concerns weren’t unreasonable. She senses disrespect within her house and is displeased that even other dynamics, like her relationship with another elderly man in the town, are affected by what she chooses to wear or not.

Angammal’s world further shrinks when her chilling, ironic need to control her daughter-in-law with an iron fist spirals out of control. She bursts out whenever confronted, as if allowing any room for vulnerability snatches away whatever little remains of her world. Geetha Kailasam thrives in the crevices of a fascinating character who augments her fear as anger. While one can’t complain much about his acting, it takes a while to believe Saran as a young man who returned to his village rather than one who seems city-bred.

Aiding Vipin in realising his vision is cinematographer Anjoy Samuel, also the film’s producer, who deftly weilds the camera and restrains it as the eye of an intimate observer rather than of an imposing intruder. Building the film’s extraordinary aural landscape are the music composer Mohammed Maqbool Mansoor, sound designer Lenin Valappad and sound mixer PK Krishnanunni.

An adaptation of Perumal Murugan’s short story Koduthuni, Angammal captures with affecting intimacy a deeply personal turmoil that must strike a chord with many, even those far from Angammal’s world. Through Vipin Radhakrishnan’s frames of Angammal come the stillness of burden, but also the wind of respite that mountains bring to Angammal and all those like her who struggle to mend with the ways of the world. It’s a work of art that embraces you and tugs at you, like a generational breeze that carries the scent of a wildflower.

Angammal releases in theatres this Friday, December 5

Published – December 02, 2025 02:37 pm IST