“Woooooaaaaavvvvv!”
This reverberating invocation of the forest’s demigod is the lingering sensory aftertaste of Rishab Shetty’s Kantara—a film phenomenon from Karnataka like never before. Released on September 30 in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telegu, later dubbed in Hindi, and now reportedly being dubbed in English, Kantara has grossed around Rs360 crore at the box office. It is a pan-India hit, which dropped on Amazon Prime Video in four languages this week.
What made Kantara the phenomenon it is? Often, box offices, like washing machines, run on fuzzy logic. Formulae work only upto a point. Story is usually Queen, but not always. Stars, a lot of the time. On the basic plot level, Kantara is a regular action film, a vengeance drama, with extended slo-mo action sequences, and a hero so brawny and macho that he borders on caricature. These are South Indian cinema tropes as old as '70s’ Rajinikanth movies. What sets Kantara apart is what Shetty, writer-director-lead actor of the film, produced by the Bangalore-based Hombale Films (which also incidentally produced both the KGF films), does with the basic narrative, using the region’s Bhoota Kala traditions observed among tribal communities here.
The emotional centre of the drama is not as much a human or a couple or group of humans, as it is divinity and an ancient bond between humans and divinity that tribal knowledge repositories believe sustains the amity between man and nature. Shetty treats this thread, the thread that alone elevates Kantara to poetic proportions, with reverence and utmost beauty. He uses sonic elements like tinkling anklets coming from the depth of thick rain forests to the thunderous and strident “wooooaaaaaaavvvv!”; he uses the dance forms and folklores of the Tulunadu region including art forms such as Kambala racing and Yakshagana, besides Bhoot Kala performances with rigour, respect and beauty. The hero, Shiva (Shetty), content with locally brewed inebriates, boar and fish, and smoking up, is likened to the Hindu god Shiva. The tree house he escapes to is called Kailasa.
Shiva is a mischief-maker and lotus-eater, but with all manners of swag. His mother is forever worried about him and chasing him around with a stick to mend his ways. She scares Shiva the most; the dark night forest doesn’t. Shiva becomes the inadvertent instrument to protect the rights of his community over the forest land, seemingly with the help of a benevolent landlord. Money, at first, is not evil in Kantara; the state law-and-order machinery is.
The story begins 100 years ago, when a king, in search of mental peace, makes a pact with the forest’s demigod that in exchange for giving the villagers complete control over the forest land, he can attain his peace. A hundred years later, the king’s descendants return to take the land from the villagers. The epic conflict for Shiva and his people on one hand and the outside world on the other is set up.
The film has bawdy comedy as well as well-executed melodrama. The sexist lens—women are either sacrificial sidekicks to the hero or obsessed with reforming her child—distills itself in moments that stir serious questions about sexual dominance of men over women and the importance of a woman’s consent. The anti-industrial progress politics on one hand and the primitive lens on gender equality on the other would strike a dissonant note in any age, not just today, in the post-#MeToo world.
But Kantara rises above these limitations because Shetty’s gaze on the big picture is unwavering and passionate. His control over the artistic flourishes of local performance art to infuse authenticity and beauty into the mystical and the mysterious in nature uplifts the narrative. The demigod is a designated medium, in expressive make-up and elaborate costume, working himself into a trance, channelling a guardian spirit, which addresses the concerns of the community.
Shetty’s end is sublime: Through the same performative demigod figure, he establishes that state-community partnership can be the only effective solution to the man-nature conflict—and why local communities, including the state machinery, can themselves be sacred custodians of the environment.
A rural comedy with folklore beauty becoming a national blockbuster, bridging North-South divides geographically as well as mentally, has also something to do with the moment in human history. The theme of man-and-nature conflict resonates a lot after the uncertainty and darkness of the pandemic years. We are questioning human excess and our relationship with nature and environment seriously.
It’s probably too soon to spot a trend, but a few recent films work out this theme more convincingly than before. The recent Disney fantasy Strange World is about a family of adventurers, and their dire mission to save the planet from a mysterious ecological crisis. Closer home, Amar Kaushik’s werewolf drama Bhediya is cautionary about the human want to encroach and destroy ancient forests. In James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, releasing in theatres worldwide on December 16, we’re going to see more of what goes on below the surface of Pandora and the fight to retain it, a decade after Sully and Neytiri start a family the Na’vi way.
The soulful and visceral climax of Kantara appeals deeply to our left and right brains—it gives us a message of belonging to each other and to nature. It’s a sentiment that the last three years have rendered meaningful and aspirational.
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