Official Trailer:

If you have taken a bus ride between Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli, you would have come across Isakkiyamman temple near Aralvaimozhi where every vehicle would stop, get the blessings, and continue their journey. Similarly, there is a Shastha temple between Theni to Madurai near Andipatti. My safe guess is there are many like this. While I have heard stories that these gods are related to death, they are powerful, and one shouldn’t get in their way when they roam in the night, I never bothered or ventured into what is the real story behind those gods. Why are they there? How did they come up? I got that backstory in Maadathy. Maadathy, an unfairy tale, starts with the message, behind every deity, there is a story of injustice. I liked the opening narration technique, how Leena Manimekalai, the director, holds our hand and takes us in to the origin story of Maadathy. Watching the movie, the thought that crossed my mind is Did I grow up in the same state? Same place? Supposedly a progressive state in India?

Post the movie, I googled on puthirai vannars. Puthirai Vannars are a washing community – the job they are assigned to. They are below Dalits in caste hierarchy. Puthirai refers to bushes since they live in bushes along riverbanks and one family serves a village of 100 people. They are not just untouchable but also unseeable. Yes unseeable. Your read it right. BR Ambedkar talks about them in his writings, regarding their unseeable status. I never knew there is a community below untouchables (which itself is mind numbing, and sick) with unseeable status.

In the lines of Pariyerum Perumal, Asuran, Mandela, Karnan, we get Maadathy. What I like about these movies is that they are not preachy, they get into nuances of the issue (Pariyerum Perumal showed this brilliantly how girl’s father gets pressured), and above all these are well made cinemas too. Score high both in content and form. Like Karnan, Maadathy uses folk narrative technique. In Karnan, a child becomes a deity, waits for the villagers to awaken, and cheers when they rise against oppression and establishment. Maadathy tells us how the deity came about.  We got immerged in their environment in both Karnan and Maadathy. In both these movies, oppressed people are caged – people of Podiyankulam are confined in Karnan with no access while Veni and her family is enslaved in bushes on one side of the river – they are allowed to cross the river only when there is a death. Animals and symbols, including the donkey, are another similarity between these two. Yosana with a parrot on her shoulder makes you wonder. While other movies in the above list are about male protagonists, Maadathy talks about women, who are hit by double whammy, not only they are below men in each caste deck, but they also face the oppressive tactics of patriarchy.

Leena Manimekalai takes a minimalistic approach in narrating the story. With few scenes, she conveys the status of Puthirai Vannars, where they fit in the social-caste ladder. With exquisite images we feel the free-spirited nature of Yosana. Interactions between Veni, and her in-laws convey the danger of being a woman in their community. Through few scenes, director holds a mirror to the hypocrisy in our society. While the community is considered impure, because seeing them could be polluting, they turn the impure into pure, cleansing the menstrual clothes or shroud on a corpse. While the villagers worship women as goddess (they had to construct a temple for the goddess to avoid the curse), Veni and Yosana are at the receiving end of their caste domination. Goddess Vs objects of desire, Cleaners are Unclean. The duality, an outcome of our social conditioning. It is not just Veni and Yosana. When the village youths are angry with the village head, rather than taking it out on him, they take it out on village head’s wife. Women end up being an object in caste and patriarchy power game.

BGM is minimal too, goes well with the whole design, excellent work by Karthik Raja. Dialogues are natural, hard hitting, and humorous (when it needs to be). Maadathy is a great example for why we need local dialects and lingos, they convey the feelings much better than the common Tamil we get to hear in most of the movies. Just watch the emotional scene between Veni and Yosana, the conversation conveys the hopelessness of their situation, the fear, and the violence they face being women.

Excellent performance from everyone and it is hard to believe most are first time actors except few, they are from the local community. I can visualize the intense workshops and training they would have gone through to get the flawlessness we see in the movie.

Climax leaves you bewildered. Is Maadathy right in her action? Or are we all need to pay the price for being a mute spectator? Like the river in the movie? River comes across as a silent observer in Maadathy. Rivers are worshipped as gods. So then, is god a mute spectator or an active participant in caste violence? What is the right punishment for being a perpetrator or a silent observer of the crime? What we get to see in Maadathy is horrific and poetic at the same time. Pariyerum Perumal, Asuran, Mandela, Karnan, Maadathy, and add to it Malayalam movies, The Great Indian Kitchen, Kumbalangi Nights, Jallikattu, are a good anti-dote to movies we grew up with in 90’s/00’s (remember Devar Magan, Mannan, Gentleman, Nattammai, Padayappa?), taking on caste hierarchy, patriarchy, and toxic masculinity. I hope these movies bring in the required awakening and enlightenment in our society…and give hope to our next generation.