 I think we should put a spoiler alert. Many of you might have watched this new film which is quite a rage across India called Kantara and not just India. I've actually been on YouTube to search Kantara reviews and many of these reviews are by foreigners. Some of them sitting in America, some sitting in Sweden even and everyone loves this movie but it's got into a bit of a controversy in the last few days and even before that actually and it's been compared to a horror film which came out a few years ago. I haven't watched it called Tumbad which was also very popular at that time and the director of Tumbad has said that Kantara is nothing like Tumbad. That was a critique of or against the toxic masculinity and parochialism that Kantara celebrates and again we are back with Trina. Trina you watched the movie as well. Yeah I watched it yesterday and the director of Tumbad said that it's got toxic masculinity and to me when I watched it and I'm actually going to hold my views on it because as someone who's not a man, I would want you to, I mean I can keep claiming that I'm not masculine but people are saying you have a certain view. So did you find it toxic? I think the thing is that of course there are elements of this you know very macho personality of the hero and all of that but if you look at cinema in general and specifically cinema from the south like I haven't watched that much cinema from the south so I will I can't really comment on it but I've spoken to people like for example my sister who watches a lot of Southern cinema this is not out of the ordinary like the hero being very macho and having this sort of you know like very hypermasculine personality is something we see in cinema we've seen it a lot in our own Bollywood cinema we've seen it and especially through because this movie is set in the 90s so I think that's important to remember because especially if you look at Bollywood cinema even through like the 70s 80s 90s even the Bollywood hero has always been a very macho man so I don't think there was anything extraordinarily toxic masculine about it in fact for example like there are scenes where you know like one scene which is being called out is where he goes and pinches this girl of course that's very very problematic but I think we also need to realize that that may be very close to reality I mean this may be what is actually happening so just because something looks problematic we can't just take it out of a story we are telling which is set in a specific time where that is in fact but let me be the devil's advocate here and I agreed to a large extent with what you're saying here but let me be the devil's advocate you could still display that setting without necessarily him having to go and do that thing right to go and pinch the waist of the heroine yeah absolutely I mean I'm not I personally like I'm not a big fan of that scene yeah but what I think is that it may would you say it kind of sets the character in a certain sense it yeah it does it does because that is how the character of this guy Shiva is made who is this you know like very sort of I don't know I can't think of a word for it but like this very boyish he has very impulsive he does whatever like with respect to this woman but even with respect to like you see him getting into fights you know he acts on a whim on everything so I think that's part of the character that is shown as well obviously it's not okay I mean if you think about it in terms of whether it's okay to go do that of course it's not but we we can't only be showing things on screen that are okay because there are a lot of things which are not okay but they do continue to happen in society so how do you depict reality without showing some of those things and much of Bollywood was like that yeah exactly and I think even in this movie for example because even the women because like for example his mother she calls him out on his bullshit a lot like you see her always you know running after him even when there is a scene where he you know pushes this woman away and the mother immediately comes how dare you this is not how I've raised you and also sure there is masculinity but it's not like they've shown it in a way where it's glorified at least that's not what I would say they have shown a counter to it also where this person is being you know reprimanded for behaving in that way well you know one could also argue that this is this fits into a very typical thing where the son who's in in some ways a no good kind of person and never do well he drinks alcohol all the time he's always looking for some kind of meat to eat and there is a bit of a glutton thinks about food gets into fights all the time and and clearly is also shown probably smoking marijuana right it's not very clear but we can you can make out that his he goes into kind this kind of a days and that the man who gives it to him right is clearly always in this days he speaks in this kind of a situation where probably they stoned yeah so this character is being set up in a certain sense as being a bit of a lout right he fights and right in the beginning when he's gone and asked for the medal he gets the medal these given a lot of the all his friends they're also like him they all get these bottles of alcohol and they go away and he overhears two women walking past saying that one of them says my son is getting spoiled by this Shiva right yeah so Shiva is clearly the and right at the beginning those two people talking Shiva is a black sheep not only of the family but of the village itself and in some senses I mean he wanted to say that that is itself the story right here is a person who is a bit gullible he is a bit of a goon yeah right he is violent aggressive but at the same time he does not really see the different right from wrong and there is a turning point at one point when he changes yeah and maybe that is itself a thing to be set up right yeah and but but perhaps right yeah in hindsight the director probably would think unless they've actually tried to say this is what it is right and this is what it was and even now this is what it courtship is in let's say among the working classes or the poor that is how it and we should not bring our you know rational modern sensibilities about romance into that yeah necessarily because that is how it unfolds and so that is the thing I think we should revisit whether there is an anti-modern voice speaking at this movie I'm not saying necessarily that's bad yeah good but I'm just saying that so there is there is no doubt that this man is being set up as a very masculine character very macho character who not only fights with everyone but also fights with the representative of the state yeah when the the forest officer comes right and he is shown as both again the forest officer also has a certain matches more there yeah yeah for sure yeah and he's shown to be very rugged red often unkempt unshaved yeah and he right at the beginning when these two villagers go and say that oh we've killed one wild boar's hub but small so the meat is less and then he beats them and yeah and there is I think a very the film is very sensitive to reality rather than an imagined kind of thing right so an upright officer who is upholding the rule of law and representing the state yeah is also not necessarily good yeah right whereas there are these his seniors who come they are much more practical yeah they say don't do this do this do the the adivasis will go against her this will become a problem yeah um so that what did at any point did you feel uncomfortable while watching the film and I that is I think the question because I I really liked the film I was greatly I greatly enjoyed it but then I also like films in which you know old Hindi films in which the villain gets beaten badly and stuff like that and like I like the way in which it's set up for the villain to be really cruel and winning till the last second and then you feel the urge to actually take revenge as a viewer right yeah did any point in this film make you feel uncomfortable and also what are the points in the movie because I don't we shouldn't give away any spoilers for those who haven't watched but those who have watched they'll understand which are the points in the movie when you felt like exhilarated or felt yes or felt a lot of you know I don't know whether one could call joy but felt that identity yeah energy yeah I mean definitely one of the parts would be the end sequence but again I don't want to say too much about it and give it away yeah but the trans the transition that happens towards the end sequence and also the way it's been short and made uh it's it's a fight but it's also a dance yeah like so the way it's been done I thought was extremely good even in fact like I am not someone who enjoys action cinema at all but I feel most of the action sequence so you don't watch the Avengers and stuff like no I don't but I feel that most of the action bits in this movie have also been like I said it's always sort of a dance like the way it's been short like for example the first sequence after the buffalo racing yeah even in that mud when they're having a fight and you see those shots you know from the top where the water is flashing it's it's almost if you see that in isolation it's almost hard to figure out if this is a fight that's going on or that would probably bring take you back to the hong kong movies because those are the ones where the people are put up and wires and the fight sequences are often very choreographed they're almost dance yeah yeah exactly and again that's something I think in southern cinema which has always been there where the fight sequences are never meant to look very realistic yeah yeah they're not meant to be because actually if you see two men fighting it's not going to look that well done but over here you know there's always like there's a leap and then you hit someone they're all wired up and when they kick the man each person was flying back yeah you do like a backflip and you land on someone's head or something like that so but the last sequence without giving away what it is I think the last scene is is remarkable because it whoever has watched any kind of you know dance which is which has certain amounts of tribal elements right whether it is whether it is Yakshagan which emerges out of that kind of space or even dances that you see from Africa right there is that method used it's been it's kind of sitting on that and it's interesting because the director actor Rishabh Shetty I think was a Yakshagan performer so he emerged out of the Yakshagan tradition so he knows it and the location is actually although it's shot somewhere else probably but the name of that space is his village his real village where he grew up right so perhaps he knows yeah what it is and I read a little bit about the background of how that movie was shot and they wanted to kind of understand what people wore and the what is the kind of clothes they wore and what is the so the costume they did was by speaking to the local Aadi Vase even I read that they went and spoke to people what do they what they eat so it's in this kind of brings us to another part right which I think is a crucial thing to look at now again since the movie right at the beginning is set up for you to understand what this film is about right at right at the beginning there is this king yeah who is obviously should be happy he has riches he has a family he has a child but he cannot sleep he's not happy he has no peace yeah and he is sent out to look for peace and he tries all methods but he can't till he happens to be in the forest and he sees these stones yeah which are obviously the idol and it's a kind of rudimentary representation of the idol and he turns around and he feels peace instantly yeah and in that scene you can see that it's been done in a certain way because it's raining yeah and he instantly feels that peace and it's inside a forest and he turns to see these local people and we don't know who they are yeah right because we don't know whether they have a village right perhaps they're forest dwellers the adivasis right and he asks for the stone that he wants to take it back to the palace and they say no you can't because this is our god right panjurli deva which is interestingly and this might be an important thing translated as demigod which is not yeah in the super in the in the subtitle it yes you see it as demigod our demigod yeah and demigod by definition is not full-fledged god right demigod is a lower god yeah right has power and might even be a human being who has certain amounts of power right so it's a demigod panjurli deva and he says okay and and then we see immediately panjurli uh possessing one of these people and speaking yeah right so it's set up for us that panjurli can speak and says that yes you can take me with you but you give all the land till which my where my voice reaches and give it to these people right so in that sense it's probably setting up the village from that moment and he says yes and then panjurli warns him that i may forgive if you go back on your word i may forgive you but my uh what should one say my partner right uh guliga will not right so guliga is a ferocious thing and if you do a little bit of google search you see panjurli and guliga are represented guliga is represented with i think mud or black paint on the face and is a more ferocious yeah and then panjurli with yellow paint yeah so you see and the king takes it goes back gives them the land and till for more than a hundred years because this is starts in sometime in the 1850s and in 1970 or something yeah one of his descendants wants the land back goes to court and is warned by the bhutakola performer through whom panjurli speaks yeah that you will learn a lesson on the steps of the court so he dies with blood coming out of his mouth on the steps of the court and that is how it is set up now when you watch it you kind of already know what this film is about it's it's about that riches cannot get you peace peace comes when you share with people yeah uh the panjurli is in a sense nature because yeah he's deep in a forest yeah the spirit of nature can be benevolent right give you peace but also if you violate nature then nature has a disruptive side which is guliga and it's only this when you come to a balance between what you take from nature yeah and what you give to nature right is uh is when you can have peace and that is the balance right and so rest of the story you know is going to be something like that because otherwise and and when you see that the bhutakola performer right and is going with his wife and child right child who becomes shiva yeah later on he says that what we don't understand is that this is not ours right this is nature's yeah right so you see that okay and as you watch the movie you feel that there's a very progressive message here right yeah I mean what what message did you take out of it uh I mean like you said one one of the messages that's there is about this relationship and balance between human and nature uh that's one aspect of it but of course it's also about ownership of land yeah right because there's this there's this constant tussle between three parties which is the state the what they call the landlord towards the end which is descendants of the king who had given the land uh and the people who actually live there um so it's also about greed from the landlord to sort of take that land back because you feel a sense of and by cheating them yeah exactly because there's a sense of entitlement that I like my ancestors had given this away so now it's mine to take and and there's also a thing that you realize that he's he he's doing it because there's a survey team which is going to come and write down who has what land and he tries to cheat yeah he tricks them into like he pretends to be their savior yeah and through that tricks them into sort of giving up their land back to him so that when the survey happens that this is also an interesting thing it's a very subtly putting because the land rights actually come into existence only when the state surveys it and puts it on record right exactly because then like for example there are so many scenes before that before when they're talking about how the survey might happen yeah and the landlord's lawyer I think is there and they're asking people for their paperwork and you realize that most of the people have no actual paperwork for the land which is actually theirs and one of them actually comes and asks for rice thinks that this is they would do this is a ration exactly this is why have you got your ration card do I look like the ration shop yeah exactly so you see that actually no one has any kind of actual document document yet it has been their land for years and years and if you remember there's a scene where the the forest officer stops these people coming out of the forest carrying sticks and stuff right and he stops them and says that have you taken permission yeah and they said why do we need permission yeah he says yes you need the government's permission to take things from the forest is this your do you think it's your ancestors property right and that is when Shiva and his friends come and they said no no no no permission will be required right this is our yeah and the forest officer tells him that the this is the government's and he says that we have been around before your government came into existence yeah exactly so in a sense that if you look at it it puts on it kind of acknowledges certain issues which I don't think any other mainstream cinema ever even touches upon yeah I mean we would have seen these things in NFD you wouldn't have sorry but you know in the old days of Durdarshan NFDC movies made what would be called arthouse parallel cinema would touch upon it and it would have a very conscious non-commercial approach to it whereas this is an out-and-out commercial cinema but its themes are exactly what we would have seen in the 80s right in so-called arthouse films right the art film that Durdarshan showed which wouldn't actually find takers in cinema theatres yeah so that brings me to a question that you know and I want you to kind of respond to it that in the end we see that the landlord is killed and the land does not go to him right and there is some kind of a rapprochement reveal the end after saying we are not going to reveal it yeah sorry if you haven't watched this too bad for you you know there are some spoilers you can't do anything about and I'm sure that the fact that the landlord is going to come to some kind of a bad end is will be known to everyone that's true actually revealed a lot yeah too bad I think that's okay yeah I think we should put a spoiler alert right at the beginning but there'll be some spoilers if you don't want to watch this we'll let you know right at the beginning after this recording is taken okay so what I'm saying is but let's not give anything away so we see that there's some sort of an alliance between the forest officer who understands them and he comes to their rescue right what did you feel about that solution I'm actually unsure of what what I made of it it was interesting because this is the same guy who from the beginning has very clearly been set up as a villain yeah I mean it's not that you interpret him as a villain but the way he's presented is very clear that this is supposed to be the villain yeah it was interesting also because you do realize that this guy is just doing like we discussed is just doing his job so in that sense that alliance to some extent makes sense but yeah I'm not entirely sure about how I felt about so to come to your earlier question when you asked me if there was anything that made me like any point yeah so I wouldn't say it made me uncomfortable but it made me unsure this this kind this end where these two parties sort of come together to defeat the landlord or whatever it didn't make me uncomfortable but it didn't make me unsure of how I feel about this kind of settlement because like we said the rest of the film there were a lot of like themes and stuff which were based in reality I think this alliance is not is something I was not convinced by yeah like in the sense that this felt like like a compromise yeah yeah probably a compromise for the censors I don't know for whoever but to me I think that what maybe and it is interesting that a good film in that sense and that is why this is a good movie is whether you like it do you like the solution or not right yeah a good film is that something that makes you think later as well right when we were discussing that I think we should do a chat on this as a show right I mean we're not doing it about Rajababu although I have a lot to say about it but when we I think that I felt uncomfortable and dissatisfied with the solution and later on the more I thought about it the more I saw the symbolism there I felt in some ways that it was politically regressive and I say why I think that there are two parts to it one is that it and I'll go back to the idea of the demigod they don't say and maybe it's an English translation and that's the difficulty here that I'm not watching it I don't know what native Kannada viewer would say about it say about it hear it and I think there's nothing called Kannada right that already repeats so when the conscious way of saying it as demigod says that there's a greater Hindu tradition yeah right and these are smaller traditions within that Hindu tradition right whereas historically there's always been a conflict right it's not been that easy an assimilation between local religious beliefs some of which would be seen as going against what mainstream dominant Hindu tradition is yeah and I saw that there was some criticism of the usage of the om symbol within the yeah I mean again I don't know whether that already exists in the in the local no there was also some other with respect to this aspect of Hinduism entering the because so for example the director said something about that you know how this Bhutakola has been part of Hindu culture for a long time and blah blah blah but there was this other actor called I think Chetan Kumar who tweeted something about it and he said that and it was a I mean he wasn't being he wasn't trolling it or trashing the film or anything he said that it's great to see one of our movies making national and international waves and blah blah blah but it is important to recognize it is important to note that Bhutakola is not Hindu it has it is a practice of the Adivasis and it has existed long before this and it has been now so is it it's worth actually exploring I'm interested in looking at it and seeing what it means and you know historically this has been always spoken of the great tradition and little tradition and how local cults many small mother goddess cults have got incorporated and made into one big deity right yeah and I see that there is not necessarily a conscious attempt maybe that is how Shri Shetty sees it yeah the positioning of the om in the middle yeah of that title kantara and it comes and but at the same time and I'm not saying this is this is a very straightforward thing but I'm saying it's a very complex way in which the movie actually deals with it and establishes it because you see meat eating a lot of meat eating right drinking right it's not a puritanical religious and that to meet being born which is yeah which is not something even in like Hindu yeah apakas Hindu cultures and poke is considered dirty yeah yeah yeah maybe that is a play on the idea of the Bhutakola performer being the varaha yeah that is what and also they close the relationship with the with the forest and how they live off the forest so drinking meat eating yeah he comes and says that there's no fish yeah why is no so it's a very aggressively establishing non-vegetarianism as a yeah way of life right yeah and that I so it's a complex way in it but overall to me it sent it seemed like the local tradition has been assimilated into a larger tradition and it is being presented as that yeah that this is what we are and when we look at adivasi assertion or their their fights struggles to have their own rights which has often come up against the development state right and this is not new this has happened for since independence or even before that right and the solution to that to me seems to be driven through not just not community action but by one hero yeah the hero who does it right others are actually standing as supplicants and he kind of drives them to rise up he's the savior yeah he's the savior and he drives them to rise up against them yeah there is there is no team involved right this is one man yeah that's the overall sense of course people will point out no everyone was fighting there were these women also fighting but the point is that somewhere there was one man and then the man actually can only fight back yeah when a spirit right something supernatural comes yeah of course that could also be just an allegory it could be just a sense that he understands suddenly realizes the what it is all about right yeah so as i'm saying that i won't say that i accept that this is toxic masculinity or it is anti you know you know anti-modern and so that i think that there is something progressive about it but at the same time yeah i think that the solutions are yeah leave me uncomfortable and in some ways it is it can be seen as regressive and you can see that why the huge lot of people actually like the movie not for anything else but because the hero is so macho and he's beats people up so brilliantly yeah yeah it's almost as if this is no bit different from a Bahubali which by the way i love as well oh my god come on yeah you know i'll end by telling you the story about Bahubali when Bahubali too was released there there's a thing that went on on twitter and all that kattapa ne Bahubali kukyumar yeah that i've seen yeah and i remember anchoring and there was a story on it and i said what is this kattapa right and they said my co-anchor said you haven't seen Bahubali i said no so i went home and i switched on and i watched it on youtube Bahubali because it was not available anywhere else at that time and my wife who was sitting there saying what is this you're watching right this is terrible right and then slowly she also got dragged into it and she also watched it and then suddenly it says the next part is in two years from now right it leaves you hanging yeah there's no cliff angle like that i haven't thought of and luckily for us the next part was the next day so i so we booked tickets and went and watched Bahubali to the next day where you must watch it but what i'm saying the reason i said that there's and maybe a lot of this is because it is that new interest in south indian movies they're doing very well they're very well produced very well the cinematography acting is really yes i think a big part is also what we said is that i think what a lot of these movies do well is bring up these kind of issues in mainstream cinema yes because in bollywood there is a very clear distinction there's either mainstream cinema or there's this like art or alternative cinema which will deal with certain you know societal issues you very rarely see them converge and even those issues are largely small town issues which will appear in some multiplexes and then come on exactly they're not blockbusters like exactly yeah okay so uh you know maybe next time we should discuss rajapapu and bahubali so that's our chat today if you've liked it do like press the like button even if you've not liked it press the like button and just one press and do subscribe to our channel news click on youtube and then you'll get to know when a new video drops