Thalaikoothal

Wow...We wanna congratulate the cast and crew for delivering such a phenomenal movie. What made Thalaikoothal extra special was not the fact that it addressed euthanasia but the way the story was told.

-The screenplay was rich in characters, rich in symbolism, rich in dialogues, rich in score, actually just rich in everything.

We thought we were just going to watch Samuthirakani go through a dilemma whether or not to euthanize his dad but we got to witness other people's struggles too. These segments reinforced the scenario and excited us to keep on watching

-Kathir and Katha Nandi had an effortless and beautiful chemistry 😍. The flashback moments demonstrated that indeed every life matters whether old or young. The elderly also have dreams, joys, & pleasures, and their age does not define them

-The acting was so natural and pure across characters that we were literally transported into the film. We felt like we were in their midst as the feelings, settings, and dialogues were genuine.

-Another important aspect of the movie was the symbolism of the chameleon. It was interesting how it was considered a "bad omen" then we saw how it all surprisingly ended

-Many thank yous to the editing, set design, music, and direction teams, as well as the rest of the crew for the quality work!

The moral difficulty of euthanasia, the financial cost, the family and social impact, solutions for that in the past years in southern India have been excellently portrayed by the director. It is a very difficult situation in real life and that comes through in this movie. There is no correct answer. You could see the commitment to do their best in every actor in this movie -- the main character, his wife, the comatose father, little daughter, transgender in the village, other villagers. When so many in the movie give their best, the movie has to be a delight to the viewers. It is worthy of an international award.

Despite the sometimes harsh words and conflict between family, this is a loving movie. When you think about a movie, time and time again, in your daily life...it is an excellent movie. The themes span across all cultures, and people. Most people do not admit they have feelings about end of life choices and feel either embarrassed or shame for wanting their loved ones to "go away". This movie reminded me of a Korean series, Trolley...damn if you do and damn if you don't...no real perfect answer to life's questions. I'm not a big fan of Indian films because I hate when they break out in song and dance...this was not that type of film.

Its an incredibly beautiful movie communicating an incredibly difficult human attribute viz., love, with incredible simplicity. Love to those who haven't loved and lost may not be the same as those who have loved, lost and taken years to regroup wondering was there anything else that they missed which would have prevented their loss. I mean, the multi-billion dollar medtech and pharma industry owes a significant share of its bottomline to the heart strings of the later. They would put their own life and that of the rest of their loved ones on hold ceasing to count their days and months as they wait for that one bat of the eyelid or one twitch of the non-existent curl of the lip. And the value those who have loved and lost place making their loved ones find THEIR OWN expression, even for a moment longer can not be measured in rupees or dollars.

I loved the movie: the unpretentious care the family bestowed on the bedridden with the unobtrusive intertwining of the flow of his story made me proud to share the same lineage, a thamizh ponnu. The subtle cross reference introduced by the portrayal of the intact swallowing instinct of a fellow villager in a not too dissimilar condition to the dependency on enteral-tubes for nourishment of the hero was truly humbling; it made me wonder if the design of the enteral-nutritional aids could do more to reduce the burden of the carer in explicit withdrawing the provision of nourishment indicating debilitation of natural expression.