Charisma amid chaos
him enter the frame and right the world.
Six years ago, Slate writer Grady Hendrix had put forth the following hypothesis about Rajinikanth: If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby married an earthquake, their offspring would be Rajinikanth.
Grady was right. Rajinikanth isn’t an actor. He’s an experience. Any narrative he’s in has to serve the experience rather than the other way round.
In Kabali, writer-director Pa. Ranjith creates an incredibly convoluted tale of gangsters in Malaysia. The story spans several decades and begins with Kabali being released from jail. He’s been in prison for 25 years and survived 13 assassination attempts but that hasn’t dimmed his prowess or his panache. He still strikes fear in the hearts of his rivals — and there are so many of these that I soon lost track of who was fighting whom.
My favourite was Tony Lee ful gang called 43. Tony wears beautiful suits and bow-ties. Actually all the gangsters seem to be hugely invested in being stylish — Kabali is so big on suits that even in the midst of a lifethreatening situation, his wife implores him not to take his off.
The wife is played by Radhika Apte, who is utterly wasted here. She’s either pregnant or watching proudly from the sidelines or nagging him to look after her better.
According to this film, Malaysia is the Wild West where shootouts happen in broad daylight and on busy streets. Here, an aging don named Ang Lee all gangsters gather and give each other murderous looks. The police function like junior artists.
Obviously Ranjith isn’t overly concerned with logic or coherence. It’s more about posturing and creating dramatic set pieces for the superstar.
The Rajinikanth magic is in full force, but the script is repetitive and banal and does little to milk his persona. Also, how do you make sense of dialogue like: “Kala hoon, takatwala hoon”. Yes, Kabali says that. But his signature line is ‘Bahut khoob’.
I was hoping to say that after the film but Kabali left