Kaaka Muttai: A slice of life

As a film about the beauty of childhood, however penurious, Kaaka Muttai (‘The Crow’s Egg’) is effortlessly accessible. In a five-acre slum in Saidapet, Chennai, two rumpled kids dream of eating a scrumptious pizza priced at Rs 300, which is what they earn in a month collecting and selling chunks of coal from the railway track after a freight train has lurched past. As the child-stars skip barefoot across mounds of garbage, to an all-too-cheerful soundtrack about dreaming by the foul waters of the Cooum, it is easy to mistake Kaaka Muttai for a simple film. But under the carapace of its slice-of-life narrative is a world that hums with jealousy, unfulfilled desires and class conflict. Since their family cannot afford to buy eggs, the protagonists, 12 and 10 years of age, secretly relish crows’ eggs stolen from a tree in the empty plot that serves as their playground, earning them the sobriquets Chinna Kaaka Muttai and Periya Kaaka Muttai—the only names they go by throughout the film. But when a pizza restaurant comes up on the playground, they must bid adieu to this delicacy. In any case, crows’ eggs don’t seem to interest them anymore. They must find out what a ‘pisa’ tastes like: perhaps it is sweet? As the slum children peer curiously through the gates of the restaurant, we recognise the scene from the snatches of conversation they have had with their rich ‘friend’ Lokesh, who lives in an apartment complex with a fence around it. In both cases, the iron bars don’t budge.

Tamil cinema doesn’t get any more real. “In a few years, people will divide the history of Tamil film into before Kaaka Muttai and after,” says Vetrimaaran, who discovered and co-produced the film with actor Dhanush. “It is a slap on the face for filmmakers who claim Tamil audiences only appreciate conventional cinema.” Breaking the myth that winning critical acclaim at international film festivals cannot possibly translate into mainstream success, Kaaka Muttai has taken the box office by storm after its release in India on 5 June with English subtitles. Over two-and-a-half years ago, when Vetrimaaran called wedding photographer-turned-filmmaker M Manikandan, he had only a vague sense that the latter’s sensibilities could bridge the two worlds. He had just watched Wind (2010), a short film by Manikandan about a policeman who guards for a full day the body of a man who has ended his life in a place far removed from civilisation. “I remember telling my mentor Balu Mahendra that Manikandan would take Tamil cinema to great heights,” says Vetrimaaran. His faith in the filmmaker was bolstered by Kaaka Muttai, a script so stunning it would win over Dhanush in an instant. “He read 10 pages and said, ‘This is great stuff, let’s do this’,” says Vetrimaaran, who has directed him in Polladhavan (2007) and Aadukalam (2011).

Despite all the backing, Kaaka Muttai is a truly independent film, says Manikandan, who wrote, filmed and directed the feature film—his first. “Neither producer interfered aside from occasionally advising me and I continued to enjoy this freedom after Fox Star Studios came on board,” says Manikandan, 33, on a phone call from Chennai. Manikandan’s son, who pesters him for a monthly pizza treat, inspired him to imagine how a poor family would deal with the pressures of globalisation. “Commercials glorify expensive fast food and it becomes aspirational. For a child, pizza may not be tastier than, say, sweets. My middle class values made me think about how many families can afford to spend Rs 1,000 on a pizza meal,” he says. “I was also saddened by other ads that typecast dark skin as ugly or reject faces with pimples. I decided to write Kaaka Muttai to deal with all these themes—the crow is a metaphor for dark skin, and even the coal picking ties in with that, besides showing that slum children live life on the edge,” Manikandan says.

Kaaka Muttai is a sensitive look at the margins of an urban society in the throes of change and a commentary on the power structures prevalent therein. It is astonishingly real. “I had set three rules when I started to write: that the film wouldn’t end in sadness, that I wouldn’t capitalise on the plight of slum dwellers, and that kids should be kids and not have to mirror adult reactions,” he says. A death sequence in the film is an undoing of movie clichés. When a close family member dies, the children do not cry; they only hug their mother, who is disconsolate. “It would have been easy to insert a song there. Anyone watching the film would have cried. But I didn’t want to resort to theatrics,” Manikandan says. He is not afraid of being pigeonholed as a parallel filmmaker. “I would welcome that,” he says. “I do not want to make compromises. I won’t have my characters dancing or singing. I just want to simplify themes the way Latin American filmmakers do. I feel that a lot of parallel or art house cinema fails to reach a large audience. But it can, if conveyed in simpler terms.”

His film premiered in September 2014 at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was rewarded with a standing ovation. “We decided to adopt a Lunchbox-like strategy and do the festival rounds before showing it in India,” says Vetrimaaran, admitting that Indian and international media played a big role in making Kaaka Muttai a sensation. The film, assuredly directed, is also entertaining and crisp, whittled down as it was by almost a third. In an attempt to recreate the unattainable dish, when the boys’ grandmother rustles up a dosa topped with vegetables bought for a few rupees, they complain that it is not stringy and stretchy like the delicious- looking pizza of commercials. Only food that is spoilt is stringy, retorts the grandma, in one of the funniest sad scenes from the film. Kaaka Muttai is a rare film that inspires a range of emotions: joy, empathy, despair and comfort among them. Most of all, it inspires confidence in the Tamil film industry, which lacks a culture of parallel cinema. “We are not attempting anything new. Filmmakers before us, Balu Mahendra for instance, were masters of minimalism. But perhaps we are re-discovering the realism that got lost somewhere along the way. Every modern filmmaker seems to be pushing ahead towards better cinema, one step at a time,” says Manikandan. He is not resting on his laurels. Wrapping up Kutrame Dandanai (‘Crime is Punishment’), a low-budget film that he says is not for everyone, Manikandan is already writing a third script. Born and raised in Usilampatti, a town in Madurai district, Manikandan holds a diploma in automobile engineering. Most men in his family are employed with the police force, he says, and his straying into the arts had cast him in an unfavourable light. “This film has changed their perception of cinema. It has moved them,” he says, admitting to weaving some aspects of his mother’s character into the film. “My father was an addict and she handled everything,” he says.

Manikandan enjoys cinema that is rooted to the place of its origin. Kaaka Muttai was shot on location in a Chennai slum over the course of 61 days, with two local children cast in the lead roles and Iyshwarya Rajesh playing their mother—with rare maturity, one might add. “I could not have taught professional actors to emote like these kids or to identify with the lives of slum-dwellers,” Manikandan says. “I am not someone who says cinema is my passion and I will die without it. If I make cinema, it must be true to life. Otherwise, I will happily return to wedding photography.”

AadukalamKaaka MuttaiKutrame DandanaiLunchboxPolladhavan