Swarnavel EswaranThe Uniqueness of P.S. Vinothraj’s Koozhangal (Pebbles, 2021) and Kottukkaaali (The Adamant Girl, 2024) in the Art Cinema Movement
The last two decades of digital cinema have seen filmmakers in Tamil venturing into areas regarding form and content that the previous century of celluloid cinema had not seen. Nonetheless, P.S. Vinothraj stands out as an exceptional voice within Tamil’s art cinema due to his radical commitment to slow cinema aesthetics and an intensely observational narrative style. Unlike his predecessors, Vinothraj entirely discards the embellishments of commercial filmmaking—his films are marked by an almost documentary-like detachment, devoid of background music, elaborate dialogues, or conventional plot structures. His debut feature, Koozhangal (Pebbles, 2021), is an uncompromising cinematic experience that eschews melodrama in favor of raw realism, making it a landmark in Tamil art cinema. Similarly, Kottukkaali (The Adamant Girl, 2024) expands on this approach by exploring caste and gender oppression through a measured, unhurried storytelling style that demands patience and immersion from the viewer.
The recent art cinema movement in Tamil cinema, exemplified by films like Koozhangal (Pebbles, 2021) and Kottukkaali (2024), marks a significant departure from mainstream Tamil cinema’s reliance on melodrama and commercial formulas. Instead, these films align with global art cinema traditions that emphasize realism, slow cinema aesthetics, and the everyday struggles of marginalized communities. Analyzing these films through the lens of slow cinema and the Tamil aesthetics of landscape and emotion sheds light on the profound impact Vinothraj has made in the art cinema circuit. His debut film, Koozhangal, won the prestigious Tiger Award at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, and Kottukkaali premiered at the (74th) Berlin Film Festival and won many awards in the festival circuit.
Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice
In Art Cinema, Paul Young and Paul Duncan (2009) and David Borwell and Kristen Thompson and Jeff Smith (1989; 2017) describe how art cinema distinguishes itself from mainstream filmmaking through its rejection of linear storytelling, its focus on psychological ambiguity, and its aesthetic commitment to long takes and contemplative visuals. They argue that art cinema prioritises mood over plot, allowing for a more unrestrained, expressive cinematic language. This perspective is evident in Vinothraj’s films, where traditional narrative structures are replaced with episodic, observational storytelling that captures the rhythms of daily life. Koozhangal (2021) follows a father Ganapathy (Karuththadaiyan) and son Velu (Chellapandi) who embark on a grueling journey through the barren landscapes of Tamil Nadu to bring back the boy’s mother Shanthi, who has left their home due to domestic violence. The film’s stark realism and lack of conventional plot progression emphasise the harshness of their environment and the emotional distance between them. These films certainly prioritise mood over plot.
Kottukkaali (2024) centers on a day in the life of a young woman trapped in a conservative and superstitious family that tries to exorcise her from her love for a lower-caste boy. The film intimately portrays her struggles with caste oppression, familial control, and personal agency, using slow cinema aesthetics to highlight her emotional and physical confinement. In his seminal work on art cinema, David Bordwell posits that it is a distinct mode of film practice that prioritises ambiguity, psychological complexity, and realism. Unlike classical Hollywood cinema, which is governed by clear cause-and-effect logic, art cinema often embraces open-ended narratives and episodic structures. Koozhangal, directed by P.S. Vinothraj, embodies these principles by forgoing a conventional story arc in favour of a raw, observational depiction of a father and son’s arduous journey through the arid Tamil Nadu landscape. The film’s minimalism—devoid of non-diegetic music and relying on naturalistic soundscapes—reinforces its neorealist lineage, reminiscent of the works of Satyajit Ray and Abbas Kiarostami. Similarly, Kottukkaali explores the psychological turmoil of its protagonists caught in societal entrapments. If his debut film, Koozhangal, established his commitment to realism and psychological depth, Kottukkaali further strips its narrative to engage with existential and social anxieties, a key characteristic of art cinema.
Landscapes of Emotion: Thinai Aesthetics and Road Cinema in the Films of P.S. Vinothraj
P.S. Vinothraj’s cinema stands out for its deep engagement with Tamil aesthetics, particularly the classical concept of thinai, which connects specific landscapes with corresponding emotional and narrative moods. In his two major films, Koozhangal (Pebbles) and Kottukkaali, Vinothraj adapts the thinai framework to contemporary concerns, grounding his stories in the topography of his native village, Iruttapatti, near Madurai, while drawing on the symbolic richness of Tamil literary traditions.
Koozhangal is marked by the paalai landscape, arid, rocky, and unforgiving. Associated in classical poetry with separation, hardship, and long journeys, paalai becomes the emotional terrain of a father and son’s journey to retrieve a runaway wife and mother. Though the physical distance travelled is about 13 kilometers, Vinothraj stretches this into a durational cinematic experience through long takes, handheld camerawork, and ambient soundscapes, immersing the viewer in the oppressive heat and emotional desolation of the rocky terrain. The return journey on foot, after the son destroys the rupee notes meant for bus fare, turns into a slow, contemplative descent into despair and revelation.
In contrast, Kottukkaali evokes the kurinji thinai, which is associated with hilly landscapes, love, and union. Though set in the same geographic region as Koozhangal, around Palamedu near Madurai, this film highlights the relative lushness and vegetation of the muddy region around the hills to frame a different emotional arc, that of desire, rebellion, and the social consequences of inter-caste love. The 23-kilometer journey undertaken by autorickshaw, as a young girl is taken to a temple for an exorcism from a love spell, again expands temporally on screen. The spatial movement becomes a site for psychological, social, and emotional exploration, using the road-movie structure to examine the violence inflicted on desire under caste patriarchy.
Vinothraj’s formal choices, long takes, nonactors, and natural sound, enhance this merging of landscape and emotion. His aesthetic sensibility was shaped not only by Tamil literary and cinematic traditions but also by global influences. A key moment in his artistic journey was his encounter with the films of French Roma director Tony Gatlif during a retrospective at the Kerala film festival. Gatlif’s road films, often focused on marginalised characters moving across landscapes charged with cultural memory and emotion, deeply resonated with Vinothraj, who later sought out all of Gatlif’s work. This influence is evident in how Vinothraj structures his films as road journeys where the transformation is both spatial but also emotional and political. In my conversations with him over the last few years, he had often spoken about how he was constantly on the move/dislocated when he was young. In fact, from Madurai, he went to Tirupur to work as a child. Then, his stint in a DVD library enabled him to be exposed to cinema, leading to his hunt for jobs in the film industry (Vinothraj, Telephonic Conversation).
His apprenticeship under director A. Sarkunam in films like Vaagai Sooda Vaa and Manjappai and his early work in the short-film platform Naalaya Iyakkunar further honed his sensibilities. Nevertheless, feeling pothaamai/unfulfillment led him to work with Murugaboopathy and his experimental theater troupe, Manalmagudi, for three years (Ibid.). However, Vinothraj has forged a path distinctively his own, one rooted in Tamil terrain but globally conversant; minimalist in dialogue, yet rich in effect; and grounded in the real while evoking poetic abstraction through landscape and form. Through Koozhangal and Kottukkaali, Vinothraj demonstrates how regional aesthetics like thinai can be revitalised within contemporary cinema, transforming local geography into a vessel for universal emotion and critique.
Slow Cinema of Vinothraj
One of the most striking sequences in Koozhangal, as exemplified by the film’s publicity, occurs when the father and son wait for the bus to the wife/mother’s home but look in contrasting directions. Similarly salient is the scene whenthey return home after walking through the barren landscape after a long and futile day. As he hurriedly drinks the water in the steel jug from the pot at home, the camera holds on to him and, through the father, conveys profound fatigue and frustration. Just as by the return of the school bag home, which was left at the kiosk on the way, the return of the absent mother. Silence and ambient sound heighten the scene’s realism, making the audience acutely aware of the oppressive heat and the stillness of the surroundings. This sequence exemplifies slow cinema’s commitment to duration, where time is not compressed to advance the plot but is instead experienced as a weighty, tangible force. More importantly, as the son enters and places the pebble he collected on the way and kept in his mouth to quench his thirst as he keeps that in the shelf, we come to know from his collection of pebbles that incidents like his father’s abuse of his mother and her going away are routine and not an exception. In contrast to conventional cinema’s rapid pacing, this sequence invites viewers to sit with the characters’ discomfort, reinforcing their physical and emotional struggles. However, unlike the father, the son finds joy when he gifts the puppy, the live one replacing the vanished toy,he gathered on the way to his younger sister, who starts happily playing with it.
In Kottukkaali, a similarly powerful scene unfolds when the protagonist, a woman trapped in a patriarchal society, sits silently in an autorickshaw amidst all the uproar around her. The camera lingers on her face for an extended period, capturing the subtle shifts in her expression as she listens to the sounds of her close relatives. The long take, accompanied by minimal sound design, creates an atmosphere of quiet suffocation. The sequence aligns with Lutz Koepnick’s argument in On Slowness that slow cinema challenges the hyper-stimulation of contemporary media by drawing attention to the unnoticed details of everyday life. By allowing the audience to dwell on the protagonist’s isolation, the scene becomes a meditation on her inner turmoil, making her oppression feel viscerally real.
Kottukkaali’s first 15 minutes inform us of Vinothraj’s aesthetics as an auteur. The film begins with cricket sounds during the initial credits, telling us it is night. Then we see the protagonist Meena’s (Anna Ben, in an unforgettable role) mother silently praying to her village god under the tree, and the camera follows her during the early morning dusk as she walks to her home. Once she reaches home, we see Meena sitting alone by the cot and her mother applying the sacred ash from the temple on Meena’s forehead, over her clothes, and on her hands and feet. In closer shots, we see the mother preparing her daughter by applying oil to her hair, braiding it, and pasting the red dot on her forehead, though the daughter is aloof and not responsive to the dressing-up ritual. It parallels the rooster, which frees itself from the small stone it is tied to and runs out only to be chased by the male family members who want its legs to be tied while taking it to the temple.
Parallelly, we see Meena’s maternal uncle Paandi (Soori) also getting ready, his sister applying the white powder paste on his throat as his voice seems affected. When she criticizes the adamant girl, Meena, he is after, he gets angry and pushes her away with the men from the family who defend her. Then we see the autorickshaw after the driver mechanically gets it started carrying the deadpan Meena, her mother, two of her mother’s sisters, the younger one whom we saw applying the paste to Paandi in the back with her son. The autorickshaw is patrolled by two-wheelers in the front and the back, with Soori and two of his friends as the pilot in front and two other men from the family following the vehicle with the women at the center. As they are traveling, the men in the two-wheelers chat. When Paandi asks about his friend’s father, we come to know that his father went away and wanted to be a saint but was brought back home by his mother. However, his father left again. Similarly, through the men at the back, we learned how the land prices have increased, and the elder brother did not help the other buy the land earlier. Through such talks, Vinithraj sets up the milieu and the larger community of his plot and protagonists, adding a layer to the realist aesthetics of his film, primarily through gossip not directly related to the plot. The idea of the road movie is also distinctly different here, as the road acts as a conduit to culture.
P.S. Vinothraj’s Koozhangal and Kottukkaali stand as stark reimaginings of the road movie genre, transplanted into the arid landscapes around Madurai. Rather than tracing escape or adventure in a conventional sense, both films use the journey motif to delve into the structural violence of patriarchy, caste, and kinship systems. The camera moves with the characters—often from behind—as they walk across a parched landscape studded with palm trees, dry shrubs, and scattered rocks, capturing both motion and stasis, alienation, and endurance. In Koozhangal (Pebbles), which was lauded by Ananda Vikatan for its raw emotionality and spare storytelling, the father-son journey unfolds in an oppressive climate, both literal and social (Vikatan Vimarsanakhuzu). The abusive father, steeped in alcoholism and the toxic entitlement of masculinity, drags his son along to bring his wife back from her natal home. Language itself becomes a tool of violence, as the father hurls slurs and insults, revealing how verbal abuse corrodes dignity alongside physical violence. In this sense, the road is not toward resolution but confrontation with a deeper cycle of pain. The pebbles the son collects and saves on the shelf at home mark the number of times he journeyed with his furious father, who takes out his anger on him. The school bag he left at the shop is back at home when he returns, indicating that the mother, despite being badly abused by her alcoholic husband, cares for her son’s future. Her love spills over, as we see, despite all the heat, the lost puppy that he brought home is now playing with his younger sister.
In Kottakaali, Vinothraj turns his lens toward the interlocking oppressions of gender and caste. A girl in love with a lower-caste boy is forced to return home where her maternal uncle asserts endogamic rights over her in disturbing, violent ways. Reviews in Vikatan and other Tamil journals noted the film’s brutal honesty in depicting this specific form of familial patriarchy, where love is punished and women’s desires policed through kinship. A chilling improvised sequence has the uncle violently slap the girl in an autorickshaw simply because she was humming along to a song. The mother and sisters who intervene are beaten, too, in a chaotic, handheld shot that is tightly staged but breathes with the unpredictable reality of real life.
Vinothraj’s aesthetic signature, long takes combined with mid-range handheld camera movements, anchors both films in the hyper-local but allows for more significant resonances. The camera follows characters at a slight distance, never too close, allowing them the space to be observed within the dusty, harsh landscape. These long walking shots, often from behind, function almost ethnographically, giving us time to notice the topography and ambient life. Nonactors populate the background, offering fragments of village talk, bits of context not essential to the plot but vital to the atmosphere and lived experience. As the characters walk, the world breathes around them: a dog barks, a baby cries, and a conversation about marriage or caste flits by.
In Vinothraj’s films, keeping with his minimalist aesthetics, drone shots are rare but powerful, often used for top-angle shots that reduce the human figure to a speck in a barren, sun-scorched land. Time expands in these moments, and we are made to feel the sheer weight of walking, under heat, pressure, and history. What makes Vinothraj singular is not only his visual minimalism or sonic restraint but also his improvisational brilliance. Both films were lauded for coaxing emotional truths from nonactors in real-time. In Koozhangal, the father’s violent outburst at his wife’s family is not staged in a traditional sense but unfolds with terrifying immediacy. In Kottakaali, the domestic confrontation in the autorickshaw spirals into chaos yet remains tightly choreographed, anchored by an invisible rhythm of bodies, voices, and wounds.
Despite their sparse dialogue and minimalist plots, these films offer a deep psychological reading of social trauma. Vinothraj builds his soundscapes carefully, eschewing music for ambient and diegetic sound. Birds, roosters, wind, and the crunch of footsteps become emotional markers where silence weighs heavier than words. What results is cinema that listens and looks, not to explain, but to expose. By localising the road movie in the arid heart of Tamil Nadu, Vinothraj reclaims the genre for the rural poor, the silenced women, the beaten children, and the forbidden lovers. Furthermore, he does so not with melodrama or exposition but through walk, gesture, glance, and the long take that dares to hold, even when it hurts. Furthermore, the long shot compositions radiate with the heat of the land between the characters who stand at great distances. Such long shots are not restricted to the main characters. Consider, for instance, the woman from the bus in Koozhangal who, across the landscape, reaches the solitary tree on the left of the frame to feed her child under its shade. That woman could be read as an epitome of the abused single mother of the region. Consider, for instance, how her hungry child’s cry dwarfs the mundane, meaningless sound and fury of the male (drunk) passengers when they get into their routine fight (Rangan). What is significant about Vinothraj’s authorship is the gradual way the passengers who board the bus establish the milieu: the women from the local santhai/market with fish to sell; the plastic pots with water to be carried (home); the young adolescent girl/bride with her family; the ritualistic tall lamps; masculinity driven angry men; the hungry child and the lonely mother.
The Road Movie Genre and Vinothraj’s Films
The road movie genre is often linked to themes of self-discovery, displacement, and existential searching. Scholars such as Timothy Corrigan and Jose Duarte (2018) argue that road movies transcend mere geographical movement. Using travel as a metaphor for transformation, alienation, and political critique, they frequently break from traditional narrative structures. David Laderman (1996; 2002) emphasises their tendency to resist mainstream expectations, favouring introspection over spectacle. Wim Wenders, one of the most influential directors in this genre, exemplifies these themes in Paris, Texas (1984) and Alice in the Cities (1974), where landscapes function as emotional and psychological terrains. Similarly, Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry (1997) fuses existential inquiry with the road film structure, while Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (2016) blends social realism and youth culture within a road movie framework.
Mexican road movies, particularly those emerging in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, offer a perspective that intertwines socio-political critique with themes of identity and marginalisation. Films such as Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros (2000), Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También (2001), and Amat Escalante’s Los Bastardos (2008) explore how movement across geographical spaces reflects more profound socio-economic disparities and personal conflicts. Y Tu Mamá También, for instance, subverts the road movie’s conventional narrative by juxtaposing a carefree sexual coming-of-age story with an underlying political commentary on class and historical trauma in Mexico (Garibotto and Pérez, 2016). Much like Vinothraj’s, these films focus on landscapes as sites of both personal and structural oppression, underscoring themes of disillusionment and entrapment.
Indian road movies have evolved within their own unique socio-cultural and cinematic frameworks. While mainstream Indian cinema has traditionally associated travel with adventure, heroism, or romance, independent films have explored the road as a site of resistance and introspection. Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise (1991), one of the most influential feminist road movies, presents the journey as an act of defiance against patriarchal structures, culminating in an iconic, tragic, yet liberating ending (Williams 1991). Indian films such as Dev Benegal’s Road, Movie (2009) and Ruchika Oberoi’s Island City (2015) similarly use travel as a means of critiquing societal norms, though they do not fully embrace the road movie’s anarchic or liberatory ethos. Unlike Thelma & Louise, which portrays the road as a path to rebellion and freedom, many Indian road films like Vinothraj’s Koozhangal portray the movement as a space of hardship rather than empowerment. Kottukkaali, in particular, contrasts sharply with the feminist subversion in Thelma & Louise by showing how caste and gender oppression restrict movement, reinforcing psychological entrapment rather than escape. Nevertheless, there is hope suggested through the teacher character, who offers the boy a lift at a time when his father most physically abuses him. But then, the son accepts the lift only to be found on the road shortly after following his father. In Vinothraj’s words: “There were many ideas behind the teacher’s character, and it can be interpreted in multiple ways. For instance, even if she is driving the two-wheeler, her husband tells her to give the vehicle back to him when they near the village. So, you can still see the traces of patriarchy … [Nonetheless,] the teacher’s character is introduced to underline the importance of education and how it takes you forward in your life. It is why Velu’s mother leaves him behind so that he can go to school. When the teacher offers to drop him at the village, it is a sign that his education will take him forward” (Harshini 2023). Thus, Koozhangal is infused with the road movie spirit.
Vinothraj’s Koozhangal aligns with the tradition of art cinema road movies, following a father and son on a gruelling journey through the arid landscapes of Tamil Nadu. Like Wenders’ protagonists, they traverse vast spaces in search of meaning, with long takes and unhurried pacing emphasising the road movie’s focus on movement as an existential process rather than a goal-driven plot device. While Mexican road movies often portray mobility as a way to negotiate socio-political anxieties, whether through class struggles, migration, or postcolonial ruptures, Vinothraj’s films highlight movement as an oppressive condition. Instead of mobility leading to newfound liberation or self-discovery, as in Y Tu Mamá También or Thelma & Louise, Vinothraj’s characters experience travel as a burden, intensifying their suffering.
In contrast to mainstream Tamil cinema’s portrayal of travel, often tied to heroism or spectacle, Vinothraj highlights endurance and suffering. The barren landscapes in Koozhangal echo the emotional isolation seen in Paris, Texas. Similarly, Kottukkaali is an inverted road movie that explores psychological entrapment rather than physical travel. Like the Mexican road movies that critique entrenched social hierarchies, Kottukkaali examines caste and gender oppression, illustrating how mobility is literally and metaphorically restricted. By situating Vinothraj’s films within the lineage of art cinema road movies, we can see them as narratives of displacement that reject conventional resolutions, presenting movement as physical toil and existential reckoning. His work resonates with the themes of Mexican and Indian road movies yet diverges in its treatment of mobility, not as a space for discovery or liberation but as a testament to structural violence and endurance.
The relationship between movement and contemplation is central to the emotional power of art cinema road films (Edmond, 2015). Unlike conventional road movies, which celebrate the freedom of movement, Koozhangal subverts this notion. The father and son’s journey is not of discovery or adventure but of exhaustion and necessity. Their forced movement across the landscape does not liberate them but underscores their lack of agency. This rhythm of travel, punctuated by prolonged silences and moments of physical exhaustion, deepens the film’s emotional weight (Hurault-Paupe, 2006).
Similarly, in Kottukkaali, the protagonist’s movement through the rural expanse of Tamil Nadu reflects an emotional and social entrapment rather than mobility or change. The film’s juxtaposition of built and natural environments, village homes, fields, and temple courtyards creates a tension between tradition and autonomy. European and Latin American road films have historically used such contrasts to explore themes of alienation and freedom, framing rural landscapes as oppressive and liberating (Garibotto and Pérez 2016; Falkowska, 2009). Vinothraj’s work, however, reframes this dynamic through the lens of Tamil socio-cultural constraints, where movement does not necessarily equate to escape.
Comparisons with Contemporary Masters of Slow Cinema
Though vastly different, Vinothraj’s cinema shares strong thematic and stylistic affinities with the works of Gurvinder Singh and Amit Dutta, two of India’s most prominent slow cinema auteurs. Singh’s Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan (2011) and Chauthi Koot (2015) employ slow, meditative pacing and minimalistic narratives to depict socio-political realities. Like Koozhangal, Singh’s films utilise long takes and ambient sound to immerse viewers in the everyday struggles of marginalized communities. Both directors also resist conventional exposition, relying instead on the expressive potential of landscapes and physical gestures to convey emotion and conflict (Jain 2018). In Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan, the portrayal of a Dalit family navigating an oppressive rural economy resonates deeply with Vinothraj’s depiction of caste and gender-based struggles in Koozhangal and Kottukkaali.
Amit Dutta’s films, such as Nainsukh (2010) and The Seventh Walk (2013), further push the boundaries of slow cinema by merging meditative temporality with an exploration of visual art and mythology (Srinivasan 2020). Unlike Vinothraj’s raw realism, Dutta’s works often incorporate stylized compositions and painterly aesthetics. However, both filmmakers commit to duration, sensory immersion, and an emphasis on the rhythms of nature. The Seventh Walk, for instance, unfolds almost entirely in the wilderness, much like Koozhangal, where the landscape becomes a character shaping human interactions. This emphasis on the environment as a narrative force loosely aligns Vinothraj’s cinema with Dutta’s contemplative approach, albeit with a more grounded and socially engaged focus.
Vinothraj’s films also share strong parallels with international slow cinema auteurs such as Carlos Reygadas, Lisandro Alonso, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Reygadas, particularly in Silent Light (2007) and Post Tenebras Lux (2012), employs long takes and minimal dialogue to construct immersive, contemplative narratives. Like Vinothraj, Reygadas focuses on rural settings, using natural landscapes to shape his characters’ psychological and existential struggles. The stark, sunlit terrains in Koozhangal resonate with Reygadas’ use of vast, open spaces to evoke loneliness and transcendence (Hershfield 2014; Bordun 2017; Vasiutkevych 2024). Similarly, Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja (2014) and La Libertad (2001) depict solitary journeys that unfold in real-time, with sparse dialogue and an emphasis on movement through desolate landscapes, a style closely mirrored in Koozhangal. Vinothraj’s collaborator editor, Ganesh Shiva, enables the contemplative pace of his films.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s meditative approach, seen in films like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and Cemetery of Splendour (2015), presents time as fluid and experiential (Sarkar and Sarkar 2024). While Vinothraj’s realism contrasts with Weerasethakul’s mystical narratives, both directors are interested in duration, silence, and engagement with the subconscious rhythms of life. Kottukkaali, with its intimate interior spaces, though within a traveling auto rickshaw and prolonged contemplation, subtly echoes Weerasethakul’s dreamlike stillness, where time stretches, and characters exist in protracted states of introspection (Caillard 2022). The arid landscapes in Vinothraj’s Koozhangal and Kottukkaali function as active forces shaping his characters’ emotional and psychological conditions, much like the barren and fragmented spaces in Michelangelo Antonioni’s films. Antonioni’s cinema, particularly L’Avventura (1960) and Red Desert (1964), is known for using landscapes as extensions of existential alienation, where desolate environments mirror the emotional voids within characters (Moore 1995).
In a similar vein, Vinothraj’s films employ the dry, unforgiving terrain of Tamil Nadu as a metaphor for abandonment, oppression, and endurance. The father and son’s journey in Koozhangal unfolds against the backdrop of a sun-scorched wasteland, their isolation heightened by the stark composition of the frame, echoing Antonioni’s tendency to place characters in vast, depopulated spaces that emphasize their insignificance. Lutz Koepnick’s On Slowness: Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary (2014) suggests that slow cinema’s prolonged attention to landscapes disrupts conventional cinematic time, allowing alienation to be experienced as a weighty, immersive reality. This is evident in Kottukkaali, where the protagonist’s confined spaces contrast sharply with the open, yet inhospitable, outside world, much like Monica Vitti’s suffocating existence in Red Desert. The extended silences, static compositions, and the absence of melodrama in Vinothraj’s films reinforce the Antonionian aesthetic of detachment, where characters are emotionally adrift, shaped by their environments in ways that deny them resolution or catharsis. By intertwining landscape with psychological states, Vinothraj’s cinema extends Antonioni’s rich legacy into the context of Tamil art cinema, paying homage to the master and transforming physical spaces into affective terrains of social and existential struggle.
Lalitha Gopalan’s pathbreaking Cinemas Dark and Slow in Digital India (2021) provides a crucial framework for understanding the aesthetics of slow cinema in the Indian context, particularly about form and the specificity of content. Her discussions of films such as Thithi (Raam Reddy, 2015), Labour of Love (Aditya Vikram Sengupta, 2014), Kaul: A Calling (Aadish Keluskar, 2016), and Piravi (Shaji N. Karun, 1989) illuminate how contemporary Indian filmmakers engage with temporality, realism, and affect, particularly in the context of digital technology/aesthetics. P.S. Vinothraj’s Koozhangal (2021) and Kottukkaali (2024) resonate with Gopalan’s analysis, particularly in their use of long takes, minimalistic dialogue, and an observational approach to storytelling. Koozhangal exemplifies the slow cinema aesthetic through its stark landscape, the physical toil of its protagonists, and the endurance of time as a central thematic and formal concern. Gopalan’s theorization of “cruel cinema,” which she applied to Tamil films like Paruthiveeran (Ameer Sultan, 2007) and Subramaniapuram (M. Sasikumar, 2008), also finds relevance in Koozhangal, where the unrelenting harshness of the environment mirrors the struggles of its characters.
The Arid Landscape and Aesthetic Form in Vinothraj’s Cinema: A Karisal Literary Perspective
The stark, arid landscapes of Tamil Nadu’s southern regions are more than just a backdrop in P.S. Vinothraj’s films; they actively shape his cinema’s narrative and thematic concerns. Koozhangal and Kottukkaali are rooted in the dry, sun-scorched terrains of Tamil Nadu, landscapes marked by barrenness, heat, and a relentless atmosphere of survival. This geographic specificity resonates deeply with the tradition of Karisal literature, particularly with works like the iconic writer Poomani’s Vekkai (Heat, 2012), where the land is not merely a setting but a force that dictates human struggle and resilience. Karisal literature, named after the karisal (black soil) regions of Tamil Nadu to the south of Madurai, centers on the lives of agrarian communities, often portraying the unrelenting heat and drought that define their existence. Poomani’s Vekkai, a novel steeped in the rhythms of rural life, captures the suffocating weight of caste oppression and familial tensions against the parched land, much like how Koozhangal and Kottukkaali immerse their characters in harsh environments that reflect their psychological and social entrapments. In Koozhangal, the father and son’s journey through barren stretches of land, with cracked earth underfoot and the sun beating down mercilessly, is reminiscent of the oppressive heat and desolation described in Vekkai. Their suffering is personal and deeply tied to the unforgiving terrain they must navigate.
The prolonged silence and the emphasis on ambient sounds, such as the wind sweeping through dry fields or the distant calls of birds, bring the viewer into the characters’ world, where every movement is shaped by heat and exhaustion. This approach aligns with the literary style of Karisal novels, where the weight of the land is conveyed through sparse, evocative prose that mirrors the stillness and endurance of its inhabitants. Furthermore, Kottukkaali extends this exploration by depicting the interiority of a young woman trapped in a stifling society. Just as Vekkai employs heat as a metaphor for simmering tensions and repressed anger, Kottukkaali uses the metaphor of the sacrificial rooster, whose feet are tied, and oppressive silence to highlight the suffocation of patriarchal and caste-based control. The contrast between indoor confinement and the vast, open yet unwelcoming exteriors reflects a paradox often found in Karisal literature: the vast and all-encompassing land offers no escape from entrenched social structures. In positioning Vinothraj’s films within the framework of Karisal aesthetics, one can see how his engagement with realism is not just visual but deeply thematic. His protagonists do not merely inhabit their landscapes; they struggle against them, absorbed into an environment that mirrors their suffering, shaping their destinies in ways that are inescapable. By drawing from the arid landscapes of Tamil Nadu, Vinothraj’s films become cinematic counterparts to the literary tradition of Vekkai and other Karisal texts, reinforcing a shared aesthetic of resilience, deprivation, and the silent, simmering rage of the marginalized.
Gender, Caste, Space, and Emotion in Kottukkaali and Koozhangal
Gendered experiences of space play a crucial role in Kottukkaali, where the protagonist, a woman, navigates the deeply patriarchal rural landscape, exposing how gender shapes mobility and emotional experience. Unlike male-centred road films, where movement suggests self-discovery or existential crisis, Kottukkaali interrogates how women’s movement is policed and emotionally fraught. The protagonist’s journey is mediated by social expectations, surveillance, and spatial restrictions, turning the landscape into an arena of silent oppression. Falkowska (2009) notes that road films often depict landscapes as contested sites of power where gendered bodies face different stakes. Quoting from Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli’s Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and The European Road Movie (2006, p. 5), Falkowska draws attention to the differences between American and European Road Movies: American road films typically embrace the mythology of “freedom, reinvention, and limitless possibility,” often tied to the image of “vast, open highways” stretching across a seemingly boundless landscape. This reflects the cultural narrative of the American Dream and individualism. In contrast, European road films are shaped by a more “fragmented landscape” – a “mosaic” of different cultures, nations, and histories. Roads are not just physical but symbolic of “boundaries and entanglements linguistic, political, and economic.” Here, travel isn’t always liberating; it can reveal divisions, histories of conflict, and the complexities of postcolonial and transnational identities.
In Kottukkaali, village roads, temple spaces, and household courtyards are charged with anxieties of transgression, where movement is never neutral but always under the scrutiny of caste, custom, and familial honor. The long, lingering shots of empty spaces emphasize absence, exclusion, and the protagonist’s growing sense of entrapment. Thus, the emotional weight of Kottukkaali stems not just from its physical landscape but from its portrayal of space as a silent mechanism of gendered control, where women’s freedom is always contingent and conditional. Consider, for instance, the climax of Kottukkaaali, where we see the local village priest exorcising the ghost of a young woman who seems to be possessed and gone silent, protesting patriarchal torture. The way the priest touches her body parts in a raw and violent fashion, including her navel, in an extended ritual in front of her husband and their family is not only abusive but questionable, amounting to the violation of her dignity in a public space. However, such rituals are not unusual even in contemporary times.
The tridents in the temple symbolize the priest’s invasion of the victim’s body. Also, the tree there contrasts with the close-up of natural elements in European art cinema, which has been generally associated with fostering intimacy and connection. However, directors like Antonioni are an exception (Jazairy, 2009). Nonetheless, Koozhangal employs this technique of intimacy to amplify the film’s tactile realism, cracked earth, blistered feet, and the swaying of dried grass. More importantly, the pebble that the son collects on the way and hides it in his mouth. Or the burning stick through which the father lights up his beedi from the family who are catching rats and roasting them in the fire to eat. These shots are not merely aesthetic flourishes but an emotional conduit, immersing the viewer in the haptic experience of the characters’ suffering. The father and son’s visual and sensory journey makes their struggle’s physicality palpable. Similarly, Kottukkaali evokes emotion by using environmental sounds, the rustling of leaves, the distant hum of birds, and the heavy breathing of a tired body. This aligns with the idea of “embodied simulation,” where viewers engage viscerally with the film’s environment, feeling the character’s fatigue and distress (Wojciehowski and Gallese, quoted in Mikić, 2017, p 80).
Thus, the landscape is seen and felt, reinforcing the film’s immersive quality. In Koozhangal, the father’s rough demeanor and the son’s silent endurance are mirrored in the relentlessness of the land. The journey is not simply about reaching a destination but about surviving the natural and social environment. Similarly, in Kottukkaali, the protagonist’s movement through different spaces underscores the constraints of social mobility, where physical travel does not equate to personal or emotional freedom. P.S. Vinothraj’s Koozhangal and Kottukkaali exemplify how the landscape is an emotional force in Tamil art cinema. Through long observational takes, sensory immersion, and contrasting environments, mainly through the vast exteriors and the cramped spaces within the bus or auto rickshaw, these films transform the rural terrain of Tamil Nadu into a site of endurance, loss, and resilience. The landscape is neither passive nor neutral; it silently witnesses human suffering.
A central narrative in Kottukkaali revolves around an intercaste love affair, which catalyzes the protagonist’s suffering. The film subtly yet powerfully portrays how caste norms dictate personal relationships, particularly for women, whose autonomy is often curtailed by societal expectations. Unlike mainstream Tamil cinema, where intercaste love is either sensationalized or resolved through acts of heroism, Kottukkaali presents it as a deeply entrenched struggle that leads to systemic oppression. The female protagonist, caught between her desire for love and the rigid structures of caste endogamy, finds herself isolated and subjected to psychological and social constraints regarding her choices. The film’s slow pacing and prolonged silence underscore the weight of her predicament, forcing the audience to sit with her pain rather than offering dramatic resolutions. Vinothraj’s portrayal of intercaste relationships diverges sharply from commercial cinema’s often formulaic representations by focusing on the quiet endurance of suffering rather than overt conflict.
In Koozhangal, the arid, barren landscapes of Tamil Nadu dominate the frame, emphasising the harshness of the environment and the characters’ lack of control over their circumstances. The vastness of the land, juxtaposed with the father and son’s small, struggling figures, conveys a sense of insignificance and endurance. Their journey’s long, unbroken takes make the space feel overwhelming, reinforcing themes of displacement and survival. Unlike mainstream Tamil cinema, which often uses landscape as a backdrop for heroic exploits or picturesque beauty, Vinothraj’s use of space foregrounds deprivation and resilience, making geography an active force in storytelling. Kottukkaali, in contrast, utilises confined spaces to highlight the protagonist’s entrapment. The claustrophobic interiors of the autorickshaw, which has frequent starting troubles and prolonged silences, create a sense of suffocation, mirroring the protagonist’s emotional and social repression. The outside world holds the potential for escape yet remains inaccessible due to rigid caste structures, the protagonist is not free even to attend nature’s call. She is monitored by the possessive maternal uncle. By framing characters within tight compositions, Vinothraj reinforces their lack of agency, a striking departure from mainstream Tamil films where space is often used to highlight grandeur, spectacle, or freedom.
Cinematography and Sound in Vinothraj’s Films
The cinematography in Koozhangal and Kottukkaali plays a pivotal role in shaping the narrative’s emotional depth and immersive realism. Shot on the modest budgeted indie cinema’s favorite, Sony A-7 (S II), Koozhangal employs long takes to emphasize the grueling journey of its characters. The film’s cinematographers, Vignesh Kumulai and Jeya Parthipan, utilize harsh lighting and natural compositions to accentuate the barren landscapes, making the environment a central force in the narrative. Handheld shots add to the rawness, reinforcing the sense of struggle and endurance. The absence of artificial lighting creates an organic visual texture, aligning the film with the aesthetics of the cinema of realism. Koozhangal was shot between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., unlike most Tamil films, which prefer the “golden hour” of dawn or dusk for their key sequences.
Kottukkaali, on the other hand, shot on Alexa Mini by cinematographer B. Sakthivel on a relatively bigger budget, contrasts interior and exterior cinematography, mainly within the traveling auto rickshaw, to mirror the protagonist’s entrapment. The interior shots are composed with restrictive framing, often using the spaces within the bigger auto rickshaw that can carry seven people. In contrast to the ubiquitous moving/handheld long takes prolonged static shots enhance the constraining atmosphere, making the audience feel the weight of caste oppression and social expectations. Low-key lighting within confined spaces contrasts with the stark brightness of outdoor settings, subtly reinforcing the tension between confinement and the unattainable promise of freedom outside.
The sound design in both films is equally significant. Koozhangal relies on diegetic sounds, wind, footsteps, rustling leaves to immerse the audience in the father and son’s arduous trek. Tamil cinema’s well-known critic, Baradwaj Rangan, who assisted with the subtitles of the film, calls the sound design by Hari Prasad “outstanding.” He also points to the way the plot progresses in Koozhangal: “Vinothraj gives us geographical markers along the way: trees, giant rock formations, a stone on which Velu has written the names of his parents and sister, a family that catches and eats rats. Everything/everyone becomes a sort of ‘milestone’ along the way. Even the way the geography of the villages is revealed is through walking. There are no ‘establishing’ shots. We look at people and homes and cattle and streets as Ganapathy and Velu walk past them.” (Rangan). The sound design in Kottukkaali (Suren G, S. Alagia Koothan) and the quality of its location sound by Raghav Ramesh are exceptional as well.
Such “milestones” and the village milieu as it gradually unfolds are marked by distinct ambient sounds: crickets, cows, birds (crows), and the automotive (bus/auto rickshaw) in Vinothraj’s films. The absence of a conventional background score ensures that every environmental sound carries weight, reinforcing the stark realism of their journey. The sparse background score by Yuvan Shankar Raja is unobtrusive. The oppressive silence in many sequences amplifies their isolation, making even the most minor auditory details, like the crunch of dry soil, intensely palpable. In Kottukkaali, sound design contributes to the protagonist’s emotional landscape. Distant conversations, muffled voices, and environmental noises create an auditory confinement that mirrors her emotional state. The strategic use of silence, interrupted by sudden ambient noises, builds a psychological tension that reflects her suppressed emotions and lack of agency. Vinothraj’s approach to sound aligns with the works of slow cinema auteurs like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tsai Ming-Liang, where sound becomes an active narrative device rather than just a background element.
Digital Technology and Aesthetics in Vinothraj’s Films
Vinothraj’s films are deeply rooted in the aesthetics of digital cinema, leveraging the flexibility and immediacy of digital technology to construct immersive, observational narratives. Unlike mainstream Tamil films that use digital advancements to enhance spectacle through visual effects and high production values, Vinothraj employs digital tools to reinforce minimalism and realism. Handheld digital cinematography, though Gimbal in Koozhangal, allows for intimate, unobtrusive filming, capturing the harshness of the terrain and the fatigue of the characters without overt stylisation. Digital cameras enable prolonged takes without the constraints of film stock, a crucial factor in achieving the slow cinema aesthetics that define his work. The digital format also plays a significant role in the sound design of his films. The precision of digital audio recording enables an acute focus on ambient sounds, wind, footsteps, rustling leaves, enhancing the sensory immersion of Koozhangal and Kottukkaali. In Kottukkaali, digital cinematography allows for heightened contrasts between claustrophobic interiors and expansive outdoor settings, subtly reinforcing the protagonist’s psychological state.
Furthermore, Vinothraj’s digital aesthetic resonates with D.N. Rodowick’s theories on the shift from indexicality to a new form of realism enabled by digital cinema. While digitally captured, his films maintain an indexical connection to reality through their documentary-like observation of social conditions. Unlike the hypermediated visuals of commercial Tamil cinema, which often rely on digital post-production to enhance action sequences, Vinothraj’s films use digital technology to strip down the cinematic experience, foregrounding raw performances and unembellished spaces. By embracing the potential of digital cinema while resisting its commercialized excesses, Vinothraj situates himself within a global tradition of independent filmmakers who use digital tools to amplify narrative authenticity. His approach parallels filmmakers such as Pedro Costa and Wang Bing, who similarly use digital technology to craft immersive, socially engaged narratives.
Drawing from the affordances of digital technology and aesthetics, P.S. Vinothraj’s visual language is shaped by his commitment to slow cinema aesthetics, marked by a restrained use of dialogue and a mobile camera that captures the emotional and spatial contours of his characters’ journeys. His films, Koozhangal (2021) and Kottukkaali (2024), reject expository storytelling, relying instead on visual and auditory immersion to convey narrative and affect. In Koozhangal, the strained relationship between the father and son is rendered through silences, fragmented conversations, and glances rather than verbal communication. This approach aligns with Bordwell’s theory of art cinema as a mode of narration that prioritizes psychological depth over explicit exposition. Bordwell suggests art cinema “foregrounds psychological uncertainty and narrative ambiguity” by eschewing conventional dialogue-driven storytelling. The absence of dialogue forces the audience to engage with the materiality of the image, heightening the emotional and sensory impact of each scene. Consider, for instance, the way the interiority of the child Velu is visually painted, whether his tearing of currency notes or throwing away the matchbox to get at his raging bull father or the way a balloon, a pebble, a toy, a flying plane, or a puppy captures his heart despite the heat. More importantly, the haiku-like poem of the girl who wants to sell her leaf toys, and when he moves away without buying, we see the leaves flying like birds around her as she smiles.
In On Slowness: Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary, Lutz Koepnick highlights how slow cinema disrupts conventional cinematic pacing, compelling audiences to experience time differently. Vinothraj’s use of the moving camera within extended takes aligns with this philosophy, as the long durations of movement intensify the weight of the characters’ suffering. In Kottukkaali, this technique is particularly evident in scenes where the female protagonist is framed in constrained spaces, with the camera following her hesitantly, mirroring her psychological entrapment. In Koozhangal, the oppressive social structures that dictate the father and son’s journey remain unspoken but deeply felt. The barren landscape mirrors their struggle for survival, subtly invoking how caste hierarchies determine access to resources and mobility. Unlike mainstream films that explicitly name caste identities or frame caste violence within revenge tropes, Vinothraj’s film lets the material conditions of the characters speak for themselves. The long, observational takes emphasize the endurance of oppression, mirroring the approach seen in the works of Neorealist filmmakers.
Kottukkaali extends this exploration by focusing on a restrictive space, where caste and gender intersect to limit the protagonist’s agency. The film’s use of slow cinema aesthetics, long silences, static shots, and minimalistic performances heightens the suffocating experience of caste patriarchy. Unlike mainstream Tamil cinema, which often grants its protagonists dramatic moments of defiance or transformation, Kottukkaali lingers on the inertia of oppression, drawing attention to the subtler ways caste functions as a mechanism of control. Instead of reinforcing hierarchical structures, Vinothraj’s films highlight the invisibilised, mundane violence of caste, making the experience of marginalised communities the focal point of cinematic contemplation.
Conclusion
P.S. Vinothraj’s exceptional films like Koozhangal and Kottukkaali exemplify Tamil cinema’s engagement with art cinema aesthetics, drawing from digital technology-driven realism of long takes, desaturation of colors, slow cinema, and the Tamil aesthetic of the intricate connection between landscapes and emotions. Through their commitment to realism, subaltern narratives, and formal experimentation, these films challenge the dominant structures of Tamil mainstream cinema while securing a place in the evolving landscape of global art cinema. Their impact suggests a growing movement that redefines Tamil cinema beyond its commercial stronghold, positioning it within a transnational framework of independent and auteur-driven filmmaking.
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