A man dies. His family give him a funeral. And beneath the absurd pageantry of the last rites, they wrestle with the void created by someone simultaneously troublesome and deeply troubled. Members of the Problematic Family
Members of the Problematic Family surfaces less like an oil portrait and more like a mosaic, its scenes as splintered, contradictory, and unsettled as the family it depicts. Its structure closer resembles stanzas of poetry, drawn from Director R Gowtham’s life pre-filmmaking, as a Tamil poet and translator.
“My co-producer Mukesh Subramaniam, also my mentor, says film has some kind of formlessness and that’s its form,” he told Indian Link.
“I wouldn’t say that I’m a good poet and I know the technicalities of poems; I just write whatever comes to my mind, but I knew I didn’t want to do the existing [three] act [structure]. The literary experience of mine would have definitely contributed to the [film’s] structure, I would feel.”
The first section of the film observes the young man Prabha’s funeral rites with a verité crispness, as those left behind cremate, quarrel and drink. It’s hectic and disorganised; an aunty escapes to drink juice, a cousin insists on lighting crackers in the funeral cortege, a grandfather berates Prabha for leaving them so young. But most strikingly, there’s little reflection or grief involved.
Then we backtrack to discover that despite the sombre observances, Prabha, while alive, was the textbook ‘nikkaama aadmi’ – a loutish, diabolical terror content with careening recklessly into his relatives. Prabha shaves off his grandfather’s beloved moustache, sending the old man spiralling into suicidal shame…not that Prabha notices, he’s already off to harangue his mother for food in the middle of the night. Young theatre actor Ajith Kumar gives a standout performance as this disquieting menace, managing to make a volatile, soulless void like Prabha compelling for an audience. Members of the Problematic Family
Even with his objectionable behaviour, it’s astonishing how relatable Prabha feels – every dysfunctional family has that black sheep, the cousin or aunty or uncle the rest of the family must tread carefully around.
“Everybody has a Prabha [in their lives]; he’s not someone directly in one way, it’s a mix of guys we see and hear about,” R Gowtham reflects.
“I was one of them when I was younger; there’s a Seamus Heaney poem, ‘Digging’, which describes me…I used to watch my father work, my grandfather work.”
But R Gowtham decides to turn what we knew on its head; as we return to the funeral, repressed emotions come to the fore and we see echoes of Prabha’s worst behaviours in his family. His Uncle Sellam shows up drunk and late to the post-cremation meal, leaving his food unfinished (an inauspicious omen in Tamil culture) as he combusts under the pressure of holding the family together; another outstanding performance from actor Karuththadayan.
As we watch a flashback of his mother beating him over the head, our view of Prabha shifts into to something closer to a stray dog than a problem son, equally pitiful as he is a nuisance. By the end of the film, you’re left wondering if he is what made the family problematic, or if the family themselves were the problem.
Members of the Problematic Family
An independent film made with a shoestring budget and a small team from the Redhills area of Chennai, Members of the Problematic Family made history as the first debut from a Tamil Nadu director to screen at the Berlinale earlier this year.
“We were lucky that we were able to have the world premiere in Berlin – after that, we thought it will be embraced [by the industry] and we will travel, but that’s not happened,” R Gowtham admits.
Unfortunately, like many independent films, distribution has been a tricky task, even with the Berlinale stamp of approval. But being selected as the Opening Night film of the 17th Indian Film Festival of Melbourne has been a welcome step forward.
“It’s good for the film; film takes its own path, and we are very little people next to it. The work will outgrow us,” R Gowtham says.
“We are looking for North America and Asia premiere as well, and we are trying for India premiere and release next year.”
As for R Gowtham, he’s already planning a follow-up feature, ‘Members of the Problematic Society’, based on a typo made in an article about this film. Fearless in his engagement with the existential, much like the Soviet and German filmmakers he admires, his next films seem destined to plunge further into the visceral and the melancholy.
“I wanted to die at 33. Thirty-three seems to be good, like Jesus or Buddha, but I crossed that. [Rainer Werner] Fassbinder died at thirty-nine, but he made 40 films before that,” he muses.
“It’s morbid, but we have to [do this] work. Let’s see how long it goes.”
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