Movie Review – Kadali (Telugu) / Kadal (Tamil) – Old story with new actors!!

“There are two things that bother a film-maker. One, when he is offered a lifetime achievement award. The second is when he is asked to do a book on his films. Both invariably mean that the sell-by date is round the corner, or worse, that it has passed” said Mani Ratnam in the book Conversations with Mani Ratnam written by Baradwaj Rangan.  There he missed a crucial point that audience acceptance also plays a vital role in deciding the shelf-life of a director. Back in 80s, there was storm which created furore in the film fraternity with its subjects on social-awakening. They called it “visionary” and the world knows it by the name Mani Ratnam. At the turn of the century, this storm subsided after giving Sakhi (Alaipayuthey in Tamil) and then Amrutha (Kannathil Muthamittal in Tamil). Kadali (Kadal in Tamil) marks the downhill trajectory of a creative genius who doesn’t get content hitting a nail after nail in his coffin with every new film he makes.

Kadali has some traces / characters of Ryan's Daughter, a 1970 film directed by the legendary David Lean, which in turn was a very loose adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary. Kadali’s story revolves around few good people (The Gods) and few bad people (The Satans) and as every other film it ends with the good winning over evil. The path between the start and the finish line is filled with silly, traumatic, incorrigible, sleeping-around, and penurious people with a vacillating faith in God. Every person has a good or an evil tag attached to them and they are underscored with white (for good) and shades of grey (for evil). This practice goes overboard and the overdose of grey submerges an inkling of white in the film. Almost like the vintage films you can see either good or bad, or an ignorant bunch people who play a deaf ear to all the jazz about God.

Let’s stay where we are, and delve in to the character that switched sides from good to bad and then back to good so effortlessly. All this for the sake of a girl who came like a flash and changed everything with her little on-screen presence. She is referred as an angel – who doesn’t understand what paapam is - and as a catalyst for change. Isn’t it too biblical and too run-on-the-mill? You wonder all it took to reform a man was fair skin, cherubic smile, white clothes, and a marginal dolt. This is one of the clichés that bolsters Kadali and tries to instill faith in God.  In a society that’s replete with bad elements the onus is on the individual to unearth good and embrace it. This concept is hammered on to the audience with a gospel touch by making symbolic references to the God, the Satan, the Angel and the Sheep. On one side, the film blends religion into every subtle nuance – a decent effort – but at times it reinforces that religion is the genesis of all the difficulties.

The entire weight of the movie is taken by two extreme poles of performances – Arjun and Arvind Swamy. Both outdo each other in their roles, but it’s so frustrating to see the brilliance of the former and the calmness of the latter completely wasted by bungled up writing. Gautham Karthik is a bagful of surprises and shows poise in his variegated character. Thulasi Nair is nothing but a canonized Hasini from the Telugu film Bommarillu. Her bubbly and buoyant nature is rooted to her childhood and the loss of emotional growth or something to that effect. She is not the Mani Ratnam material and a bad pick by the director. Manchu Lakshmi shines in her brief role. The supporting cast is near perfect and sync into the ambience of the fishermen hamlet – an impeccable set design by Shashidhar Adapa.

A R Rahman tried to pull off another masterpiece but few good songs faced a sudden death due to their improper placement. The flagship song Gunjukunna (Nenjukulle in Tamil) has been grossly wasted. You make your mood to enjoy it but it comes and goes in a jiffy leaving no time to settle. ARR with his BGMs created the right aura for the scene in which actors thrived to bring out the right emotion. His music punctuated the narrative and elevated every scene consistently but again the shoddy screenplay left all of it in lurch. Albeit classy, Sreekar Prasad’s editing went haywire in certain areas and the transition from one scene to another raised many doubts - What happened to the lip-lock scene shown in the trailer?? Rajiv Menon with his cinematographic excellence left no stone unturned in uplifting the cinematic brilliance of the film. The visual panache forms an integral part of the film and is one of its saving graces. The way he canned the thundering storm in the climax calls for a thundering applause.

Bottom-line: Kadali is not a great work of Mani Ratnam. As a fanboy you may try to pull all the strings in the film to praise Mani sir, but for others it’s a lackluster ensemble. This predictable film reigns high on its visuals, music, and some power-packed performances, but again these poorly written characters have nothing exciting to say and are forcefully pushed into poorly written scenarios. For such a movie, the characters needed more depth and they lacked it. There are some trademark Mani Ratnam scenes but they won’t come to rescue this sinking ship. All good things come to an end and for few good moments in the film you have to pay a heavy price of boredom. When the writer and director fail to SEE DEEP into the emotion in narration, the film will be in DEEP SEA. That sums up everything and also justifies the title – Kadali.

My advice to all aspiring film-makers: Watch it if you are in support of a spirited failure rather than a passable success, and learn how to avoid all the classic mistakes committed by classic film-makers. I am dejected, devastated and disappointed after watching this film, and I want to thank Mani Ratnam for deceiving me by offering a wet firecracker. Now, I have to watch Nayakudu, or Geetanjali, or Dalapathi to cleanse off this cardinal sin!!

My Rating: Expectation – 9/10; Reality – 5/10