JOIN USTallana
Kannada (U) ¬¬¬¬
Director: Sudarshan N
Cast: Nirmala Chennappa,
K S Sridhar, Surabhi Vashist, and Nagendra Shah
It's a dysfunctional family. An alchoholic carpenter for a father, a house maid for a mother and a school-going, not yet teenaged daughter. They have their ups and downs, but life is still beautiful.
For, Sadananda, a retired engineer, is keen to help the maid's daughter study and flourish.
His pregnant daughter comes home, unhappy. Can unhappiness spare the maid? It does not, as one evening, after school, the girl stops by to ask her mother for something, on the way home. Only, she does not reach home at all...
Tallana is a stark, silent effort at disturbing the innermost, impenetrable walls of the heart and mind, of our consciousness, of our sense of humanity.
It also mirrors the different facets of a society – sympathetic and helpful on one side and opportunistic, selfish and exploitative on the other.
Most of all, it holds a mirror to the anguish of parents, helpless against a system lacking sensitivity and a proper mechanism to deal with crimes that go almost
unnoticed, thanks to convenient transformations perpetrated by the so-called guardians and shapers of the society as can be seen in the instance of Gargi, Sadanand’s daughter, who’s “advised” by the woman gynaecologist to abort the foetus as its not a male.
Tallana shows the struggle of a couple who scour even the “red light areas” for their
daughter and a father, who is helpless against the crime about to be perpetrated on his daughter.
Yet, he manages to support his daughter’s decision. While the same luxury is denied the maid and her husband.
Sudarshan’s script and direction is not in-the-face, preachy affair that’s dished out around the time the award circuits become alive every year.
Yet, sensible performances bring out all the tumult, pain, frustration and anger, even from the audience. Editing, music and cinematography only serve to enhance the experience.
Tallana also leaves behind certain persistent questions for society to answer.
A topical subject to be watched with the whole family.