Shivamma Yarehanchinnala Movie Review : Shivamma Yarehanchinnala review: A gritty tale of woman’s resilience

Shivamma (Sharanamma Chetti) is the unlikeliest heroine. A middle-aged woman, she is not well-read, nor does she come with any wise words to wage a war against the cruel world. She is kind, gritty, and is a go-getter. Stuck in a cycle of poverty accompanied by her physically unfit husband, a daughter who has finished college and is ready to be married, a college going son, and a brother who doesn’t like her much, she is instantly attracted to a multi-level-marketing scheme of a meal-replacement shake company. The rags to riches stories of those mentors really make Shivamma believe that ‘she can do it’! But, can she?
The subject and storyline of Shivamma is very interesting, and so is the premise where the movie is set, especially considering how jealous the city-dwellers are about the villagers’ healthy lifestyle. Shivamma, like a furball of love, is filled with kindness and grit and you can’t not feel empathetic with her for her actions as it is laced with innocence and not greed. She is just a woman who wants a good life and stand out to people who sees her as a ‘mere woman.’
Hardly 46 kilos, Shivamma helps her son restart his bike, she walks around between agricultural land with ease. She believes that the meal-replacement shake can surely change her life. She goes to the extent of spending all the money she had saved up for her daughter’s wedding and takes loans from every known person in the village. When a boy, who is going bald, comes to see her daughter, she wastes no time in promoting the product to him! While she runs away from some people, tired of her ‘shake appeasement’ some people run from her too! When her own village bans selling the product, after the death of an old man, she takes no time to put it all in a bag and carry it over to her head to the nearby villages. Often made fun of and ridiculed by strangers and villagers for promoting a ‘miracle shake’, Shivamma is unbothered. She has one goal - to sell the products, make money as soon as possible. And she is ready to take up any kind of risk for the same. Her confidence is sure enviable.
There is a lot of silence in the film, and one particular scene where a hungry Shivamma adds the shake powder to a bottle of water and consumes it while sitting alone in a barren land really pulls at the heart strings.
All the artistes who are part of Shivamma are non-actors. They were all hand-picked from a village. That somehow doesn’t sit well. While Shivamma is at her best, people around her look a bit camera-conscious. There is no start ofend to film but a documentation of a few months of Shivamma’s life.
Full marks to director Jai Shankar for setting up an interesting premise. It is no easy task to bring out a film with non-actors. He has brewed or rather ‘mix’ a curious blend of comedy, the absurdity of life, and commentary on futility of resistance and the tale of woman who is nonchalant. He brings out the complexities in the simplicity of villagers’ lives. His last short from Katha Sangama, Lacchaavva, also had a similar interesting plot. Also, a special shout-out to actor Rishab Shetty for supporting these stories.
Shivamma comes with the ‘festival film tag’, and may not be everyone’s cup of tea, especially the commercial cinema-goers. Sure there are no action sequences between 2 actors, but there is a fight of a gritty woman, who does it all with no help or support from anyone whatsoever, and that itself is worth watching and supporting.