CINEMASCOPE: THE MUTATION OF MISERY.

A drunk man, a bleak village, a reluctant son - and a long journey to the wife's home, asking her to return. The first half on a local bus, the other half on foot - barefoot, in punishing heat, a journey that doesn't seem to end. The father and son barely talk; they walk, and walk, and walk some more. The setting, a hamlet in Tamil Nadu, resembles a desert: barren lands, despairing trees, stale trails.

Vinothraj P.S.'s debut, Koozhangal (Pebbles), which won the top prize at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, unfolds as a day in the life of a village, where rains have evaporated, turning farmers into hunters: they roast rats for lunch.

Koozhangal doesn't rely on revealing dialogues or intricate plot turns. Its story can be summarised in a short sentence. It almost risks being an art-house cliche: a sparse quiet drama, much like the lives of its characters, where nothing much happens. But the magic of the film lies in the way it is told - deriving its powers from silence and visual storytelling.

Vinothraj leaves us alone with the characters and images - there are no voiceovers, few filmmaking cues - presenting a ravaged world unvarnished. The final outcome doesn't make us a voyeur but a companion: we stroll inside a foreign setting, yet feel like a native.

Koozhangal, which won the top prize at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, unfolds as a day in the life of a village, where rains have evaporated, turning farmers into hunters

Vinothraj is able to elicit that effect because he relies on the Iceberg Theory: his film lies both below and above the surface, engaging not just the eyes and ears but also the mind. We know little about the main character (Karuththadaiyaan; excellent performance, full of wounding intensity). His traits trickle out like water from damp clothes. We know that he's a drunkard, a chain smoker and broke. Wearing a perpetual frown, he bullies and beats his son. He used to beat his wife, too, causing her to leave the village. He is desperate and broken, irritable and hostile - miserable as well as repulsive.

But besides that, we know nothing else. We don't know what he does for a living (if he does anything at all). We don't know his recent or distant past - only a few hours of the present. We don't know his feelings. We don't even know his name for the longest. That too, eventually, comes from his son. His chalked inscriptions on a rock lay out the family tree. The one beside 'father' reads 'Ganapathy'.

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