With its striking cinematography and poignant rendering of a family drama, it is no wonder that Koozhangal (Pebbles) was picked as India’s official entry to the Oscars. Produced by Nayanthara and Vignesh Shivan’s Rowdy Pictures, it is P.S. Vinothraj’s debut film.
In Koozhangal, an alcoholic Ganapathy and his son, Velu, try to bring back the lady of the house. She had fled home to escape Ganapathy’s abuse. The third character in the film is the landscape, which provides context to the marital feud and the father-son relationship. Through the perspectives of the father and son, Vinothraj skilfully unfolds life in a drought-hit village on the outskirts of Madurai.
Vinothraj weaves his own pain and anger into the plot. To escape her alcoholic husband’s abuse, Vinothraj’s sister fled with her infant son and walked 13km at night to reach her own village. When she narrated the ordeal over the phone, the director could only console her saying things would get better. He told her that one day her husband would beg her forgiveness. This imaginary journey of the husband is the backbone of Koozhangal. In the film, Velu compels his father to bring back his mother.
At the heart of Koozhangal is a vision of rage, amplified by the arid landscape and the blazing sun. The film begins with the montage of a woman drawing water from a well. Soon, a man thunders past her to a school and drags a boy out. The two take a bus to a lonely outpost and walk to a nearby village, where the man angrily demands that his estranged wife return home with him.
Vinothraj is thrilled about the Oscar selection. “I never thought this would happen,” he said. “We were very happy when we won the Tiger Award (the top honour at the International Film Festival Rotterdam).”
His journey in films has been as uneven as the pebbles his movie is named after. As a child, he used to watch film shootings in and around Madurai. His father died when he was in Class 4, leaving behind a pile of debt. Vinothraj dropped out of school and worked as a coolie at a flower market near the Meenakshi Amman temple in Madurai. He used to earn 040 a day, and then go and watch film shootings around the temple in the evening. Then, his mother sent him to work in a banian (singlet) manufacturing factory in Tiruppur.
But when their debt was finally paid off, Vinothraj came to Chennai to join the film industry. To make ends meet, he worked in a DVD shop in 2008, which was closely associated with filmmakers. He prepared 20 different resumes and handed them over filmmakers who happened to visit. That is how he met director A. Sargunam, who offered him work as an assistant cinematographer in a TV series. Thus began his journey in films. Koozhangal is just his first stop.