Much of Anjali, even more so than others of Ratnam's earlier works such as Mouna Ragam, is communicated not in the words of the script but in the acting and direction, in nonverbal cues of facial expression, body movement, and vocal tone, and this emotive expression is helped along by the context of Indian cinema in general before the mid-1990s, founded on simple stories whose art lies not in the events but in the unfolding, not in the content but in the telling.

Revathi is, as always, expert at realising and conveying these emotional tones, although Anjali emphasises a different subset of her talents: very unlike her centre-stage dance performances in Mouna Ragam, she does not participate in the dances, which are left to the children. Instead, Anjali calls for even more of the same subtlety with which she infused a dancer's sense of movement into the dialogue scenes in Mouna Ragam.

Released in 1990, Anjali is very clearly a 1980s film: the children dance with Michael Jackson moves, and the science-fiction fantasy sequences are copied from the land-speeder chase scene on Endor from Return of the Jedi (1983) and the Millennium Falcon's escape from the Death Star in Star Wars (1977) (except Revathi is far more graceful than Carrie Fisher could ever be), and from the flying bicycles in E.T. (1982). The low-budget, blue-screened fantasy sequences give these bits of the film a campy, Doctor Who feel; Ratnam very plainly hadn't yet attained the fame and budgets that he commanded after his breakout into Hindi and the success of Roja.

Like Mouna Ragam, but even more so, Anjali is what critic Lalitha Gopalan has described as a "cinema of interruptions." To a Western audience it seems jumbled and disconnected by the intrusions of fantasy sequences and songs, and after setting up the tragedy of the apparently stillborn child, the entire first half of the film seems not to go anywhere, dwelling on scenes of family and neighbourhood life instead of advancing the plot.

This very preoccupation with people rather than with actions, though, can be viewed not so much as a shortcoming but as an enrichment. Take, for instance, the first fantasy sequence, in which the child Arjun pulls a book of science fiction stories from under his pillow, the father Shekar opens it, and the entire family is sucked (literally, as if by vacuum) into a fantasy sequence in which they find themselves piloting land-speeders and spaceships. A Western viewer loses patience because the spaceships have nothing whatsoever to do with the actions of the rest of the film. But this Western objection misses the point: fundamentally this film — and Indian cinema in general, at least prior to the mid-1990s — is not so much about actions as it is about people, not so much about what happens as about how it happens: How does the family experience the science fiction story together, as a family? It's significant that in the final scene in this segment, as the cover of the science fiction book is closed for the night, the whole family — Shekar, Chitra, Arjun and Anu (this is before the introduction of Anjali) are lying together on a bed, holding each other.

Hollywood would never dwell on this simple togetherness to the extent that the Indians do — and that is a shortcoming of the Americans, who are driven by consumerism and a belief that external things can make them happy. (A century ago, America was not so much this way. A century from now, India may be this way, too.) The Indians have less need for plot over character, because they already know what happens: you're born, you suffer, you die, then you do it over again. The question is not where one goes in life — we all end up in the same place — but how one arrives there; does one follow dharma?

And it's this unspoken presence of dharma that's at the core of Anjali — the very sincere simplicity of Anjali's emotions after Shekar and Chitra bring her home from the institution charms first her brother Arjun (the scene in which she tenderly touches the wounds that he acquired defending her from the mocking neighbourhood children is a gem!), then her sister Anu and the rest of the neighbourhood children, and finally the entire neighbourhood, whose leaders previously had demanded her removal and called her disruptive and potentially dangerous. (The only neighbourhood character who consistently shows love to her is the ex-convict, whom Chitra mistrusts.) Most of all, Anjali brings out her mother's faith in Anjali's personhood, even if Anjali is unable to respond overtly to her love: having known families with autism, it's easy for me to empathise with Chitra's heartache at a child who backs away from her touch, and to cry along with Chitra when Anjali at last says the word "Amma." Anjali reminds us that people with disabilities are reflections of ourselves, because the human condition is a limited and disabled condition (we are humans, we cannot see like devas), and that such people can bring out the good in all of us, as Anjali does to the entire neighbourhood, even in its grief at the film's end.

In Anjali we see even more of Ratnam's penchant for light that floods into spaces and creates strident contrasts, from the sunlit windows on Shekar when his son Arjun reveals in front of his parents his knowledge of his father's clandestine meeting with another woman (who turns out to be Anjali's physician) to light angling across a room from a single bulb during Shekar's discussion with Chitra of the possibly criminal troubles at his workplace.

The culture that India has exported is not the best of its culture. What was exported is what most embraced Western consumerism — and that diaspora fed back into Indian cinema in the mid-1990s and after, weakening somewhat its focus on people and relationships and conferring something of a preoccupation with things and events. The best of India, on the other hand, seems to have stayed at home, because the West had no use for it. India by and large lags the West in addressing disabilities, scientifically and socially. It can be cruel and callous to those whose visible otherness defines them as members of the out-group, but equally, compassionate and empathic towards those whom it accepts as members of the in-group, as people like oneself. This film shows both sides of this dichotomy of shunning and inclusion, illustrating all that India can do when it recognises the humanity and divinity of all people, of all states of (dis)ability.