I am large. I contain multitudes. - sang one of my favourite poets, Walt Whitman, in the epic Song of Myself.
But what happens when the society refuses to accept the layers of largesse and mystical expanse that carves the landscape of a young woman? What happens when one must be forced to keep oneself small, and dim one’s light in order to appease an audience as abhorrent as arrogant?
Lalanna’s Song, written and directed by the fierce Megha Ramaswamy who is known for her critically acclaimed work in Newborns, What Are The Odds, Bunny and Shaitan, is a haunting cry in answer to that quintessential question.
The plot follows two young mothers through a typical tough day in a bustling Indian city, till they encounter 12-year-old Lalanna, a gifted kid who seems to eerily embody all the oppression that occupies the two women. She seems to unsettle them by doing nothing but being her kind self, and owning her identity as artist with a disposition calmer than most adults. What follows is the vicious circle of evil – of the bullied becoming the bully, the sullied going on to sully.
Miram and Shoby go about running all the errands of the everyday and end up at a rather unexciting birthday party – except in their imagination. After a moment of fantasy involving a steaming exchange with a boy they spotted at the store, what unfolds is a repressed rage and flailing passions channelled at an unassuming child.
Parvathy Thiruvothu as Shoby packs a punch as always, and the young Nakshatra Indrajith as Lalanna is a marvel wrapped in mystery. The characters are sketched from the elegance of the everyday, unfiltered and untouched. It’s refreshing to see their raw anxieties expressed boldly by eye, in a world of otherwise painfully plush screenplays and unnecessary dialogue. Here, nothing is hushed or covered up despite the characters trying unsuccessfully to veil their feelings and fears, wishing for the impossible but settling for the real – until it gets too much. The cinematography is intimate and intense, the shots leaving little room to breathe but to take all that is shoved in our faces – much as in life. Darkness and doom are inescapable in our times.
Add to it a stellar soundscape – the whoosh of waves, the vast haunting ocean, the unpredictable rain and chaotic alleyways – a landscape rife with dream and despair, with boredom and banality. A visual and aural tapestry that cradles Lalanna’s Song to perfect music. No wonder it has been serenading critics at Berlin, MAMI, DIFF, and the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, where it won Special Mention for Innovation and Pushing Boundaries.
Lalanna’s Song is no lullaby. It is an attempt to stir humanity from its slumber before we reach the tipping point. It is a reminder to turn the age-old adage to realise that the child is the mother of woman.
These 34 minutes of Lynchian cinema pack bravery and brevity, form and phantasmagoria, an urgency and an eternity. Lalanna liberates time with her screaming song, a song of reclamation as much as a cry of battle and protest, of horror and help. A surivor’s roar composed powerfully by Sneha Khanwalker.
This is a song of the unsung. A cry of every woman left to mother herself and every girl carrying the unbearable weight of empathy and femininity. To be tender in this world is impossible. The film also focuses on the contradictions faced by an artist – her genuine effort to befriend a lost child, much like herself, yet bear the burden of the ambitions of the adults around her. There’s also her awkward embodiment of artistic talent, and her disrespected clairvoyance thanks to the insecurities of the unaware adult.
Mistreated, we mistreat. Ghosted – we ghost.
Director, Megha Ramaswamy
Lalanna leaves you with some important questions:
What is the moment a child transitions into an adult, and the moment an adult resorts to childish revenge?
What are the ways we use to cope with our warped realities and twisted perceptions?
How does one find playfulness in an escapable web of responsibility and compromise?
What are the desperate measures we resort to in order to take back our power?
How many times did we have to jump off the cliff of grace and pick up ourselves again?
Why is art a constant target?
Lalanna’s Song is an anthem for a growing new generation – misunderstood, undervalued, dismissed in their reserved poise. Lalanna is each of us, celebrating, scaring, seething, singing of our glorious selves in the face of sexism, oppression, hate. A song of the nixed, and the phoenixed.
You might catch yourself chiming along.
Words Soumya Mukerji
Date 4-08-2025