Vanangaan Movie Review: Bala and Arun Vijay’s voyeuristic and problematic film is unwanted addition to Tamil cinema’s obsession on sexual violence

1.5/5

Vanangaan Movie Story:

Kote (Arun Vijay), is a deaf-and-mute man who does odd jobs to sustain a living with his sister Devi, in Kanyakumari. While working as a security guard at a local orphanage which houses visually impaired girls, he realises that a few men are taking advantage of girls’ disability to voyeur them while they bathe. As Kote takes up violence to finish them off, Vanangaan becomes a tale of brutality.

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Vanangaan Movie Review:

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Director Bala is no new face when it comes to portraying the lives of the downtrodden, and in pain. Tragedies galore in his storytelling, and we know Bala’s hero is never a man who comes from wealth and sophistication. Bala, who became the flag-bearer of rawness and reality in Tamil cinema, comes back with Vanangaan, which is only yet another tale of milking sexual assault and voyeuristic filmmaking, resulting in hypocrisy.

Kote is a man of action. Words hold no meaning to him, not just because he is deaf and mute, but also because they don’t bring justice. That’s the moral ground Bala wants to make you believe when Kote takes on three men who voyeuristically enjoy as visually-impaired girls’ bathe. But the same Kote holds no bar when he can beat up Tina (Roshini Prakash) black and blue in front of everybody just because she teases him like no other. In fact, at one point in the film, when Kote refuses to reveal the real reason why he murdered the perpetrators, and Devi is battling for her brother, Tina once again gets slapped by Kote. Why? Because she questions and raises the pain, they are facing due to Kote’s refusal to reveal why he killed the men. Bala, who makes his protagonist a righteous man fighting for women’s dignity, is answerable for not only making the same hero beat up a woman at his will, but also why he chooses not to make Kote reveal the truth and shame the perpetrators. Why does the onus of sexual assault fall on the survivors, in this case women? Bala and Arun Vijay’s Vanangaan falters gravely in this aspect.

A huge problem that I have with Vanangaan is its insensitive and extremely problematic portrayal of sexual violence. I believe audiences of today’s age are enough exposed to the over usage of the issue onscreen, that even a mere mention is enough to understand the survivor’s pain. But that is not enough for Bala, who makes camera angles pan on women’s bodies, as men gawk like dogs at meat. Bala also makes no repentance when it is always the women facing the brunt of men’s actions. It is a Devi who keeps crying for her brother, it is Tina who has to face the wrath of Kote’s unexplainable violence on her, and it is the visually-impaired women who need a saviour. If that is not enough, Bala makes even more problematic stances when a group of Chinese tourists are chided for having spread the virus after eating dog meat, and women of privileged backdrop support Kote for beating up Tina. The reason? Well, she talks. Bala who speaks about women’s rights and safety, makes women trash talk when one of their kind gets beaten up. And finally, when Vanangaan ends on a note at a central character’s loss, you question what would have been the film’s intention after all. Vanangaan is neither the saviour women want, nor a necessary addition to the overloaded content on sexual assault in Tamil cinema.

Vanangaan Movie Verdict:

Vanangaan takes up the done-to-death issue of sexual assault as if there is nothing else that is plaguing society. But as it shows, it does more harm than good when the film forgets to treat its women characters with dignity. Bala, who wants even a woman’s corpse to be covered with a safety pin, forgets it when multiple camera angles are placed at the bathing booths to ogle women. Vanangaan is grotesque and would have done more good than bad had it was not made.