Army of the “oppressed”: My quick take on Dhanush’s “Karnan”
I had started to watch Dhanush’s Karnan but had to take a break in between because of two reasons one was the near-realistic rustic plot of Karnan which was moving at a snail’s pace which could not hold my attention and the second one was Zack Snyder’s “Army of the dead”. But it was the rave reviews of Karnan which compelled me to complete the viewing (it is available on Amazon prime).
The first impression after watching this movie is that it is a typical “film festival” type of movie and it will go the “Asuran” way and win loads of awards this year. It will remind you of the golden age of parallel cinema where the likes of Shyam Benegals, Govind Nihalanis, Ritwik Ghatak's & Mrinal Sens, who ruled the roost showing the hard-hitting topics with serious content, stark realism on socio-political context and to a certain extent it would be an antiestablishment affair. Maybe it was relevant then (in the 60s and 70s)
I am away from India for more than 3 decades now, hence I am not sure of the ground realities, however, I am not sure if the caste/class divide still exists in the 21st century India hence found the plot bit unpalatable. Set in 1991, can a village survive without a formal bus stop?
Considering this as a work of fiction let me say that it is indeed a hard-hitting movie that moves at a snail’s pace at the beginning where the director has taken his sweet time to define his plot setting but in the late half it revs up its speed and compensates for its tardy start.
The director Mari Selvaraj has a unique style of using visual metaphors throughout the movie, in a very subtle way he conveys the message to the audience e.g. An eagle/hawk picking a chicken from the village shows how the Oppressor takes undue advantage and the oppressed class meekly accepts it; a donkey moving around with its legs tied, mirrors the state of the villagers, a headless torso of a stone statue being worshipped. The cinematographer too, has done a commendable job of capturing the rustic landscape aesthetically. Performance-wise it is top class, especially Dhanush, he continues from where he left us in Asuran (he is getting stereo typed in similar roles, hence should be careful in picking roles in future), Malayalam actor Lal has a towering presence in the movie and so are the other characters.
Though the movie is not “exactly” based on our revered epic “Mahabharata”, but there are many characters in the movie with names like Karnan, Duryodhana, Draupadi, Kannan & Abhimanyu where one can draw parallel. For me, Karna is the most favorite character of Mahabharata, maybe because I have read Marathi novel “Mrityunjay” written by Shivaji Sawant or maybe because of Bal Dhuri whose stage performance I had seen in India when he acted as Daanvir Karna in a play based on same Marathi novel. Karna in Mahabharata is shown as an oppressed who fights against all odds to get his rights, here too the writer symbolized Karnan as a fighter who fights for the rights of his fellow villagers.
The movie is available on Amazon prime in Tamil (with English Subtitles), you can watch it just in case you are a fan of parallel cinema and enjoy the frame where people and pigs showed living together, or if you want to enjoy rustic cultures like “celebrating” a death instead of usual mourning.
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