Yash in KGF: Chapter 2. Director Prashanth Neel has cooked up a lavish 12-course meal for the audience with KGF: Chapter 2. But, every dish in the meal, including the appetizers and the entrée, is a dessert. He doesn’t want the audience to sit through various stages of the meal before they could get to the fun part, i.e., the dessert, which is usually served at the end of a meal. He serves it to them right from the opening moments of the movie. And he keeps it coming. Of course, the meal is heavy on calories and maybe it could even ruin your appetite for more nutritional meals. But, these things hardly matter when you are experiencing the euphoric mood in a theatre where cinegoers are lapping up the non-stop flow of adulation for the unbreakable spirit of Rocky, played by Yash.
Prashanth established this pattern in KGF: Chapter 1. And he has doubled down on it without any iota of doubt or guilt in the sequel. In the second half of the first part, the narration slows down a bit to focus on the hero’s transformation into a saviour. Rocky infiltrates Narachi as a slave miner as part of his mission to seize control of the gold mines. And soon he begins to suffer pangs of guilt set off by the human rights violations that take place in the mines, which function like a Nazi concentration camp. We even see the guards murdering mineworkers, who are considered unemployable, in cold blood.
Rocky finds himself in the middle of a moral epiphany: should he just stick to the plan or do something to save innocent people from the clutches of abuse? And of course, he picks the latter. This is rather the only point in the whole franchise so far – the hero goes through an emotional and moral struggle, learns from it and grows as a person.
Sanjay Dutt in KGF: Chapter 2 (Photo: Sanjay Dutt/Instagram) This creative decision unburdens Prashanth Neel from adding depth to the hero’s character. There is no complexity to Rocky or there is nothing mysterious about his personality. Rocky has no confusion in his mind as to what he wants and is ready to go to war to take what he wants. He’s not tired of all the killings and bloodshed either. And the franchise never bothers to challenge Rocky’s bulletproof vision of him becoming the CEO of the world.
This approach has allowed Prashanth to go all out in creating a pure visual experience. Take, for example, the scene in which Rocky lights up the entire police station with his belt-fed machine gun over a piece of gold. You may think, isn’t he overreacting? But, Prashanth knows that just showing the scene of a man unloading magazine after magazine from his heavy machine gun onto a police station and blowing up everything in it, at various playback speeds, makes up for a good big-screen moment. He knows it will capture the imagination of the audience and convince them they’re getting bang for their buck.
KGF: Chapter 2 director Prashanth Neel during the promotions of the film in Hyderabad. (Photo: KGFTheFilm/Twitter) Prashanth wants us to be in awe of the burnt-earth background that he has created with his art director. And he wants us to be blown away by the visual style, which is anime-like, filled with dark colour schemes. He wants us to surrender to his vision of modern-day hell, which he envisions in the form of gold mines. See, money is the root cause of all evils. He doesn’t want us to pause for a moment and think. He is relentless in supplying everything that could keep our brains, eyes and ears busy. The imposing power structures, glamorous muscle cars, a continuous supply of action scenes fraught with men who seem to have been exported from different timelines in human history and the deafening background score all keep us glued to the screen.
Prashanth Neel is like Hollywood director Zack Snyder but on steroids. He wants to churn out massive cinematic moments one after another even at the expense of emotional connection between the audience and the movie.
Prashanth and his team have done a swell job in whipping up an eye-catching escapist movie. Despite its innate flaws, one cannot deny the fact that it works to a great extent. Some movies speak to us at personal, psychological and emotional levels, and some other films offer experiences that are akin to jolly rides at an amusement park.
Which category do you think KGF 2 belongs to?
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