Selvamani Selvaraj’s Kaantha begins ambitiously with the contemporary aesthetics and glamor of the 1950s Tamil film industry. The story is a commentary on life in the cinema, crime and the effects of fame on an actor’s ego and its weakness. The story is presented as a power play between a filmmaker and a superstar who was once his star student. At its core, however, there is a crime thriller. Dulquer Salmaan plays “Nadippu Chakravarthy” Thiruchengode Kalidasa Mahadevan (TK Mahadevan/Mahadevan), a doomed superstar, and Samuthirakani plays Ayya, a supposedly genius filmmaker whose outsized ego and desire for power, especially over TK Mahadevan, destroy himself, Mahadevan and the complex web of relationships he has created. While the duel between the two men TK Mahadevan and Ayya remains the main plot of the film, Kumari, played by Bhagyashree Borse, ultimately acts as the medium through which the men settle their ambitions once and for all. A theme that was quite accommodating, but still disappointing.
From agency, audience and Saantha
TK Mahadevan is Ayya’s protégé who found and explored him. The conflict in a once endearing relationship begins when Mahadevan’s rise to stardom takes him from Ayya’s shadow to a reigning star of Tamil cinema. When their paths cross for a collaboration in Ayya’s once shelved magnum opus Saantha, the real drama unfolds off screen. Saantha was in development once before with Mahadevan playing the lead role.
Source: IMDb
However, due to ego clashes between the director and the actor, the film was tragically shelved. 1950s Saantha is Tamil cinema’s first horror film, starring Mahadevan once again, but this time opposite Kumari, a debutant and current protégé of Ayya, who eventually comes between the two men and their long-standing rivalry. Much to Ayya’s dismay, Mahadevan, now a superstar with great influence and command, encroaches heavily on the script’s boundaries, including changing the title to “Kaantha”.
Ayya, a purist in his filmmaking style, detests Mahadevan’s intention to cater to audience tastes and cater to his fans. In the film, such an argument has given way to an increasingly relevant and almost poetic dialogue. In a recording between the two, Ayya says, “The audience you’re talking about won’t exist in 50 years, but the film will endure,” suggesting that viewership and audience morale may change and tastes may dissipate, but the work will endure and speak for itself.
In a recording between the two, Ayya says, “The audience you speak of will no longer exist in 50 years, but the film will endure,” suggesting that viewership and audience morals may change and tastes may dissipate, but the work will endure and speak for itself.
In both Kaantha and Saantha, Mahadevan is portrayed as a “panivai marandha sandharpavaadhi” (naughty opportunist) who is plagued by issues such as “kutra unarchi” (guilt), “vetri” (success) and “garvam” (ego). It is worth mentioning here that while the makers have tried to draw parallels between TK Mahadevan and the character he plays in Saantha, Dulquer manages to seamlessly differentiate between the two.
The film strives to portray Kumari’s agency in an otherwise subservient environment into which women in ’50s cinema, particularly debutantes, were thrown, but it lacks effectiveness. Kumari certainly has moments of resistance and determination, but these moments further reduce her to a passive medium through which the two men communicate. Her resistance is too similar to her personality and is used as a tool to first project Ayya’s ego and then appease Mahadevan’s.
Photo credit: @dulQuer/X
Her small acts of autonomy may at first seem like a promising path for her character, but they fail to achieve that goal as they were never intended. She is forced to make such a decision in order to maintain the very structure that limits personal and private acts of resistance. For a viewer in 2025, measured against the background of the treatment of Women in the cinemaThe question arises as to how much has changed since the 1950s in terms of both the representation and treatment of women in cinema.
Almost Kaantha
In Kaantha, we hear so much about Ayya’s genius that we wonder exactly what stature this star filmmaker is. He is shown to be doing his best to teach Mahadevan a lesson without justifying the means he uses to achieve this result. What we get instead is a character who, although conceptually narrow, is written as a petty and selfish man in execution without articulating his moral foundations. As the story progresses, you get further and further away from its core and its characters.
The narrative creates an excessive discrepancy between the characters and their intentions. The key emotions such as love, admiration and guilt are only addressed and rarely shown. Until the two main characters arrive at a window that offers the opportunity to explore their moral dilemma, neither we as an audience are involved, nor does Rana Daggubati’s jokey character, Inspector “Phoenix”, allow them to do so.
The narrative creates an excessive discrepancy between the characters and their intentions. The key emotions such as love, admiration and guilt are only addressed and rarely shown.
Visually, the makers tried to reflect the style and filters of the 50s. Through this attempt they have also created almost boring images that remain dark, blurry and repetitive.
Source: IMDb
Finally, we are reunited with the murder that was the opening shot of the film. What follows is more than an hour of tension and drama that only builds as the characters so apathetically confess to the crime. The use of noir elements both visually and emotionally are never fully explored, resulting in a flat and banal watch.
Parting thoughts
Dulquer wowed the screens as Gemini Ganesan in Nag Ashwin’s Mahanati (2018) and he has once again returned to reprise the role of superstar Mahadevan, also set in the 1950s. Through this performance, he impresses audiences with his natural flair for playing iconic roles that are similar in nature, yet stand out distinctively through them. Dulquer’s acting skills are sometimes completely left to the film. Kaantha gives us a glimpse into the merciless world of the film industry and its impact on movie stars who are pushed to the brink of self-destruction.
What one might observe in Kaantha is the enactment of the politics of visibility. We are reminded of who has the power to control visibility and who benefits from it, whose work is erased and whose suffering is made a spectacle. However, it still fails to meet its conceptual design and initial goals. Kaantha promises so much possibility in theory, but in practice it makes for disappointing execution that stifles the potential of the characters and story.
Shreenithi Annadurai is an India-based lawyer. Her areas of interest include art as political expression and issues of representation and resistance, drawing on rights-based perspectives and feminist media practices.
