Kantara - bas karo yaara

Wooaaaahhhhh !!! Wooaaahhhhh!!! Wooaaahhhhh!!!

That’s my only constant blood curdling, ear shattering image of the movie and I don’t mean it as a compliment. Maybe it’s just me but I couldn’t quite figure out what all the overheated hype was about the latest offering from South India, the Kannada movie Kantara which released on Amazon Prime this week a month after its theatrical release, to send a pan-India and diaspora audience into paroxysms of ecstasy.

After KGF (2018, 2022), Pushpa (2021), RRR (2022) and now this, I am ready to mothball the hyperactive, hyperlong, hyper alpha male action vehicle for a little while. I enjoyed Pushpa : The Rise for its inventiveness, swagger and songs. Definitely can’t say the same for KGF and RRR - they were just loud and long. Kantara delves into a slightly different realm of magical realism coupled with environmental issues that are worthy of discussion such as how does responsible human development coexist with Nature and animal rights, but I for one just couldn’t shake the Pushpa hangover. And the courtship in these movies borders perilously close to sexual harassment.

I need to binge watch a retrospective of Hrishikesh Mukherjee films to detox.

November 26, 2022