Cwtch, which means embracing someone to offer a sense of warmth, is a famous Welsh word some of us might be familiar with. An inter-title before Naangal commences introduces us to another one word — Hiraeth — which means homesickness for a home one cannot return to or one that never existed. Very rarely can an entire film’s plot, conflict and resolution be summed up in a word, and director Avinash Prakash establishes precisely that in the first frame of his film, which also doubles as his biographical.

With Naangal, Avinash puts us in the middle of three brothers’ traumatic yet transformative upbringing in a dysfunctional family. Rajkumar (Abdul Rafe) is a man whose once-affluent family is now bankrupt. After parting ways with his wife and some financial setbacks, he has become the chairman of a run-down school. With no place to assert dominance, he takes it out on his three children — Karthik (Mithun V), Dhruv (Rithik Mohan) and Gautam (Nithin D) — who stay with him and are forced to endure his physical and emotional torture. What happens when their resilience gets tested forms the rest of Naangal.

The film, drawn from Avinash’s own experiences, captures the trials and tribulations of this troubled family from August, 1998 to the summer of 2002, and every time the timestamp appears on screen, a sense of how long the characters have endured their fates hits us. Enduring pain is a common trait among all the characters. Rajkumar has to manage his crumbling empire where some of his employees prefer running away when he needs them the most or, after years of service, don’t have the heart to leave even when he begs them to. His estranged wife Padma (Prarthana Srikaanth) hopes for a future with her family, and even the youngest member of their family, Kathy (Roxy the canine), has a rough upbringing. But Naangal is predominantly the story of the three kids who, along with Kathy, are innocent souls caught in an adult’s world, one where dysfunction is considered everyday life.

Avinash does not hesitate to utilise most of the film’s runtime to show their daily routine, day in and day out. Despite the large estate, it’s the boys who have to run outside with plastic cans to fetch water as they don’t water supply. The first couple of nights show their home battered down by rain, which we assume is the reason for the power outage, only to be informed later that it is due to their bill dues. Even their everyday meal becomes plain rice with pickles or sandwiches made from the heel pieces of bread. In a mainstream film, this family would be the textbook example of the ‘vaazhnthu ketta kudumbam’ (a family that has seen better days) trope. But here, the film does not milk their plight for our sympathy and instead holds a mirror to showcase another day in their lives.

In a scene a few minutes into the film, a pitch-dark rainy night’s silence is broken by a sound. it leads the two youngest boys to investigate, with one of them certain that it’s a ghost. When we breathe a sigh of relief to know it’s just their dad, we immediately learn how the kids would have rather preferred that it were an evil spirit haunting the old property. To further drive home the point, the scenes turn to monochrome, denoting how the joy gets sucked out of their life when their father is around. The film does a fantastic job of showing the adults through the kids’ eyes. As time progresses and the kids learn it’s not all dark with their parents, we understand that they are also victims of their circumstances.

Despite some violent sequences, such as the ones where the kids are manhandled by their authoritative father, Naangal has its share of lightness, like a scene where one of the kids dunks their father’s shaving brush in toilet water to take his share of revenge. For every slap or a show of misplaced anger, the kids also meet folks who show them how love, empathy and kindness should not be a luxury — like those who’ve worked for their family, their maternal granddad or even a random girl they bump into on a bus ride. The filmmaker expertly hits us with sequences that bring out multiple emotions. Like the scene where one of the kids bites into their farm-grown, lusciously red strawberry only to twitch from its acerbic taste, the film takes us on a rollercoaster ride of sentiments.

A still from ‘Naangal’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Similar to the thick blanket of fog that slowly engulfs the hills, Naangal takes its time to unfold. Thankfully, this slow-burn nature works in tandem with establishing the tedious routine the boys are put into by their father. But that does not stop Avinash from having a little fun; the film that the kids sneak out to catch is Baby’s Day Out, one of the children sings ‘Raja, Rajathi Rajan Indha Raja’ while cleaning the toilet bowl, and — in a beautiful touch — Guna’s screenwriter Sab John is roped in for a small but effective role. Speaking of Kamal Haasan starrers, considering the backdrop, the kids’ fondness for Phantom comics, and the abusive father, the film also reminds us of Aalavandhan, but thankfully, no one goes on a killing spree in Naangal.

With cinematography and editing also handled by Avinash, ideas such as the one to show the same sequence in motion despite a cut in between are bold moves. While the makers have opted for live sound, not all the dialogue reaches us the way they are intended to. Ved Shanker Sugavanam’s music rightly elevates the mood the film opts for in each scene, and his use of deafening silence makes the punches land harder. Despite this being the feature debut for almost all of the film’s primary cast, the kids Mithun, Nithin and Rithik, along with Abdul, pull off a neat job, especially considering the number of lengthy takes the film has.

Naangal takes you on a trip down memory lane to your childhood days without assuring you that all of those memories would be pleasant. It is a profoundly personal work from a filmmaker who, with the title, tells the world that this is who they are without letting this chapter of life define them. And for that, he deserves a cwtch!

Naangal is releasing in theatres this Friday