re:mote voices

Title: Anjali

Cast: Baby Shamili, Revathi, Raghuvaran, Prabhu, Tarun, Shruthi, Saranya

Director: Mani Ratnam

Anjali is a strange and intense Indian film, which combines a variety of moods and influences. To some degree it is a film about a block of flats, and the children that live there - who roam the streets, burst into song, and have an awareness of every piece of scandal in the block. More particularly Anjali focuses on one family who live in the block - who move there after the death of their third child in childbirth, a child who would have been named Anjali. The two surviving children are outsiders initially, but in the way of things they prove themselves to the resident children and are soon part of the group.

Things seem to be going well, until the father is caught out in lies, then seen with a strange woman at different times by the children and then the mother. This causes a real tension that looks set to tear the family apart. However when confronted the father reveals the truth - the lie he has been living is not the lie that they expected. In some ways the truth should bring a certain joy, but instead is grimmer and has more impact on the family than the alternative.

The film is filled with the stories of the people in the flats - who is seeing who behind someone else's back, which man beats his wife, which man spent ten years in prison for murder, and so on. Layering up the lives and the sense of an encapsulated universe within this one community. Within this Anjali's family at times fit in perfectly and at others find themselves at the centre of dispute and confrontation.

In composition terms there is a certain use of filters and lighting, which give the film a resulting look and feel that enhances the mood and atmosphere in a curious manner. At times the film feels like a serious family drama, then we have scenes more reminiscent of what we might expect from Bollywood, where large groups go through the motions of set scenes - parts of these might remind of something like West Side Story, the way the kids form a kind of gang and interact with everyone else in a knowing, sly style.

Mixed into this there are also a couple of real flip out scenes, where we enter into the fantasy life of the children. With that we first have a bed time story that turns into a science fiction pastiche, which is a mix of influences, but particularly reminds of the original Star Wars films with the models and scenes that are derived from there. The second scene comes at a point of triumph, before the turn towards inevitable tragedy, where all the children are out playing on their bikes and take off into the air in a scene which recalls E.T..

It is difficult to entirely know what to make of Anjali, but there is little doubt that it is a striking and memorable piece, which took me aback.