Appuchi Gramam Movie Review

Synopsis: A meteorite is bound towards Tamil Nadu and the experts predict it will cause destruction on a large scale. Meanwhile, the people of Appuchi Gramam, where the meteorite is expected to hit, try to come to terms with the fact in their own way.

Movie Review: Appuchi Gramam opens with the information that at least 20,000 meteorites hit Earth every year. We are then shown images of the people of Appuchi Gramam grimly waiting for a meteorite to strike the place. It is a gloomy visual that recalls the beginning of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. Then, we are shown the events that occurred during the week earlier. We are introduced to Nallamuthu and Chinnasamy, who are stepbrothers and big shots in the village. The village has suffered because of their antagonism and is even without a deity because of their constant squabbling. Then there are Selvam and Dheeran, the village’s youth, who are in love Chinnasamy’s daughter Selvi and her cousin Sangamithra. There are some oddball characters as well — an educated man, an old man who uses any reason to have a drink, a miser, a dancer and her fan who plans to steal from the miser to pay the dancer and have her perform in the village, a kindhearted widow with a son abroad…

After Mundasupatti, here is another Tamil film that uses a meteorite to narrate a story about village life. But what Appuchi Gramam lacks is the quirkiness of that film. This is a somewhat sombre film that suggests that society, when faced with the prospect of extinction, will prefer amity over enmity. The problem is that the sub-plots are quite routine, and so, the film doesn’t feel fresh. The rivalry between Nallamuthu and Chinnasamy is a different version of what we have seen in films like Cheran Pandian; both the romantic tracks are perfunctory; and the storytelling is simplistic and lacks nuance. There is hardly any conflict and the chaos, the drama and the thrills that one expects in an end-of-a-community scenario are largely absent. What we get instead are predictable resolutions to familiar conflicts — the rivals realize peace between them can help the village, the lovers find the courage to break free of social constraints and get together, the miser learns that there is more to life than money, and so on. Even the village’s water problem is solved! And, we are able to guess how the film will end when we see Kitty, who plays the ISRO expert, talking to Nasser, who is the Chief Minister, about a solution.

The good bits involve a sequence when the villagers initially discuss about the meteorite amongst them with skepticism and naivety, a scene in which a character talks about how both Chinnasamy and Nallamuthu have hindered the village’s progress (it is a sly commentary on the politics in the state), and another moving one in which the birds and animals that are freed by the widow return to her of their own free will. The bit about a smaller space rock that hits the place a couple of days earlier and is turned into a deity is funny. There is also another significant one in which a character talks about preserving books, but it isn’t organically brought out. But what feels really out of place is the coda, where the director tries to add an alien element into this plot.