back to the old house

why meiyazhagan (2024) spoke to me, and will hopefully speak to you too

disclaimer: i get into very heavy spoilers with this film (even though i somehow avoided the biggest one - the name of karthi’s character). this piece is somewhat meant to convince you to see meiyazhagan, but i strongly encourage you regardless to bookmark this and wait until you actually get the chance. the distribution worldwide has been mixed to say the least, so if it is playing near you i urge you not to miss that opportunity.

additionally, there being two different cuts of the film makes it difficult to say which version you’ll end up seeing when it comes out online. while the director seems to have been in charge of the cuts made to the film post-release, i’m disappointed that he would bow to an impatient audience over some of the most important moments of the film. this review is based on the uncut version, and so if you end up watching the shorter cut you may not recognize some of what i’m talking about. one deleted bit has been uploaded to youtube, so hopefully more are to follow.

update 10/31/2024 🎃: The Definitive “Potato Cut” has arrived. Read about it here:

Cutting Out the Soul of Meiyazhagan

DM @KrisLovesMovies or @50firstkates for access to the movie. You can also email KrisLovesMovies96@gmail.com for access.

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i would rather not go

back, to the old house

there’s too many bad memories

too many memories there…

(from “back to the old house” by the smiths)

to be honest, while i’ve certainly done it in the past, i’m not a huge fan of opening up about my personal life in movie reviews. for one thing, fears of being outed to people in my personal life are often at the forefront of my mind, but in general i find it hard to properly describe how a work of art shaped my perspective on my life or vice versa without coming off as cloying or just too revealing, in the sense that i should maintain some semblance of composure in a public forum. this isn’t therapy, after all.

or is it? because i walked out of the new c. prem kumar film, meiyazhagan, feeling as though pretty much every main anxiety chewing at my mind for the past month was transplanted onto the screen in a way that a film has rarely achieved. it’s easy to project onto art of course - if you examine the details of the film versus my life you will obviously find they don’t match up - but it felt as if i was being directly spoken to for the entire three hour duration. meiyazhagan is a film which will coerce any audience member who’s dealt with a loss of identity, of culture, of family ties to feel their beating heart ripped out and shown to them on screen. the ways in which these characters reckon with memory and nostalgia and learn to move forward with a greater understanding of themselves, much like prem kumar’s debut feature 96 (2018), are so unique that even though the specificities of the story are very much tied to a localized sense of displacement within tamil nadu, it achieves a very beautiful universality. i think any audience member who truly connects with the approach will project just as much as i did.

as i alluded to above, i exist day-to-day fully closeted, as currently my family situation necessitates that i hide my trans identity. not to say no other trans person has experienced toxic family dynamics, but there’s a hold on my immediate and extended family members that right-wing, and specifically hindutva, ideology has. over the past few months, however, i’ve come to the conclusion that everything within me is begging for me to fully embrace my identity. it gets harder and harder by the day to act like someone i’m not. so i’ve decided to transition as soon as i get a new job.

with the start of my transition, and finally publicly coming out to everyone i know, i find myself immediately looking at the worst case scenario: i will be cut off from the family both here in the US as well as back in India, and thus from the south indian culture that i’ve already had a tenuous link to as a member of the diaspora. it almost feels like i’m killing a part of myself. so when i visited bangalore this past august, for my cousin sister’s wedding, there was a real sense of dread that seemed to pervade the entire experience, knowing that this may be the last time for a while or maybe ever i get to experience family unity, the way we all congregated in good spirits to give my cousin and her now-husband as memorable an experience as possible. there was a real sense of community and love that i almost never really shared, being so distant from bangalore and most of my extended family for so much of my life, and so even the possibility that the rare 2-3 year visit will likely not happen anymore churned (and continues to churn!) my stomach.

perhaps the most important loss i’m preemptively feeling is my cousin sister and brother-in-law. she has always been the most open, morally sound member of my family, and she’s always reached out to me, no matter how busy she is or how unreceptive i may be. i found just from a few weeks of spending time with my brother-in-law that he is the exact same in nature. both of them are impossibly kind, have zero prejudice, and are truly selfless, always concerned about how i’m doing at any given moment. during my time with them in person we really forged a special connection. if there’s anyone in my family i feel would defend me and my chosen self, it would be those two. and yet, my cynicism gets the best of me and i start imagining a future where they’re not in my life anymore. they are all i need to feel mildly connected to my family and the aspects of desi culture i actually value: the food, the nature, the sense of community, the sights and sounds i experience when i’m standing at a busy jayanagar intersection in bangalore sipping masala chai and devouring the greatest dosa ever conceived; all those experiences i shared with my cousin which kept me sane as a child in the midst of insane family members and a feeling of diaspora detachment. she always made me feel like i belong, and she still does. but what will happen if i can’t talk to my akka and anna anymore?

after a certain amount into meiyazhagan - which came out two weeks after my return from india - arvind swamy’s character arul, a character whose home, town, financial security, connection to his family, and a future he had planned for himself are robbed from him 22 years prior, is forced to return to his hometown to attend his cousin sister bhuvana’s marriage, with whom he had a very special connection growing up. by the time their actual reunion occurs, with the actress who plays bhuvana breaking down almost immediately upon seeing him, a feeling of existential dread rushed into my conscious mind and i burst into tears. prem kumar conceives of that reunion with such immense feeling, the weight of not seeing someone you love for multiple decades compounded over time until you finally see them again… the way bhuvana and her husband ignore everyone else and cede their stage to arul… the way her husband talks about arul as if he’s known him his own life simply because of the time he spent listening to bhuvana’s memories… the way arul so tenderly puts all of his gifted jewelry onto his beloved sister, taking his time upon her request… i thought a lot about the speech i gave at my cousin’s wedding, the way her and her husband called me up to the stage to give me a big hug because they were crying too much, the way they prioritized spending time with me and keeping me around over their own privacy or wedding duties… there was too much here which tugged at my open wounds. c prem kumar must be spying on me or some shit…

if the film had only given these wedding moments and nothing else, i would have been satisfied. but in comes karthi, literally leaping into the frame in his introductory scene. his character is bubbly, energetic, filled with childlike wonder and an immense attachment to arul… who has no idea who he is. the film mines really great screwball-style comedy out of this unfortunate situation - reminiscent of the amnesia in prem kumar’s “biopic” naduvula konjam pakkatha kaanom, or vjs’s little heart attacks in 96 - but eventually this gap in memory gives way to something really heartwrenching as he gets to know this mysterious family member who keeps calling him “athaan” (cousin)...

the two of them leave the wedding and from here meiyazhagan mutates into a totally different beast. much like 96, the second half revolves around a single conversation between two people over the course of a single night. this conversation, in its intimacy and after a series of misunderstandings and a brief standoff between arul and this unnamed cousin, they go back to this cousin’s home and decide to have a few beers. the brilliance of this extended scene lies in prem kumar’s confidence in these characters and their performers, as karthi narrates his love for nature, his wife, his family, and protesters he has never met but whose loss was felt all the way across the sea. arul takes it all in and begins to open up to this miracle of a human. one could perhaps argue that karthi’s character’s presence is analogous to a “manic pixie dream girl” (in fact one of the multiple movies i was reminded of during meiyazhagan was the film this term was originally created for, cameron crowe’s elizabethtown), his purpose in the film to essentially reconnect arul with the childhood and culture he was forced to abandon and break him out of his shell of repression and depression. yet the writing and specificities in karthi’s performance make him feel like a real human, with the actor completely disappearing. it’s the most versatile and vulnerable performance i’ve seen from him.

there’s a story he tells about his pet bull, who swept multiple jallikattu competitions in a row until it was banned, and how one day he felt as though he saw god in him, which he tells with such conviction and admiration for this creature… it certainly draws arul in, who in spite of his sadness makes time to feed and converse with parrots on his terrace in chennai, and earlier in the film runs into his local temple’s elephant, now twice the size as it once was, and looks up at it in awe. their shared connection to nature brings them closer in a way that really spoke to the kid in me as well, and i thought about the road trip our extended family took through a tiger reserve on the way to the wedding, and the way my cousin and i both found such joy in watching monkeys chew through celery or when large herds of wild deer were chasing each other around. his nameless cousin really helps arul give more love to his surroundings in a way that spreads outward to the audience.

what karthi says too about the eelam tamil genocide, how he saw a young girl leading a protest on TV was killed and imagined that one day her bravery would have been passed onto her children, and how he wept over the fact that these were his own people being murdered and he could do nothing to stop it, immensely affected me as much as it visibly does arul. as we are bombarded daily with images of israel committing multiple genocides in plain view of the entire world, i find karthi’s immense love for the people who fought back in sri lanka and lost their lives in the process to be inspiring. it’s easy to be cynical, desensitized, and to think that showing emotion won’t do anything, but his tears really just show us that his own fighting spirit remains intact, as should ours.

the story which completely totaled me was about a bicycle. handed down from arul who was ready to trash it after years of use, on his last day in his hometown before being displaced he asks for it to be given to someone who really needs it. lo and behold, it makes its way to a very young karthi. the bike becomes the tool with which his parents are able to make a living, a way for him and his younger brother to go to school, and a source of joy for them all. it helps the unnamed cousin grow into himself, as he learns independence and confidence through learning how to ride by himself and safely carry his brother with him. the bike means everything to him and he preserves it like a family member; only for it to be right behind arul this very night! for an object tied so heavily to a traumatic memory to essentially help lift a whole family out of poverty… no wonder karthi’s been so attached to his athaan! prem kumar believes our selfless actions can and will lead to good in the world, no matter how long it takes for us to find out. 

there’s so much more i could touch on with meiyazhagan: arul’s uncle and dad and how their relationship almost functions as a cautionary tale for arul and his new companion; arul’s reunion with latha, someone who almost married him and, taking stock of her life, wishes she had; the privileged little moments arul and his cousin have together during their conversation which make their connection seem so real - sitting by the water, drinking, moonwalking, appreciating each other’s slippers, competing to see who can finish showering first; the film’s really unique formal qualities, like some really impressive low-light digital compositions making use of unexpected light sources; the kindness of karthi’s wife as she listens in on their reunion (i wish she got to join them!); or the gut-wrenching but ultimately happy final scene, where arul finally confesses over the phone how he doesn’t remember his cousin’s name, and they slowly draw out the key memory they shared together as children.

instead i’m gonna circle back to my cousin sister. i’d like to consider her my big sister, because i grew up as an only child, and i’ve never felt as close to anyone in my family in spite of our physical distance. the time i spent in august has made me realize she, and by extension my new wonderful brilliant brother-in-law, are the karthi in my life. they are the part of me that still feels connected to the culture i was raised on, and the unconditional love which i am afraid to lose. even if it takes 22 years, i am sure i will be drawn back to them and the land i’ll miss so much. while i still am afraid of the ramifications of coming out and embracing my identity, i don’t think i can truly kill this part of myself.