It is important for a film not to judge, let alone glorify the wrong thing. Lakshmi adds, “In Tamil cinema, we keep women on a pedestal because we’re overcompensating. That translates to any relationship where a woman is involved. The mother sentiment isn’t as prominent a concept in Hollywood. We also come from a mentality where a woman becomes complete when she becomes a mom, which itself needs to change.” If there is a narrative we are not able to avoid from the influence of the West, it is this, notes filmmaker Bramma. Writers and filmmakers are always looking for emotional stakes in their scripts, and mothers fit perfectly into this concept, he says.
A lot of people don’t spend too much time bringing out unique emotional connections in films, he says. “It is either love or mother sentiment or sister sentiment. This is like when you want to do interiors for your house, you go to a lamp store, and in this context, the safest lamp shade is the mother sentiment. Good or bad, right or wrong, mothers are the safest bet to evoke emotions.” But there have been attempts to depict flawed mothers, he points out. In his series Suzhal, the mother of Nandhini (Aishwarya Rajesh) flees to an ashram with abandon, leaving her husband to deal with domestic affairs. “Sriya Reddy’s character in the series is also very emotional because she has lost her son, but her form of manifestation is not sacrifice. Somewhere we’re attempting these things, but this has to come out in mainstream films as well. As filmmakers and writers we understand what works with the audience. The change has to happen gradually. Because if we do a total u-turn, there is fear of rejection,” he says, adding that these depictions are also usually a reflection of society.
