One of the most affecting moments in Arun Kumar Aravind’s Kaattu (Wind) is when a nameless old man, affectionately addressed as mooppan (leader), walks into his one-room cracker factory with a morbid sense of determination. Moments ago, he had dropped a few hints to his tightly locked up past. We realise that the ever-so-calm man might have been carrying a broken heart. But Kaattu doesn’t spend much lines on what caused it. Instead, the enigmatic calmness with which he faces the death becomes the point of focus. He sits up inside the room, surrounded by loads of explosives, and takes a final puff. This sequence has a lyrical quality. The cinematic fineness that is, unfortunately, absent in the rest of the film.
Kaattu, starring Murali Gopi and Asif Ali in the lead roles, is set in the 70s. Perhaps to emphasise on the period, the makers have chosen to paint the screen in a bizarre shade of yellow and orange. In any case, Kaattu doesn’t go easy on the audience’s eyes. It is not just the overtly cosmetic visuals that causes damage, but the editing (by Arun Kumar himself) that fails to hold the narrative together. More than often, the film evokes a sense of disarray, as if the shots and scenes are stitched together without giving a thought to it.
For one, in the initial sequence, the film traverses forth and back two time periods, to narrate the tragic love story of Muthulakshmi (a very effectual Varalakshmi Sarathkumar). She is the daughter of the headman of a village which regards racial purity over anything else. The flashback transition isn’t smooth. Muthulakshmi, forced to abandon her lover and marry her much elder and now disabled uncle, is suffering in silence. Just as we begin to take an interest in her, the film moves to a Kerala countryside where the male protagonists live, and it would be over an hour before we would be revisiting her village.
Chellappan (Murali Gopi) is a lone wolf, yet to come to terms with a lost love. He is the rustic version of the alpha men found in director Ranjith’s films; only more rooted and convincing. He assists mooppan in the cracker manufacture business. Although the wise old mooppan is a natural patriarch within their group, it is Chellappan who assumes the role of a leader for his dare-devilry and physical power. Right from his first scene, he comes across as a hero material. At a lowly toddy bar in the village, he witnesses a meek lamp of a young man, Noohu Kannu (Asif Ali), a bearer being taunted and harassed by his boss. Without a second thought, he stands up for the latter, fights off the bar owner’s thugs, and takes him away from the bar, and hands him over to mooppan as an apprentice. We are provided with many a scenes of Chellappan’s sexual adventures, and some of them are placed at the oddest spots in the narrative, leaving us wondering where Kaattu is heading to.
The naive Noohu Kannu, with a mane that resembles a hay bale, is treated like a house cat. Chellappan and other workers tease him, pamper him, and become the family that he doesn’t have. There are some fantastic moments that delineate the camaraderie of the men who spend their days with booze and women, unconcerned about future. The woman in the film are an unlucky lot, acting like puppets in the hands of men. The sex-deprived Parvathy (Saritha) and film-obsessed Ummukulsu are watched from a male point of view. The film ridicules them for their silliness; treats them as sheer objects of desire.
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The only aberration is the rich and more sophisticated Muthulakshmi who is the sole woman Chellappan claims to have some respect for. Kaattu unfolds in a male territory, and whatever it attempts to say about women, sound as loud as an empty vessel.
Murali Gopi is excellent as Chellappan, a role he effortlessly nails to perfection. However, it is his co-star Asif Ali who takes the cake with his interesting performance as the village fool. The actor, a star of his own rights in real life, transforms himself into Noohu Kannu, delivering a much nuanced performance. He marvelously underplays in his combination scenes with Murali Gopi with a self-restraint which is rarely seen in Asif Ali’s films. He might not be the best of his generation of actors, but Ali, certainly, is a keen learner. Scripts betray him quite often, as it does here in Kaattu, but he is slowly upping his game, earnestly taking up roles that need him to break himself and rebuild.
***
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