Two gangs of ivory poachers are at war. Who will win? This stylised and violent film wants us to care about the outcome, but all we are left with is the numb feeling of when it will all get over. That’s the quick review. A longer analysis follows, and it may contain spoilers.
The opening credits of Paul George’s Kattalan are stylised. They look fantastic, a mix of text and imagery. Then we get the mention of a year: 1995. This, too, is stylised. It almost blocks the whole screen. Then we get introduced to a character named Maari Anna. This, too, is stylised. The man stands with his back to the camera, until just the right moment. And soon we realise that style is all that’s there. A whipping is stylised. The lighting of a cigar is stylised. Car chases are stylised. The calling of names is stylised. A character named Antony is called “the notorious Saint Antony”. The fights and chases are stylised. The camerawork is stylised. Dushara Vijayan’s look is stylised. The strangling of a toddler is stylised. The killing of an elephant is stylised. Now, all this is not necessarily bad news, because when done right, style can be substance. But this is a movie where style mostly equals slow motion, and slow motion can never be substance.
Kattalan runs two hours. If the slow motion was cut down to normal speed, it would run fifteen minutes. This is basically Malayalam cinema’s answer to Pushpa. Instead of smuggling red sandalwood, our protagonists smuggle the tusks of elephants. In between the numerous instances of stylised slow motion, Kattalan made me wonder about the difference between plants and animals. When Pushpa Raj and his pals cut down trees, I didn’t seem to mind the plot point. But when Antony, in this movie, kills an elephant for its tusks, and when the camera moves in on the dead beast, it seemed like a tragedy. It’s worse when we see a cave filled with tusks, many of them still bearing the bloodstains of the elephants they were pulled from. Now, Antony wants to sell these tusks and use that money for an operation to save a little girl. Somehow, the morality doesn’t compute. But maybe this is not the movie where you want to be caught thinking about moral values.
Kattalan is a part of the Mikhael Extended Universe, which includes the films Mikhael and Marco. The actors include Antony Varghese, Sunil, and Jagadish. The story is basically the battle for supremacy between two poaching gangs, but the film doesn’t even work at the basic level of a well-shot action movie. There’s no tension when the cops appear. There’s no emotion when children are killed. Even those of us who like violent films are left disappointed, because the stylisation and the slow motion blunts the bloodshedding. Marco was filled with a purity of purpose. It wanted to unleash violence, and it did that with a series of superb set pieces. It was made for a particular audience, just like horror movies are made for an audience that likes to scream. It’s hard to see which audience Kattalan was made for. Fans of violent movies, fans of thrillers about cartels, fans of drama where a man does wrong to do right – none of them are going to be satisfied. But if you are a fan of empty stylisation, you can maybe knock yourself out.
