Rishab Shetty Kantara: A Legend Feature film on general release
At the end of last year, Kantara: A Legend (2022), directed by Rishab Shetty, became a hit across India. And indeed, the Kannada-language film is (somewhat) entertaining, in the manner of commercial-type cinema that expects a generous suspension of belief, but it is also largely mediocre. The storyline follows the classic goodversus-evil narrative, which culminates, of course – and this is such a cliché that I’m not going to issue a spoiler alert – in the vanquishing of evil and a happily-ever-after ending. Normally, such a movie would have likely had a decent theatre run before ending up on an on-demand streaming platform. But thanks to the way it was co-opted by all sections of the political system, as a weapon in India’s ongoing cultural war, Kantara became one of the highest grossing Kannada films of all time.
Kannada mainstream cinema, whose heyday ran from the late 1960s up to the early 1990s, sprung hits now and then, but apart from Prashanth Neel’s K. G. F. action film series (2018–22) it has rarely caught attention outside of state borders. When Kantara became a pan-indian film (a catchall phrase for when a film is dubbed and released in several other of the subcontinent’s languages), its success was curious and unformulaic, like a viral post that sometimes disrupts social-media algorithms. To think of Kantara though is to really think through the question of how to read a film, while also recognising that popular culture is rarely simple entertainment, but has always wielded far-reaching influence over how a country comes to see itself.
Bhutaradhane, literally a performative appeasement of guardian spirits indigenous to Tulunadu in coastal Karnataka (though also found, in a modified form, in the neighbouring state of Kerala), serves as the movie’s central plot device. On the one hand this works as a highly simplistic documentation of the ritual practice; on the other, and for the political right, it works as a means for today’s brand of political Hinduism to further co-opt what was a totemic, subversive folk culture into the larger Brahminical fold. Under the current government’s Hindutva agenda, anything that is not overtly an Islamic, Christian or other religious practice is increasingly being shoved under the larger Hinduism umbrella, eroding the culture of most indigenous peoples who traditionally don’t identify as Hindu. For the left, Kantara was problematic for precisely both of these reasons.
In the film a community of tribals, understood as untouchable and of lower caste, live by a forest. Their landlord – whose royal ancestor gave the tribals the right to the forest in exchange for protection from their deity Panjurli, a daiva that manifests as a wild boar – appears benevolent, a father figure almost. Secretly, though, he plots to get all that highvalue land back. Alongside this is a strict forest offcer who wants to legislate to protect the forest’s natural resources. And at the centre is Shetty himself (who is also the film’s writer), playing the character Shiva, who stands up against both the new law meant to protect the forest and keep out people, and the landlord. Running through the fight, between indigenous peoples and government, and the oppressed caste and the privileged caste, is a leitmotif of the ritualistic folk-theatre of Bhutaradhane. However faulty it may be in the film, there has not previously been such an extensive representation of this worship in commercial cinema, which is one reason why, for an audience habituated to films set in either urban centres or in generic villages in Karnataka, this one comes as a novelty. Exotic, even.
With a liberal use of all that is typical of coastal Karnataka, from the Kambala buffalo races, to the food, to the choicest curse words, to sights and sounds of a Bhuta Kola (an event organised to invoke the spirits), and the distinct literary form of Kannada that is spoken along the coast, all of which were objects of ridicule and caricature in earlier films set in this locale, Kantara deserves credit for creating space for an impressionistic hyperlocal representation of the region. Unlike cinema in Tamil and Malayalam, where films are consciously set in different regions of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, respectively, and the versions of Tamil and Malayalam employed in the films reflect that particular area, Kannada cinema has mostly spoken from and in the language of Mysuru, Karnataka’s former capital (now Bengaluru) and its surrounds, juxtaposing other forms of Kannada for comic relief. The film’s biggest ff¡, the elements of Bhutaradhane, however, requires a sterner dissection.
The Bhutaradhane culture includes hundreds of deities, some of animal origin, like Panjurli in Kantara, some of human origin and others who were heroes who met with untimely and unnatural deaths (according to research by scholars like Amruta Someshwar, Vivek Rai and K Chinnappa Gowda, these unnatural deaths were usually a result of caste violence and social inequalities) and were then reimagined as a deity. For the ceremony, men from oppressed classes don costumes and, following a series of rituals, are visited in their bodies by the spirit invoked. The spirit then proceeds to answer the community’s questions, in return for appeasement in the form of food, drink, the building of a shrine, etc. While the entirety of this cultural practice has too many social nuances to fit the scope of this column, what is important here is that Shetty chose in this film, however loosely, to associate Panjurli with one of the ten avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu, most effectively in the use of the song Varaha Roopam, which features towards the climax of the film. And that is as much a political move as it is a representation of how the practice has modified and adjusted to remain relevant. Bhutaradhane has, over the years, learned to adapt to newer religious tastes, getting caught up in the assimilation into the larger Hinduism fold by choosing to refrain from use of alcohol and meat (formerly quite commonplace in such rituals), the incorporation of Brahmin gods and goddesses in the rituals and so on, thus showcasing an ability, willingly or given no choice, to keep up with whatever will help it remain popular.
What was once a system of worship where gods spoke directly to humans is today being subsumed by a politically favoured system where gods speaks to humans via an upper caste middleman. The Sanskritisation of this worship theatre, when set in the folk ambience that Kantara creates, effectively blocks and denies a wider audience from accessing the complexities of a centuries-old oral culture. Does the film, in its packaging of the tradition, represent ground realities? Perhaps to an extent. Should it have designed it more cautiously? Yes.
Many have dismissed Kantara as a cinematic experience that should not be read so deeply. But what makes some of us wary when we see a film like Kantara is an awareness that visual messaging works to strengthen existing tropes. Shiva, the hypermacho protagonist, stands for the new branding of Hindutva, as protector of god and nation. When the coda of the film reverts to themes of tradition, roots and ancient times, when Shetty as Shiva becomes a spirit to vanquish the scheming landlord (a cinematic license: note that spirits are not invoked to exact personal revenge), the not-so-subtle messaging is that all answers lie in the traditions of the land, not in modern ideas like the law. It seeks to reeducate a people that when it really matters, it is god, acting via a human, who can protect communities and bring peace. The rich landlord in the film might have been killed, but the triumph of the oppressed is restricted to a cinematic experience. In real life, the latter are told, they best hedge their bets with the cult personality of the godlike. And that, given where India is right now, is both a reflection of the times and particularly dangerous messaging.