Why Does Tamil Cinema Turn Mothers Into Martyrs?

In Aranmanai 4 (now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar), Tamannaah’s Selvi is not your typical poster mom. She bathes, feeds, and plays with her kids in aesthetic soft lighting and music. Granted, she has a supportive husband, who is equally excited about their children, but in the end, it is her ultimate sacrifice (she lets herself be killed when a ghost enters her husband) that saves her children. She then goes on to become her children’s fairy godmother, defying death, even as her husband rests easy under the ground. What is it about mothers in Tamil cinema and their unending willingness to sacrifice themselves on cue?

Think about some of the best on-screen mothers you’ve grown up watching. Saranya Ponvannan’s brilliant depictions of the goofy mother perennially worrying about her sons come to mind. We also have Raadika Sarathkumar and Nadhiya’s strong matriarchs (both played memorable single mothers in Theri and M Kumaran S/O Mahalakshmi respectively). No matter how adorable these moms might be, there is always a small act of sacrifice associated with them. In Velaiyilla Pattathari, Saranya is a doting mother of two with a heart condition. In the end, her death, as devastating as it is for Raghuvaran (Dhanush), plays a pivotal role in his coming of age. Her organ transplant eventually leads him to freedom from unemployment, his biggest struggle in the film.

Glorifying motherhood and mom guilt have been happening in our cinema ever since the 60s and 70s, says senior journalist Kavitha Muralidharan. “In Parasakthi (1952), we have a widow with a kid, and a dialogue reflects the reality of the society. "Oru vidhavaiku idly kadai vekardhu thavira vera enna pozhappu irukku? (Apart from setting up an Idly shop, what can a widow do?)"” In the film, the mother eventually tries to kill her infant and herself in the throes of poverty. She is then forced to defend her choices as a mother in court. “In superstar films, the women are either a complete symbol of sacrifice when it comes to mothers, or are depicted poorly when they are heroines. They would be in one costume while in love, and another after marriage,” she adds. A costume change that often signifies a woman’s transition from a lover to a motherly figure in the hero’s life. “If you take Mannan, Vijayashanti is an entrepreneur, but in the end, she is inside the kitchen, which is shown to be a success. And Khushbu's character, who goes through a love failure, takes over the business. The idea of womanhood has been something where you slot them into mother's roles.”

And superstar films have always glorified motherhood, she adds. “When Varisu came out, my close friend gave an audience review about how the film glorifies the family structure without recognising how women are oppressed within it. But there has been a change from Vijay commenting about Asin's dress in Sivakasi to him asking his mother why she’s not able to eat what she desires in Varisu. Maybe this change happened because of some pressure. But apart from that one dialogue, the mother in the film is very stereotypical. With Vijay in the film, a director can experiment, but not many directors really want to do it.” Director Halithaa Shameem agrees, adding that we’re often stuck between templated depictions of the mother — she's either the cool, funny mom of the hero or the colourless mom of the heroine. “In Tamil cinema, the heroine's mother is even dumber because the dad in the family would be strict, and she would be characterless.” Halithaa believes this tradition to be a very cultural thing that’s ingrained in most of us. “During COVID times, I remember seeing a viral image of a mother cooking with oxygen cylinders, and everyone went “oh wow, she's a mother.” Even for me, it took time to realise the amount of things my mother has gone through as a person. She is an ordinary person with desires and I have realised this only in the last 10 years. Before that, my mother would be a mother, under that sealed stamp. Cinema gave me this perception.”

While the ‘Amma sentiment’ emotion has been a relic in our cinema for ages now, Kavitha thinks this might’ve stemmed out of convenience. “In Sangam times, women had a voice of their own and were independent, but after that at some point, people started associating women with guilt. Maybe it was convenient for men.” In Mani Ratnam’s takes of mothers forced to abandon their kids in Thalapathi and Kannathil Mutthamittal, the mothers make their choice. But they also live with the guilt of making that choice. In Thalapathi, Surya (Rajinikanth) is often prodded about his lineage. But it is the “rejection” by the mother — we don’t know much about the father — that hurts him deepest. While we’re able to accept the “absent father”, why aren’t we able to accept the “absent mother”?

“The dad has his me-time, he drinks, goes out, but he is not shown as a bad dad. But if a mother does this, she becomes a bad mom,” Kavitha says. Apart from a few extreme portrayals — Kamal Haasan’s Aalavandhan had a mother who tortures her step-kids, and in Nandha, we had a mother who killed her own son in a moral dilemma, we still find a vacuum in the well-rounded imperfect mothers' category. “We have seen enough flawed fathers and we forgive them,” says actress Lakshmi Priya Chandramouli, whose portrayal of an exhausted mother trying to find herself in Vasanth’s Sivaranjiniyum Innum Sila Pengalum, fetched her the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actress. “And it's like "appa na ipdi dhan irupanga." But there is also "amma na ipdi iruka kudhaadhu, irundha thappu." That is very problematic. If she is not a perfect mother, then she is a bad mother in society. There is no in-between.”

It is important for a film not to judge, let alone glorify the wrong thing. Lakshmi adds, “In Tamil cinema, we keep women on a pedestal because we're overcompensating. That translates to any relationship where a woman is involved. The mother sentiment isn’t as prominent a concept in Hollywood. We also come from a mentality where a woman becomes complete when she becomes a mom, which itself needs to change.” If there is a narrative we are not able to avoid from the influence of the West, it is this, notes filmmaker Bramma. Writers and filmmakers are always looking for emotional stakes in their scripts, and mothers fit perfectly into this concept, he says.

A lot of people don't spend too much time bringing out unique emotional connections in films, he says. “It is either love or mother sentiment or sister sentiment. This is like when you want to do interiors for your house, you go to a lamp store, and in this context, the safest lamp shade is the mother sentiment. Good or bad, right or wrong, mothers are the safest bet to evoke emotions.” But there have been attempts to depict flawed mothers, he points out. In his series Suzhal, the mother of Nandhini (Aishwarya Rajesh) flees to an ashram with abandon, leaving her husband to deal with domestic affairs. “Sriya Reddy's character in the series is also very emotional because she has lost her son, but her form of manifestation is not sacrifice. Somewhere we're attempting these things, but this has to come out in mainstream films as well. As filmmakers and writers we understand what works with the audience. The change has to happen gradually. Because if we do a total u-turn, there is fear of rejection,” he says, adding that these depictions are also usually a reflection of society.

It is also important here to question the lack of on-screen mothers who grapple with actual problems, Halithaa reminds. “I’ve read books about the kind of depression that new mothers go through, and other issues that older women have to deal with such as menopause. But we don't see any of these things depicted in commercial films.” What if a Sivakarthikeyan movie were to have a dialogue that acknowledged a mother’s temperament? she asks. “Imagine if we had a line that had him ask his menopausal mom why she was upset. Even such a passing dialogue in film could contribute to such a larger understanding of real-world problems.” Now isn’t that a son a screen mom truly deserves?