The Kannada feature film Don’t Tell Mother commemorates the directorial debut of Anoop Lokkur. The film takes shape from the spaces, recollections, and truths of evolution in an Indian family.
The premise
The film is currently premiering at the International Film Festival of Kerala. It is an autobiographical, farsighted projection with modest wisdom and compassion. The film is about Aakash, played by Siddharth Swaroop. He plays the role of a 9-year-old boy and his younger brother, Adi. The brothers live through both everyday acts of care and violence within their home and the school premises. Aishwarya Dinesh plays Amma. Her role is about a housewife-mom who softly nurtures her dreams of a side business, while Appa (Karthik Nagarjun) is a part of a family business. Akash and Adi are brilliant kids. They scrutinise a lot more than they are aware of. Lokkur sets the tone with kindness and care, as the audience gets to know these two boys from the juncture. They wake up to reluctantly go to school until the time they complete their homework and fall back on the bed to sleep. Amma is omnipresent like a shadow. The scenes never come across as redundant. It shifts following a striking rhythm.
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A striking coming-of-age drama
Lokkur’s framings are made easy with the help of cinematographer Matthew Jenkins. He knows exactly where to wait, what to indicate. There is no wasted moment in the way the film tells the story, even as it takes a while to illustrate its central problem. The most impressive thing in this movie is the way in which daily feats of violence and aggression are shown and never forced upon. Just as Don’t Tell Mother moves toward a saturation point of harmless recollections, Lokkur takes a step closer and harnesses the gaze. Aakash punishes Adi in the same way as the maths teacher does in school, or how clear the division of activities is in the household, in a later sequence, when Amma and Appa go to visit the whole family.
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There are traces of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s family portraits here, with bits of the economical gait which is so reminiscent of Yasujirō Ozu’s works. Don’t Tell Mother is a film that slowly yet miraculously settles in the heart down to its deeply shifting ending. The movie will instil an urge in the audience to call their mother right after.
