Kantara aka The Forest [dir. Rishabh Shetty]

Thankfully, after the initial wave of generic spectacle 'pan-India' films from the South Indian film industries, we are seeing the distribution of more culturally rooted narratives. Maniratnam, one of the first southern film-makers to hit mainstream national fame way back in the 90's, recently unleashed the first installment of his pet project, a lavish and sprawling two-part adaptation of the Tamil historical fantasy adventure novel Ponniyin Selvan. But the other film making waves across the country in its multiple dubbed avatars is on a wholly different end of the scale in terms of magnitude and budget: Kantara aka The Forest from Kannada movie-maker Rishabh Shetty.

Unlike Ponniyin Selvan's 10th century milieu, Kantara is majorly set in the present (or as contemporary as it gets in the narrative's remote rural settling), but it begins from a centuries old tradition where religion and myth are inextricably intertwined. The 'Bhoota Kola' (Spirit Dance) is a ritual in which a chosen one acts as conduit for the deity or guardian spirits and speaks for them. In olden times, the proclamations of the Bhoota would be taken as divine judgement. But as modernity and the ensuing corruption seep through society, even divine judgements start to be questioned. Thus, when the village's Bhoota conduit reminds the descendants of the erstwhile ruler that their forefather had given away the forestland under his jurisdiction to the original settlers, they respond with scorn and threats of legal action. Then there is the conflict between the age-old tribal way of life, in which they take resources from the forests for their needs, and federal-government mediated  measures that deny them access to those very forests in the name of conservation.

By couching its Chosen One story against this engrossing backdrop, Kantara aims to rise above the common herd of 'mass' movies. Of course, it takes a while to fulfill that potential. The protagonist Shiva (Shetty, who also writes and directs) is painted in HERO shades right from his dramatic introduction as the champion of the Kambala, the traditional buffalo race. In the grand tradition of mass heroes, he is charismatic, generous, hot-headed, flirtatious...the works. In that same tradition, he has an entourage of comic relief sidekicks and a mother constantly frustrated by his pranks. But Shiva is also the defender of the locals and their traditions against external forces even though, to the mother's vexation, he has refused to act as conduit for the Kola ritual. 

The first challenge to Shiva's people comes from the forest department led by the rule-bound stubborn Murali (Kishore). Shiva responds to this in the manner he knows, by carrying out guerilla raids into the forest and frustrating Murali's attempts to enforce his dictates. But then, an old and insidious enemy rears his head, threatening to disgorge the villagers from the land they have occupied for centuries. This is when Shiva transforms into the role the film has till then hinted as his destiny, a transformation that superbly infuses the hero trope with a mythical flavor and pushes it into a remarkable niche for the genre.

This transformation is for me the center-piece of the film, one that raised it above all my previous reservations. Till then Kantara was a reasonably strong mass entertainer. But after an astounding opening and the legend created around the Bhoota conduit, the film seemed to have cast aside its ambitions in that regard. Too much time was spent in giving Shiva the standard mass hero treatment. The film's humor started to repeat itself, sometimes in very ill-placed situations. Also, the manner in which some major characters shifted direction were done in an abrupt and unconvincing manner, suggesting either weaknesses in the original writing or material left on the editing table. 

But by God, once that transformation begins, when Shiva takes on the role of spirit conduit and delivers divine retribution to the oppressors of his people, all those nits were simply swept away. In the depiction of that sequence, the astounding visuals of a dust and violence streaked night, the guitar riff-driven strains of the Varaha Roopam song, Shetty's body language and facial contortions, we get a demented and incredibly visceral piece of heavy metal performance art. Watching at the cinema I was left breathless and shaking in my seat, goosebumps forming over my goosebumps. In that transcending moment, Kantara for me rose from mass movie to class entertainment.