Review of Rishabh Shetty’s mind-blowing film “Kantara”
A 2022 Indian Kannada-language action thriller film named “Kantara” is insanely fun which is powered by HombaleFilms. The cast includes Sapthami Gowda, Kishore, Achyuth Kumar, and Rishabh Shetty Rishab Shetty is the filmmaker as well. Let’s review Rishabh Shetty’s mind-blowing film “Kantara”.
Writer-director-actor Rishab Shetty’s Kannada-language Kantara, now available nationwide in Hindi and other languages, is a visually lavish, instantly engrossing spectacle mounted with extraordinary vim and vigour. It is a heady blend of history, myth, folklore, high drama, and stylishly choreographed action neatly wrapped in a form firmly rooted in the cultural milieu it has sprung from.
Shetty also serves as the film’s writer and lead actor. Although his work as a screenwriter is probably just a little short of flawless, the story has enough weight and vitality to translate into a mass entertainment piece that is visceral, rousing, and invariably captivating. The official trailer of the film can be checked in the link given below.
Kantara is made possible by a variety of factors, but the ones that stand out the most are the on-screen actors, led marvelously well by Shetty. He delivers a blow that leaves us speechless and reverberates long after the film has ended.
The movie starts off at a blistering pace. Within the first 15 minutes or so of the movie, a supernatural entity that guards the forest is introduced, and a moving race between Kambala buffaloes sets the mood. It takes some time to adjust to the sensory overload. But once the two-and-a-half-hour film’s stunning visual and aural design is revealed, everything clicks into place and pulls the spectator into the enthralling Kantara (literally, mystical woodland) world.
The compelling drama focuses on the complex power relationships—both social and divine—that have long existed in a coastal Karnataka village where a seemingly good-natured feudal lord exercises unrestricted, unchallenged control over the populace. He makes decisions that are best for the locals. The latter follow suit.
The bond between the master and his serfs is not based on servility. Loyalty is the key. It has been developed through many years of what appears to be generosity but may not be. A conflict that comes from threats to the rights of forest dwellers over the expanses of land that have been their home for ages is another major conflict in Kantara.
As Shiva, the champion of the buffalo race and a fiery young rebel with a mission, the primary actor, Shetty, puts exhilarating intensity to bear on his portrayal. The young guy must battle the monsters within his own mind. Recurrent nightmares in which he sees the ruling deity in a furious avatar push him to the brink of hopelessness and make him feel compelled to constantly express his growing rage.
He was headed towards a confrontation with the authorities as well as his own mother, Kamala, because of his impetuous reaction to provocations (Manasi Sudhir). She worries fruitlessly about his wild boar hunting addiction, which is connected to the disturbing dreams that frequently wake him awake, and his violent run-ins with the landlord’s goons.
The actor-director fashions a ferocious larger-than-life character whose erratic behaviour shapes the tension that pulses throughout the movie. The young man, who always has a short fuse, has promised to defend the village against enemies who want to deny the native population access to their ancestral lands. Government authorities are reluctant to acknowledge that the forest belongs to the peasants, which causes tension between him and them to flare up.
The build-up to the film’s stunningly beautiful finale, which Kantara, a film of enormous sweep and power, delivers, propels it to heights that only genuinely great commercial pictures have ever reached. Both the B. Ajneesh Loknath and Arvind S. Kashyap musical scores are outstanding. Together, they produce a memorable, unconventional cinema experience.
The nature and scope of Shiva’s conflict become apparent as tensions in the community rise and the demigod of the forest, who is ritualistically honoured during the yearly Bhoota Kola rite, lurks in the shadows and is always ready to strike.
Shiva’s greatest enemy is an honourable deputy forest ranger named Muralidhar (Kishore), who will do all it takes to keep the government’s writ in effect. Shiva’s boss and sponsor, the landlord Devendra Suttur (Achyuth Kumar), strikes up a friendship with the tenacious young man. But are the powerful arbitrator’s motives admirable?
Kantara’s introductory sequences offer some overarching historical hints. The script briefly describes the setting of the current dispute. The King grants vast tracts of land to the tribe inhabitants of the forest in 1847 at the request of the Panjurli (boar) demigod in exchange for promises of decades of peace and prosperity.
Many years later, the King’s successor wants to return all of the territory to the royal family because he is greedy and power crazed. The perpetrator receives immediate punishment from the deity as a result of the long-standing agreement being broken. In the year 1990, when Kantara is set, a government official enters the village with instructions to seize possession of the forest land that is under his supervision.
Review of Rishabh Shetty’s mind-blowing film “Kantara”
The narrative’s core is made up of local legends and myths as well as beliefs derived from the collective memory of the forest dwellers. The movie has a strong feeling of the distinctive ethos of the characters it is about.
Shiva, a performer of the Bhoota Kola ceremony, stands in for an ancient practise, but he has given up the mantle to his cousin because he saw his father’s disappearance while the demigod was hiding out. Shiva is still plagued by the loss, which drives him to battle for the preservation of his cultural and spiritual roots.
Shiva is a virulent protector of his people and their animistic ideology, but he isn’t the stereotypical, unbeatable Alpha male that movies like KGF, RRR, and Pushpa have successfully reintroduced to mainstream Indian cinema. Kantara fights the urge and comes out of it unscathed.
Four years ago, after I watched the incredible #Tumbbad, I also lamented why nobody in India watches such good films rooted in the country. Now, as #Kantara hurtles towards 100 crore at the box office, that hurdle has been crossed too.
Tumbbad walked so Kantara could run! pic.twitter.com/ZBskRmoVd1
— Abhimanyu Mathur (@MadCrazyHatter_) October 14, 2022
