Yezhu Kadal Yezhu Malai — Review
A film about compassion that most critics could not forgive for using AI-made images to say it.
A hard watch, and a strange case. Three Indian critics scored it between 1.5 and 2.5 out of 5. The same film was praised at a European festival two years ago.
The idea is good: a man on a train meets someone who has lived 8,000 years, and slowly changes how he thinks about other lives. What almost every reviewer stuck on is that a film arguing for compassion fills its screen with AI-generated pictures.
Released in cinemas on 1 October 2026. No streaming service or date has been announced yet. We will update this line as soon as one is.
See every place to stream Yezhu Kadal Yezhu MalaiThe scorecard
Story & Screenplay
2.5A real idea, stretched across more threads than it can hold.
An old woman tells a child stories. One is about a man who has lived 8,000 years and keeps looking for the same woman, lifetime after lifetime. Another follows a 32-year-old coming home from Dubai by train to see his son. The two men meet on that train.
What they argue about is whether every life matters, and the argument settles on a rat. That sounds small and it is the best part of the film: Sajin Shrijith in The Week said Ram makes you feel for an animal most people find repulsive.
The threads do not tie together, though. Sreeju Sudhakaran in Rediff said the film has intriguing ideas but cannot pull its storylines into one shape. Janani K in India Today called it patience-testing.
Direction
2Ram means every word of it. The telling gets in the way.
Nobody doubts the sincerity. Reviewers who disliked the film still took its message seriously, which is not always true of a film this slow.
The pacing is the first complaint. It runs 135 minutes and spends a lot of it waiting, with more songs than the story needs.
The second complaint is the one that stuck. Avinash Ramachandran in Cinema Express was blunt about the writing and the computer imagery alike. For a film asking you to value living things, a screen full of machine-made pictures was a contradiction most reviewers would not let go of.
Acting
2.5Good actors, and a lead several critics thought was wrong for the part.
Nivin Pauly plays the 8,000-year-old man. Rediff said plainly that he seemed miscast — he is a warm, open screen presence, and the part wants someone carrying a very long tiredness.
Anjali plays the woman he keeps finding again across lifetimes. Soori is the passenger on the train, and the exchanges between the two men are where the film works best.
None of the performances were called bad. The notes are about fit, not ability.
Camera & Visuals
1.5The part of the film that caused the argument.
N. K. Ekambaram shoots the real footage well, and the train scenes have a close, pressed-in feel that suits them.
The trouble is what sits beside that footage. A lot of the dreamlike images are AI-generated, and reviewers found them inconsistent — some shots do not match the ones next to them.
India Today went furthest, saying this film will be used as an example in the argument about what AI is doing to cinema. That is a heavy thing to say about a small, well-meant film, and it is why the visual score here is the lowest of the six.
Music
3Yuvan Shankar Raja delivers. There is simply too much of it.
The score is good and was not among the complaints. Yuvan Shankar Raja working with Ram is a pairing with history behind it.
The songs are the problem, not the songs themselves. Several reviewers counted more of them than a film this slow could carry, and each one stops the story again.
Audience Reaction
2Loved at a festival in 2024, largely rejected in cinemas in 2026.
It premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, competing for the Big Screen award, and was well received there. Panos Kotzathanasis in Asian Movie Pulse praised the camerawork, the sound and the way the pace tightens inside the train.
The Indian theatrical release came more than two years later, and the reception was almost the opposite. A festival audience goes in ready for a slow, strange film; a Friday night audience does not.
If you are deciding whether to go, that gap is the most useful thing on this page. This is a film for people who like difficult films, and it was never going to be anything else.
What the critics said
Sajin Shrijith: it makes you feel for a rat, then dilutes its own message about compassion with AI imagery.
Avinash Ramachandran: hard on the writing and harder on the computer-generated imagery.
Janani K: patience-testing, and destined to be quoted in the argument about AI in cinema.
👍 Watch it if
- •Viewers who seek out slow, difficult films and do not need a plot to resolve
- •Anyone following Ram — the intent here is serious and sincere
- •Yuvan Shankar Raja's score
- •The train scenes, which are the best-written part of the film
👎 Skip it if
- •You want a story that ties its threads together. This one does not
- •AI-generated imagery bothers you — it is the main complaint in every review
- •A slow film with a lot of songs is not how you want to spend 135 minutes
- •You are going for Nivin Pauly. More than one critic thought he was wrong for the part
Cast & crew
- Ram
- N. K. Ekambaram
- Mathi V. S.
- Yuvan Shankar Raja
- Nivin Pauly, Anjali, Soori