Anjali

A Tamil film set in a housing complex in India. Shekar and Chitra have two children. Anu and Arjun. The children know something. They had another sibling years ago and that baby died. Her photograph stands in the house. One day the father brings home a child. She is three. Her name is Anjali. That baby did not die. The doctors had said she would not live. She has a condition of the brain and is behind in her development. Shekar put her in a care home and told his wife she was dead. Now he brings her home. From there the film is a story of adjustment. The two children will not accept their sister. Anjali does not speak. She screams, runs, breaks things. Anu is ashamed of her. She cannot tell her friends. There are other children in the complex. They are frightened at first too. Then something changes. The children start playing with her, and the adults are still uncomfortable. The narrative holds that division throughout. The children accept, the adults do not. What the narrative is interested in is not illness but concealment: its idea is that the father's decision was made to protect the family rather than the child, and that the decision harmed everyone more. The mother does not forgive it. Anjali's condition advances. The narrative does not soften the ending. Mani Ratnam builds the film from the children's view. The camera is mostly low and the adults are above the frame. The complex is a place inside the narrative. The children have built their own order there. The music is by Ilaiyaraaja. The film was India's Oscar submission that year. Shamili, who plays Anjali, was very small during filming. Shamili, Tarun, Shruthi, Raghuvaran and Revathi are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Tamil cinema and narratives centred on children. Who it is not for: anyone bothered by emotional manipulation; the last section is openly aiming to make you cry.