Karnan – movie review

There is a set pattern that is emerging in tamil cinema world. There are a bunch of technicians – directors, assistants, musicians, singers – who are forming a coterie of what is meaningful and correct cinema. What should be told to the audience of real life incidents based on which they make their stories (supposedly). How their version is the absolute of all truths. How their version will change depending on who is protesting against and whom they are supporting. How the reviewers should comment about their movie and when they should post positive reviews and what can be approved of as a critical review. And above everything, the deification of those characters that are considered evil and bad as per epics and mythological stories. They are hell bent on creating a new narrative, claiming creative liberty of projecting an alternate view point, of that of the vanquished. It slowly began as a point of view storytelling kind and has mutated into accusing the good character of wrong doing, by doing the reverse psychological attempt of an narrative. If in a previous version the good character had its justifications for vanquishing evil, now the evil character lists out the bad deeds of the former, making it sound even more evil than itself, creating a net void and at times super imposing the evil character as good. The same happens in this movie as well for Mari Selvaraj belongs to that tribe of movie makers who are hell bent on destroying not just the stereotypes of story-telling, but also on extrapolating the concept of alternate view point, to the extent of vilifying beliefs and over writing their own version as the truest of all.

Karnan, is possibly, the most loved and wronged character in whole of mahabharatha. Except for his silence during the gambling scene and for killing Abhimanyu, his character is almost the most beautiful and decent one ever written. Sivaji’s overacting apart, the moment one thinks of the old movie, the first thing that comes to mind is that immortal song sung by seerkaazhi and penned by kannadasan. This movie, except for the title, carries no similarity to neither the titular character nor the old movie. In this story, Duryodhanan, karnan (hero) takes revenge on kannabiran (villain police officer) for the atrocity he lets leash on his village. In a 2.5 hour long movie, it is about buses not stopping at his village being the core issue, till the interval block at least, being the core theme. Suddenly post interval, it takes a different turn when police comes to do the enquiry of the brawl that happens in the interval block, wherein the hero and his friends attack and destroy a bus out of frustration. Till that time, the slight and visible hints at oppressed caste being needled by upper castes is strewn throughout the first half, leading one to believe, it is yet another caste related fight and one man’s effort at upliftment. Post interval, when the police comes to investigate, the attitude and ego of the police officer, gets the focus and all of a sudden the police character is saddled with the upper caste mantle as well, without any open mention. He becomes the symbol of both power and caste that ill treat the oppressed class and things happen lightening quick. Before one could realize, we are near the climax, which is a hugely watered down version of the real life incident, where the police beats up the entire village, hero butchering couple of police folks in revenge and beheading the chief inspector (kannabiran). There is even a dialogue which asks in anger, if he can be named kannabiran, why can’t the hero be named karnan, which for all its mass appeal, doesn’t make sense at all. Had the question been posed to the upper class people who had been needling them and stopping the bus service, it would’ve made sense. But it feels half baked with the hero deciding on its own, the reason for the psychotic attitude of the inspector. 

Within hours of the movie being released in theaters, with the producer being highly influential in movie and political circles, every single major newspaper, carried almost the same version about the movie. They were verbatim repeating each other in praising the exact same scenes, situations and how the second half was super-fast. It was quite obvious that they were being dictated and subscribed by the makers. The music and the music director has already been widely praised and much has been written about the same. Santosh Narayanan, the music director, has been slowly and definitely changing the face of tamil music and the taste buds on the ears of the audience. He keeps introducing voices and tunes and wordings and instruments that were never part of any orchestra used by any cine music director before. From being novel, it has all taken a political tone with melody never being a part of it. Especially in this movie, there is a song, which has techno beats for a situation leading to the horrifying incident before the climax, which feels downright stupid but for the powerful lyrics that saves the song. He has assumed megalomaniacal power to decide what should be heard by audience as a realistic song, if not a good song, same like the crop of directors with whom he operate.

Verdict – I watch tonnes of movies and as a select group of probably erstwhile audience, to me, movie watching is for fun time and entertainment. Making it full of “kuriyeedu” mocking religious beliefs, distorting history not just as creative liberty but as the corrected version, having crappy songs repeated on infinite loops across music stations to brainwash people into believing them as being good, are not part of my movie watching expectations. These kind of movie making will only create disturbances within people and sects and result in more deeper clashes and divisions. If this is what tamil cinema is going to be, good luck with it.