Why Tamil film 'Kaaka Muttai' is the most praiseworthy movie of 2015

n 10 October, 2014, a 12-year-old homeless boy Rahul was taken for a meal-treat by a college student. He was turned away from an upmarket restaurant in Churchgate, Mumbai by the eatery’s owner, as the boy was found to be not suitably dressed and ‘unhygienic’.

Cut to debutant director M. Manikandan’s aptly lauded feature film Kaaka Muttai, which was released more than a year after the above incident took place. His two urchin heroes are slapped by a pizza parlour owner when they try to get in for a dream pizza.

Kaaka Mukkai has a big heart. It’s a film that gnaws at your conscience without making you feel guilty for the condition of  deprivation that defines lives of street kids. It’s a film with a terrific message and one can imagine the eyes of Tamil superstar Dhanush who has co-produced the film, lighting up on hearing the idea.

Dhanush must have ordered pizzas for everyone in the room. And then called music composer G V Prakash to come up with a buoyant score to underscore the poignancy of the two little protagonist’s pizza-deprived poverty.

You can’t make the audience feel guilty for a social order that fosters monstrous inequalities. Not when they’re out for a movie in a posh multiplex armed with expectancy and popcorn. Kaaka Muttai does not embrace the tragedy of poverty as seen through impressionable eyes, it eschews the grim realism of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali or Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay.

For all practical purposes Manikandan’s stretch of poverty is sanitised . The two boy-heroes Periya (J Vignesh) and Chinna (V Ramesh) encounter no epic hurdles like Danny Boyle’s slum kids did in Slumdog Millionaire. Indeed the biggest and most insurmountable obstacle to smooth life for Manikandan’s little champs is that slice of pizza life.

The boys’ father is in jail while their mother played by Ishwarya Rajesh keeps the home-fire burning. Though spouseless and attractive, this doughty slum woman never once encounters a leery stare or a lecherous advance from any of the men around. There are no bad guys in Kaaka Muttai. Even the guy who slaps our little hero at the pizza joint was only doing his job.

To exude such positive energy in a film about two father-less street urchins is no mean achievement. While one applauds Manikandan’s ability to see light even in the bleakest situation hour, one is also put off by the rose-tinted glasses that the director seems to have put on while defining street life for the very young children and a single woman struggling to bring two sons up.

There is so much in Kaaka Muttai that’s an unalloyed triumph. The two boys and their connectivity with their impoverished world is achieved in the script through vignettes and anecdotes that emerge intrinsically from the script. This is a world where sorrow and heartbreak are put on hold.

After Kaaka Muttai, the next time you see a street urchin you’d wonder if he has ever tasted a pizza. And if he hasn’t, should you shell out that Rs 299 which could change his world-view?

Just do it. And feel better.