The last half-hour of Kantara is unlike anything we’ve ever seen

For more than ninety minutes of Rishab Shetty’s Kantara, I was wondering what all the fuss was about. The content clearly and unambiguously espouses primitivism, celebrating traditional rituals with an exuberance that is infectious but also disturbing. The ecological plunder of forestland and animals is seen as a part of that pride in tradition and rituals which the film also favours. The hero is seen happily cutting down trees, hunting down wild animals and noisily chomping on them with his loutish friends who seem to have nothing better to do than accompany the protagonist Shiva on his wild boar hunting expeditions. There is something ferociously conservative and self-limiting about the way Kantara is structured and mooded, as if tradition is the only element in our lives that should dictate our destiny. The grumpy forest officer Muralidhar (Kishore) is seen as the villain of the drama for most of the film. Later in a twist that brings the meandering plot to its stunning climax, the identity of the real villain is revealed.

That’s when the real action begins. Rishab Shetty ’s rendering of the traditional Bhoota Kola dance is so feral and ferocious, it reminded me of nothing that I’ve seen in the past. Accompanied by a roar that pierces the forest like a plunging knife — and no amount of praise is sufficient for the sound design– the Bhoota Kola dance, alien to most of us, comes to vivid celebratory scarily edifying life. If we are to judge Kantara by the last forty-minute stretch, then it is a landmark of a film: visceral and primitive, tribal and terrifying in mood, the climactic conflict and the sheer frenzy of the dance are stunning. There are no words to describe Rishab Shetty’s performance in the end-game. He doesn’t only play a possessed character: his entire shuddering shivering being seems actually taken over by indescribable forces which no camera trickery can generate. The animalistic synergy that Shetty brings to the fable of tribal and tribulations has to be seen to be believed. In fact, having seen it, I still don’t believe it. In addition, Arvind S Kashyap’s cinematography and K M Prakash/Pratheek Shetty’s editing are so masterly they seem to blend with the natural forces which seem to guide the narrative. Having said this, Kantara suffers from an abundance of weak writing and over-saturated narration for a large part. Like that other blockbuster from Karnataka KGF, _Kantara_ celebrates mobocracy (the hero is always seen in a crowd) in a display of sound and visuals which are not constantly cohesive or even coherent. Initially, I found Rishab Shetty’s writing and direction very didactic and crude. The characters are not given the room to grow as individuals. They are all lumped together in a celebration of a tradition that is as obsolete as its indefensible. As an actor, Rishab Shetty is a little too fortyish to be playing the rustic roguish wastrel. But his command over the cultural language of coastal Karnataka and the buffalo race known as the Kambala, are so impressive he seems to be born for the glory that has come his way. I only wish the celebration of primitivism did not seep into the very soul of the film. Some of the massy romance (with a painfully underage heroine Sapthami Gowda ) and the comic relief (an ageing friend of the hero who goes around having sex with any village woman who is willing) are so cringe-worthy, you wonder why the writing did not focus on just the theme of Man Versus Nature and the value of traditional rituals in an evolving society. Perhaps Rishab Shetty just wanted to make a film on the dance form and wove a plot around it. That he succeeded so spectacularly in holding the audiences spellbound in a thundering thrall is a phenomenal occurrence that not even the gods can explain. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.