Kala movie review: Tovino Thomas starrer makes moments of violence feel like a poem

One and a half hours into Kala, amidst a brutal scene — brutal, not grotesque — the text “Based on true events” appears on screen. 40 minutes are remaining. Why the disclaimer? Why now? To have it in the beginning would be to prime the audience into acknowledging the theme of the film before it even begins — that we live among violence, that we are the violence. To have it at the end would be to undermine the impact of the story with preoccupations of realism. The solution is the clumsy mid-film disclaimer that fulfils its promise — to let us know that we are vile. To get it out of the way. To make it clear that despite the story being about that, it really isn’t about it. There’s something more.

There is Shaji (Tovino Thomas), his deeply loving, but silently suffering wife Vidya (Divya Pillai), his son Appoos, his dog Blackie, and his disapproving father Raveendran (Lal). Shaji is deeply in love with his wife and himself, aware of the strands of grey lurking amidst the lush beard, rehearsing each muscle till it becomes taut and defined under his skin. In matters of money though, he’s less discerning, accumulating debt from family members, leaving failed businesses in his trail.

Still from Kala. YouTube

One afternoon as Vidya and Appoos travel to her parents’ house, and his father is off for a checkup, he mobilises a group of areca nut harvesters to steal bags of his father’s peppercorn harvest. The idea is to sell it and use that money to pay off the debts. The plot goes haywire when one of the men mobilised — unnamed throughout, played by Sumesh Moor — is there only to seek revenge from Shaji. Shaji had, in inebriated foolhardiness, killed his dog, Bau, with an explosive tucked inside a slab of meat.

But what does revenge mean?

Moor’s character wants to kill Shaji’s dog, a Mastiff. Bau was a local breed. (Look at the primal names too, descriptive of two aspects of the dog — one visual and one verbal) The hierarchy in the world of dogs finds articulation in the human realm. The dogs only love. A chase erupts where they tie, break, bruise, bang, skewer, whack, drag, twist, bite and scratch each other. The entire second hour of the film is this, edited with a sharp eye making sure brutal never becomes grotesque — even when an arm of cactus is screeches across Shaji’s back, even when Moor’s character is dragged across the floor, even when a sharp branch pierces Shaji’s flesh. The cut-to, and cut-from is a careful dance that makes moments of violence feel like a poem — stylised, sensual, elevated. Out of context, the pummels might even look pornographic, Shaji’s underwear barely holding on. Both Moor — teeth baring like fangs — and Thomas — with his surefooted gaze — bring a physicality to the fight that is raw, yes, but also desperate. You can sense the pulse weakening, the arms wavering, the eyes tiring till again they stand up and fight, and weaken, and fight, again and again. The greatest achievement of the film is this repetitive blanching of blood doesn’t feel repetitive. Every strike feels new. Every newness has its seductive appeal.

This editing is given an aesthetic, rousing lift with the help of the excessive and incisive sound design, that gives everything an intensity that reality just can’t elicit — the sidelong glances, the burning strings of tobacco, and the unblinking gaze filled with as much wonder as worry.

The success of the film, ultimately, is its stylisation of the moral tale which doesn’t feel empty the way it did with Jallikattu. The film leaves you with an intense confusion, having established how Shaji is both entitled and endearing, capable of love and violence in the same breath.

There is a wonderful moment when Shaji is staring his young son in the eye as he slams Moor’s character’s head on the bonnet of a car. In the beginning of the film when he steals the last dregs of Horlicks from Appoos who weeps in the annoying attention-seeking way children weep, he tells him that if he wanted the last dregs, he should have fought for it. To fight for what you think you deserve. It’s the kind of moral that easily lends itself to entitlement. Shaji models him on that threshold. So, at the end when you see him, there is a distaste for his proclivity towards society, but a deep love for his disposition towards his loved ones. It makes his dismissal an uneasy idea.

Moreover the world building doesn’t feel uncontrolled. It is contained, to one Areca plantation that surrounds the house filled with lushness that is tactile. The slippery wild mushrooms, the laborious red ants, the languorous spiders holding onto silken webs, the legless slithering of earthworms, grunting wild pigs, nervous dogs, voyeuristic lizards, the hood of a protective snake, a bulbous leech that is squeezed of its borrowed blood, even the CGI butterflies, this world is so dense with life, framed obviously under the designer canopy of foliage. It is hard to take one’s eyes away, even as the story slackens, even as the whacks become more and more questionable, even as the moral becomes a forgotten footnote in this violent ballet.

Rating: 4 (out of 5 stars)

Kala is streaming on Amazon Prime Video India.