Of the ‘pan-India’ surge of all South film industries, isn’t Kannada cinema’s the most surprising?
A still from the upcoming movie KD: The Devil
Okay, so what’s common to Bollywood superstars Anil Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, directors Mani Ratnam, Balu Mahendra, and Tamil screen sensations Rajinikanth and Jayalalithaa? They made their debut with Kannada cinema! While here I am, wondering lately, wow, Bangalore makes movies too?
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At least for the past couple of decades, most of us have assumed that an app or a start-up idea is to a Bangalorean, what a movie script is to a Mumbaikar: Everybody has one!
And Bangalore locals, with a brain for business, tell me a mere Rs 45-50 lakh was what it’d cost to produce a full-fledged, mainstream Kannada theatrical feature, about a decade ago, anyway. This amount would probably fetch you an equivalent of an I-T (income tax) return, if you invested in a small-time sweatshop in the IT (information technology) sector, no?
Well yes, and no—since showbiz isn’t about business alone. It’s inevitably about creating products that start conversations in the social space. And somewhere, late ’80s-early ’90s onwards, it appears that Kannada cinema somehow slipped off the soft-power/cultural map altogether; even for a lot of urban Kannadigas.
A still from Kantara
Meaning, I find an entire generation in Bangalore—nobody calls it Bengaluru anyway—that simply did not grow up watching movies in the first language of the city they grew up in. Also, if you adequately know Kannada, you don’t face much problem picking up Telugu and Tamil. And therefore Tamil, Telugu, even Bollywood/Hollywood blockbusters, it seems to me, have been more the Bangalore ‘mainstream’.
Of course, Malayalam is the most distant among southern languages. Perhaps a reason Kerala’s cinema, going through a joyous ‘Mallu Spring’, continues to flourish in the heavily literate, smallish art house space, without bearing the burden of delivering a South India, or pan-India, ‘super-hit’!
In fact, my severely limited knowledge of Kannada cinema itself has only been somewhat in the off-stream arena. Best Kannada movie I’ve seen? Deeply cinema verité, Raam Reddy’s Thithi (2015). Greatest Kannada filmmaking talents? Girish Karnad, Girish Kasaravalli, B V Karanth, and others, with strong linkages to modern Kannada literature as well.
The ‘South blockbuster’ is obviously a different beast—with a lot more in common with each other, regardless of whether in Telugu or Tamil. Histrionic is its main/love language! It’s centred on the ‘star’, who prefixes that word to his screen name; obviously male. Only more like the guy next-door, than in average Bollywood/Hollywood flicks.
The connect with front benches is supreme, with screenings that must start way past the midnight hour, when the whole world sleeps, but fans will awake to light and freedom. Idol worship is complete. Film fams rule.
It feels no different for Kannada mainstream either, while I hear stories of how Bangalore schools, colleges, etc. remained shut for weeks, when old-world superstar Dr Rajkumar was abducted by sandalwood smuggler Veerappan in 2000. Weirdly enough, the Kannada film industry is nicknamed Sandalwood.
Likewise, I’m told, there are regular shops, establishments, with garlanded photos of Dr Rajkumar’s child-actor turned superstar son, ‘Power Star’ Puneeth Rajkumar, across Bangalore. The whole metropolis, in turn, looked like Puneeth himself, through massive hoardings at every inch, when Puneeth, 46, passed away from a heart attack in 2021. Only that the week I write this, Puneeth’s last film, Gandhadagudi, is up in theatres. Unlikely, it’s an event outside Karnataka.
Nobody I know has heard of it in Bombay, which as a film-industry city, or B-Town, as they say, really got first shaken up in its 117-year history right after the COVID-19 pandemic, when films from South India, one after the other, began to bang it in theatres nationwide, while Bollywood continuously suffered flops, even within Hindi markets.
Box-office became a national sport. And films from competing South Indian capitals sounded like IPL teams. Hence Hyderabad’s RRR and Pushpa, Chennai’s Vikram (also starring Kochi’s Fahadh Faasil) became the men of the match/marquee.
Which was India’s biggest post-pandemic blockbuster? Bangalore’s KGF 2 (2022), touching Rs 1,200 crore collections worldwide, and the second highest grossing Indian film ever—after Hyderabad’s Baahubali 2 (2017). KGF 3 is under production.
Which was the most unique/original/authentic blockbuster from among the post-pandemic southern surge? Undoubtedly, Bangalore’s Kantara (2022), still killing it in theatres, as we speak, having grossed close to Rs 350 crore.
Let me tell you what KGFs/Kantara have done to the Kannada film world, as I enter the “title announcement” of another (Kannada) film, with a K, called KD: The Devil, at a PVR cinema, across Dr Rajkumar Road, in Bangalore. Sanjay Dutt is in the front row, talking about how he loved being in KGF 2, and that “South films get ‘heroism’ right”.
Dutt will be there in KD, where the hero is ‘Action Prince’ Dhruva Sarja, apparently six films down. Director Prem is best known for Jogi, “an underworld movie with ‘mother sentiment’, that Salman Sir, Rajini Sir were keen to do, but there was a language problem.”
Pyrotechnics in the cacophonous, action teasers that follow—with Mohanlal, Vijay Sethupathi, voicing Malayalam, Tamil versions—clocking million hits by the minute, signals the pic as the producer’s ultimate punt. The moneybags being KVN Productions (RRR, Sita Ramam).
Even given the film hasn’t started shooting yet, journalists from across India, Delhi downwards, packed the PVR cinema. I have another text message for a similar “trailer launch”, yet again. In? Bangalore! Wow.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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