Members Of The Problematic Family Review | R. Gowtham’s Assured Debut Is A Rule-Breaking Rarity

Many films rush to claim the mantel of being radical. Only a few truly earn it. Premiering at the Berlinale in the Forum sidebar, R. Gowtham’s terrifically unruly debut Tamil feature, Members of the Problematic Family, arrives as a singular jolt, something that dares to eke out its own individual, discrete rhythm. Shaped out of jagged bits and pieces, the film opens with the untimely death of Prabha (A.ra. Ajith Kumar). Usual commiserations follow that he passed too soon, though he was mostly seen as a nuisance.

Gowtham drives a scalpel through familiar funeral films. Electrifyingly non-programmatic, this film strays from tradition and spins out in several directions, much like the intemperate Prabha. Its energy can’t be bottled. Wretchedness underpins these characters but Gowtham is more inclined to hold up lives in churn. From the central funeral, the film backtracks into etching out Prabha. A young drifter, he is reckless and irresponsible. His uncle, Sellam (Karuththadaiyaan), whom he works for, is always lashing at him. Prabha is more eager to just while and waste away. Naturally, he’s an annoyance for his mother, Shanthi (Kanchana), who works relentlessly without pausing to relax, whereas he seems to have all the time to kill. Heading home after closing her shop, she can’t even rely on him to drive her without being a drunk mess.

Even extended flashbacks don’t really stick within frameworks, crashing into all sorts of non-sequiturs. We barely sit with a character before the film shuffles away. What emerges is a fascinating, challenging box of snippets sewn from the very loose, languid essence of everyday life. Plot is thrown out the window, replaced by a form of telling akin to unforced observation and non-engineered sentiments. Its deliberate disjointedness might initially take some time to sink in, but we grow to admire how intimately Gowtham knows his characters, the spaces, the emotional temperature of a particular sequence. He doesn’t even try to wheedle our emotions, rather building an undisguised space without chasing aesthetic lushness and narrative cushioning. Neither is he pat or too precious about showing characters in a certain light, instead enabling contradictions and deep-rooted clashes. The same unaffectedness extends to how he switches across time without cue. Digressions carry forth how the community viewed the mother-son duo. Some lament Prabha ought to have been guided better, that he’d have made a great athlete. While drinking with Sellam, the men judge how alcoholism wrecked Prabha. One rants people could have been kinder to him.

A shrewd strategist in weaving through cinematic form, Gowtham isn’t strapped to conventional diktats of a scene’s movement and purpose. Instead, he blows it all apart in a thrilling reinvigoration of the medium. Ganesh Nandhakumar’s edit reinforces an interrupted-ness of spirit which simultaneously feels thoroughly immersive. Brief scenes roll off in scattered bursts. They have the semblance of diffuse thoughts petering out midway, but Gowtham turns them into his strongest suit. Each seemingly unfinished, unresolved moment suggests a history outside the story’s immediate folds. Life—what one has borne and learnt to look past—peeks out from edges of exchanges. Members of the Problematic Family is as untethered in narrative fabric as animated with reality’s most minute disappointments. A chapter dovetails the joke Prabha plays on his grandfather, goading the barber to shave off the latter’s moustache. The grandfather feels so emasculated he even ponders killing himself.

Members of the Problematic Family breathes in its ragtag, scattershot textures. Gowtham’s keen eye roves over an ensemble, scanning disaffection, sorrow and bitterness. He notices the small hurts and jealousies and ache for affection that can in excess be just frustrating and exhausting. Pathos sits alongside exasperation. Prabha doesn’t mask his envy for his aunt’s kid who gets the bulk of his mother’s attention and care. A.ra. Ajith Kumar brings childlike manic glee and misery, fully in sync with the film’s unrestrained tempo. Neither does Gowtham indulge introducing character dynamics where other filmmakers would have gone on and on. An unvarnished vérité style accentuates our interaction with these characters. Siddharth Kathir’s camerawork goes beyond being inobtrusive to capturing the fractured heart of a family and the community that’s quick in lobbing accusations.

Gowtham plunges us in these lives without fuss or elaborate setup. The opening half-hour chapter devotes itself entirely to following the corpse as it’s lifted onto a bed, washed, put into a car and taken to the crematorium. It’s incredibly detailed and alive to each moment. A kid pinches the corpse’s nose. People halt and burst firecrackers before the car proceeds. Every beat in the rites is diligently rendered. But none of this appears overly manufactured. Instead, it teems with life’s chaos and confusion. People straggle around. Tempers are short, grudges deep and enduring. Later in the film, Prabha’s aunt, insistent on an orange juice at a grim time, is subject to the filmmaker’s sly barb. Nevertheless, Gowtham isn’t mean or patronising with his characters. Without underlining, he allows us to catch a glimpse of why people are who they are, their bruises, shame and groping quest of dignity. He swishes through restless scenes, while remaining alert to burdens, baggage and doldrums characters bear and almost crumple under. It leads to a desperately wrenching, emotionally primal scene as a character surrenders to regret and the full swell of loss. Members of the Problematic Family trusts its inner core with such depth and subsumed feeling that every big bold formal swing lands as perfectly organic and true to itself. This is a director to watch.