Thandatti (Telugu, Streaming on Prime Video)
Rating:**
Thandatti which means ear-rings, misses out on being a powerful drama on ancestorhood and accompanying legacies, and how these are destroyed by family greed. Instead, debutant director Ram Sangiah’s unbearably clamorous pointedly unglamorous film favours a mob approach to the subject.
Every frame is punctuated by an exclamation mark. The actors act so hard it hurts to watch them. One of them, a drunken man, behaves as if he has just caught himself in an earthquake. The rural Andhra location is used to create a vexing chaos. This is a society on the brink of tradition-induced disintegration, with no redemptive qualities, no saviour except a lower-rank cop on the verge of retirement who is thrown into the anarchic family feud after a woman, Thangamaponnu passes away leaving her traditional ear-rings behind for her daughters and their husbands and a son to fight over.
The above description makes Thandatti sound far more intelligent than it actually is. The narrative mistakes mobocracy for a panoramic vision. We see the haunted tortured protagonist Thangamaponnu, not in clenched close-ups as we should, but as a part of a larger community of squabbling offsprings, all so caricatural they look neither greedy not dangerous. Just stupid and aimless.
Ghoulishly Thangamaponnu’s dead body is made to sit while the family tears at each other with roosterfish enthusiasm. Some of the village fights between the cop-protagonist (who tries to resolve the family fight) and the villagers is so sloppily staged and theatrically enacted the film looks like an amateur streetplay.
The vast cast comprises largely unknown faces. Rohini as Thangamaponnu doesn’t age too convincingly. Neither, one suspects would this film which could have done with some serious selfcontrol.
The only bright spot in this chaotic melodrama is Subramani as Pasupathi, the cop who would rather retire in peace than get involved with these rustic rowdies who seem to have acquired a propensity for hamming in a community huddle.
The film has a purposely scruffy look, with rust brown and dirt grey colours dominating the palate. Every frame has at least 25-30 characters seeking our attention. Cinematographer Mahesh Muthuswamy lenses the pandemonium as organically as possible. But the film just doesn’t favour any restraining hand. It is happy being a mass of confusion and yes, it is gruesome.
The violence that Thangamaponnu suffers in the past, doesn’t justify the torture that this lobotomized rustic melodrama inflicts on the audience.
