In a recent Telugu film “Mahanati”, the protagonist “Gemini” laughs at a marching crowd of protesters. When the actor “Savitri” asks for the reason, he blurts out, “Telugu people are demanding for a separate Telugu state in Tamil.” A similar conundrum was faced by the early nationalists when they “voiced” their opinion in a language that is quite “foreign” to them. In both the cases, the “oppressed” have no other option than to express their dissent in the “oppressor’s” language. They know that this is the only way that the “other” can understand their pain and sufferings.
But, what if the very language that the oppressed are using to voice their opinion is itself built on the power relation? What if the language itself is the tool of the oppressor to propagate the oppression. This is evident in arguments of Feminists when they say how English has been a tool to disburse “patriarchal” cultural norms and how they were in a dilemma as to how to communicate this idea of inbuilt oppression in a language which propagates the very oppression that it is trying to dismantle.
Pa. Ranjith also faces the same dilemma.
Ranjith wants to voice his opinion about the oppression. But, he is only left with a medium that is propagating the very same oppression.
How can one respond to this dilemma? Can someone transcend this banality of perpetuation of oppression through language and still be able to express what she wants to express lucidly?
Ranjith “takes this dilemma by the horns” with a formidable path in the film “Kaala”, which makes his narration so complex that one feels “lost” in the myriad of colours in the climax of the film. What makes this narration so complex that one gets a mixed feeling that makes one wonder whether this film is Rajini’s or Ranjith’s or a film that is stuck in between?
Just as in most of the films where the upper caste/class culture is preferred over a lower caste/class culture, the word “he” has been prefered over ‘she” in the English language throughout the centuries. Whenever there is a general noun, the authors have always preferred to use “he” over “she”. So, just as in the films, English became a tool in the hands of the oppressor.
When women questioned this disparity in language, different answers were given to them without much thought. Some told them that “he” or “she” doesn't matter in language. Some told them to replace the “he” with “he/she” so that both the terms will have equal footing.
However, some women have started preferring “she” over “he” to subvert the power equation. This is exactly what Pa. Ranjith did in his previous films. He preferred the lower caste/class culture over the high caste/class culture.
Now, imagine an author, who, not only prefers the pronoun “she” over “he”, but also makes the text complex by using the pronoun “he” whenever there are negative attributes attached to a subject and uses “she” whenever there are positive attributes attached to the same subject. This makes the reader stumble in the process of meaning-making.
This is exactly what Ranjith has done in his film “Kaala”. He not only subverts the idea of Tamil-hero mythology but also questions how we understand a hero as such. He not only questions the way in which the lower caste/class people have been represented in films but also questions our very idea of what a film is. Thereby Ranjith also critiques our epistemological assumptions, biases and prejudices and also critiques the foundations upon which our aesthetic beliefs stand.
To tell you how Kaala Ranjith ‘differs’ from his earlier films, let me tell you an example. Take the discourse around ‘Vegetarianism’. If he had been the earlier Ranjith, he would have emphasized different food habits that are associated with different cultures and how a certain dominant castes/classes are imposing their food habits on others in the name of purity/chastity. He would have been using the same binary opposites, i.e., vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism, but he would have prefered the term non-vegetarianism to subvert the power dynamics. But, what this new Ranjith is doing is quite revolutionary. He is still subverting the power dynamics but is using a different set of binary opposites altogether. Instead of the older terms (which are constructed by the oppressor), he is now using “meat-eating people” and “non-meat-eating people”, which are defined by the oppressed. With this, the power equation completely changes. What has been ‘centre’ becomes the ‘marginal” and what has been ‘marginal’ becomes the centre.
This is the other way in which one can transcend the oppression that is inherent in the language itself. Ranjith uses the same language/ film-techniques but creates his own vocabulary/new narrative methods like the above example of meat-eating and non-meat-eating people.
And his new vocabulary makes the narrative so complex that this results in some people asking, “Whose film is this anyway?”
This new way of filmmaking is unsettling for viewers who have been habituated to a certain form of film-making styles and film-watching experiences.
When we expect Rajini to fight after the echoes of “Kya Rey, Setting aa?”, someone fights the villain. When we expect a heart-wrenching cry from Rajini when his wife and son die, we hear his daughter-in-law’s voice.
Scenes like these make us bewildered as the film doesn’t give us what we expect or desire. But, to use Zizek’s words, “A film doesn’t give you what you desire. It tells you what to desire.” This new Pa. Ranjith is telling us what to desire in his films. He doesn’t want to make a gangster film like “Naayagan”, where the protagonist’s personal loss (just as in Kaala, the protagonist in this film loses his wife and son in a gang war) becomes a loss for the entire people associated with him. But, Ranjith’s protagonist's personal loss is immersed in the goal of uplifting his caste/class people's lives who have been oppressed since time immemorial. Unlike in a film like “Naayagan”, where the central character speaks for the entire marginal community, Ranjith makes people who are standing at the margins of this marginal community speak their mind. This is explicit when Kaala’s daughter-in-law tells what she thinks about her and her family's future after losing her husband. By making these people talk, Ranjith has ‘differed’ from his earlier narrative techniques. (Kabali is a fine example for his earlier technique where “Kabali” becomes the centre of the text.)
Ranjith’s new narrative technique in “Kaala” dismantles some of the older narrative techniques in the mainstream cinema.
One of the older technique that Ranjith dismantles is “completing an arch”. In the film, Huma Qureshi who plays Zareena is shown as a single mother. One would expect the director to say something about this point just to make this character a complete arch. But, Ranjith never talks about this point in the film, which makes this character “incomplete”. And one more character in the film which we feel is dealt with in the same way is that of Anjali Patil’s. She is shown as an activist but is missing in the end. By making these characters incomplete, Ranjith wants to emphasize that this sense of incompleteness is inherent in one's life.
And it is quite interesting how Ranjith breaks away from the usual hyper-emotional drama that surrounds “deaths” in commercial films.
In any commercial film, you can witness a heart-wrenching scene around the death of any character in the film. Be it Mani Ratnam or Shankar, both of them use “death” as a tool to create an emotional connection with the audience and they have successfully created such peaks of emotion in the audience with their film narratives.
However, in the process of creating this emotional bond, they portray “death” as if it creates a ‘break’ in reality. But the reality is something that changes continuously no matter what, and one feels that these kinds of filmmakers are making much ado about nothing when they portray death in this way. For some communities, death is a celebration: a way to unite with nature, and one can witness this kind of festive atmosphere associated with death ceremonials in low-caste communities in Southern India. In Kaala, Pa. Ranjith breaks away from this usual hyper-emotional drama about death and he portrays death in such a way that emphasises that death is also natural and is a part of human life. Ranjith was asking people to not mourn over their loved one’s death. Instead, he wants them to concentrate on the struggles and goals. This is evident when Rajinikanth says to the villain that he is not demoralised with the loss of his wife and son and he will fight till his last breath to achieve what he believes in.
At times, Ranjith’s new techniques go against his older ones. Take for example how the break dancers were weaved in perfect sync with choreography in the song ‘Kagitha Kappal’ in the film Madras. This way of capturing the movements of people is possible only if we “freeze the reality”. You stop the time, capture the actions of people, and this makes a film devoid of “chaos”, which is a marker of reality that is changing constantly. But, in Kaala, you see the rappers suddenly entering into the frame. You feel some sort of incoherency and some “chaos”. This is what Ranjith wants to capture in Kaala. He wants to capture how this suddenness affects people's lives.
Ranjith’s narrative technique in Kaala is completely a different “Language-game”. To use Wittgenstein’s words “you will only understand the language being used if you are familiar with the language.”
In the same manner, to understand Kaala, one must acquaint oneself with the new vocabulary that Ranjith is creating in this film. If we understand Kaala’s son’s quarrelling with his father and his going away from home as a “vanavasam”, then what we are doing is nothing but understanding this new narrative with our old-film-appreciative knowledge. Hitherto our films have only had a single dimension when it comes to power, and to use the knowledge that we built upon watching/reading those films to judge “Kaala” is like applying the rules of Cricket to Hockey.
What about the subtexts in the film?
Everybody is talking about the fight sequence on the bridge. Some like it or some do not. But, did anyone pay attention to Rajinikanth’s car number in the fight scene?
Car number ends with 1931. In the year 1931, a historic confrontation took place between Ambedkar and Gandhi and this leads to the infamous “Poona pact”. In 1931, Ambedkar submits his representation to the “Simon Commision”, asking the British government to provide separate electorate for Dalits, which in effect asks that Dalits should be given the rights to elect their own members to the assembly. Ambedkar thought that this was the only way that the oppressed castes could shape their own future; that is, by electing their own people. Interestingly, this idea of shaping one's own future is stressed in the film, where Kaala tells to the angry Zareena, “We will build our homes (thereby our future) in the way we want/like.” And this bridge scene happens after the confrontation between Kaala and Zareena.
The other subtext is about land and ownership. People have related this ‘land ownership’ narrative only to the category class. But, who are these landless people in India?
Data from the 70th round of Land and Live Holding Survey of the NSSO indicates that 58.4% of rural Dalit households are landless: a much higher proportion than households in any other social group. And the Census-2011 data shows that 71% of Scheduled Caste farmers are agricultural labourers; they work for wages on land they do not own.
So what Pa. Ranjith is doing in his film is that of blurring the thin line between Caste and Class. Unlike other filmmakers who have dealt with land-ownership themes in their works, Ranjith wants to emphasize the point that caste is not just a social category; it is also entwined with class and has economic intonations too.
As someone pointed out, the way in which he depicted women characters in Kaala is highly appreciable. For this alone, we must support and give all the strength that we could give to him; he deserves this just for breaking away from the usual nonsense films.
And lastly, this might not be Ranjith’s best film, but, certainly, his way of filmmaking has matured when compared to his earlier films.
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