There is always something interesting: a bit of casting, or the centre framing, or the over-the-top set design… but on screen, a lot of it falls flat.
Kavin seems to be one of the few actors who is interested in cinema as an art form. I am sure he wants to become a big hero and wants to make big money – but beyond that, you sense in him a genuine love to do something different, something more than just “what the audience wants”, something that he can sink himself into as an actor. In Sivabalan Muthukumar’s Bloody Beggar, produced by Nelson, Kavin plays an anti-protagonist. He is not the doer. He is the one to whom things are done to. Put differently, he is not the “actor” here. He is the “acted upon”. Kavin plays a beggar with a mouth that makes an O-shape, like a goldfish. At no point in this film does he lose the metre of his character, and that is an impressive achievement in a dark, deadpan, absurd comedy that plays like Knives Out as remade by the Coen Brothers.
Bloody Beggar is the story of a beggar who gets trapped in a mansion with a family fighting over a will. The set-up scenes that show the beggar on the streets are not bad. (You might have seen a couple of them on YouTube.) But once he gets into the mansion (which could be due to divine intervention), the execution does not match up with the ideas. There is always something interesting: a bit of casting, or the centre framing, or the over-the-top set design, or even the visual gag of a seven-foot-tall son standing next to his very short mother. While the will is being read out, the lawyer laughs: ha ha ha. And this laugh comes back later, from a character used first in posters (he’s an actor) and then as a live presence. This character’s grandson is a nutcase who dresses up as per the parts the grandfather used to play.
All of this sounds terrific, but on screen, a lot of it falls flat. Or let me put it this way. Bloody Beggar is a “vibe” movie. If you are on its wavelength, you’ll probably enjoy it more than I did. Strangely, in this absurd world, the parts that work best are the very real, very naturalistic flashback portions that detail the beggar’s past. Not every film needs you to root for its characters. But we should at least feel interested in who they are and what’s going to happen to them – and that happens in this flashback. The sentimentality actually works. The rest of Bloody Beggar is a valiant attempt to do something different, and though you sense the unity in the vision inside the director’s head, you do not see it on screen. The various “bits” just do not add up to one smooth ultra-absurd narrative. A bloody gag involving a javelin had me giggling at the thought of it… but while watching it, I was straight-faced. That’s what a lot of this movie is like: full marks for imagination, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
