There’s great joy in watching new worlds come alive on screen—living conditions, attire, language, pastimes, poetry, expression of love... Clearly, countless hours and endless effort must have gone into conjuring up such a world from over a thousand years ago. But you know what brings even greater joy? And this is a joy that transcends time periods and landscapes.
It’s watching characters come alive, seeing them reveal their flaws, their virtues, their complexities. A car exists so people can drive. A song exists so we can listen. All the detail of a setting exists, so characters can be allowed to breathe. It seems obvious, doesn’t it? And yet, Kanguva, despite its resources and ample runtime, misses this simple truth.
Suriya plays two roles—Francis and Kanguva, and with the former, whose portions constitute the beginning of the film, you are more willing to forgive. For one, the film has just begun; for another, you expect to pay some waiting tax in such narratives, so the pleasures of the period portions can feel earned.
But even as distractions go, ‘Yolo’ deserved to be a better song, Disha Patani needed to be better integrated (if she was needed at all), and the video-game aesthetics needed to dial down the desperation. Each time they face off like a twisted, Indianised Mr. & Mrs Smith, the screen blasts WWE-like titles: ‘Francis vs Angelina’. It’s supposed to be fun, but it’s all rushed. In any case, the film doesn’t seem truly interested in their dynamic. It seems content with the actress strutting in swimwear and cackling in between referring to Francis as ‘babe’.
Watching Kanguva, the word ‘excess’ kept echoing in my mind. Character names and descriptions, guns with elaborate names, even random emojis and time stamps—everything is flung on screen in an unrelenting stream. When we are first jerked back in time from the present, a narrator bombards us with exposition.
This is a Roman king who wants to capture India. These are five islands. He seeks their help. Oh, and this is the makeup of the respective island and its people. Oh, and this is their king. And so it goes. It’s too much information to absorb, too little time to process. Before we know it, Natty’s character flits in and out, hundreds lie dead.
We glimpse a powerful image of hundreds of severed arms under water, only for it to vanish in a flash. A stack of bodies follows, again fleetingly. It’s a film with countless things to show, but count yourself lucky if you get to see anything long enough to take it in.
The film fixates on arms—both of the weapon variety, and the limb variety. Let’s talk about the latter. Kanguva’s ally severs his own, turning the deformed limb into a makeshift drumstick. A Roman king demands a hundred severed arms as proof of loyalty. Francis breaks his fingers to escape a handcuff and emerges fairly unscathed (somewhere, Kanguva gets stabbed deep and again, emerges unscathed).
In a climactic moment, a child dangles by a single arm. I struggled to make sense of this recurring imagery, but the film does not let you linger enough to think anyway. For example, let’s talk about more important arcs—like Kanguva’s guilt over orphaning a child. But here’s the question: Did he only just realize that his victims had dependents? Was he ever troubled by the lives he took? Introduced as a hardened killer, it’s unclear when we are meant to see him as sensitive. If he’s haunted by past actions, how does he reconcile this with the continued violence he enacts in the name of his tribe?
In Kanguva, this leader figure abruptly leaves his people for the sake of a promise (which shouldn’t be as easy a choice as it seems). But fair enough, he’s free to choose his path, but I wish we were given the chance to understand him. Look at Gladiator: Maximus is noble, yes, but he’s also a man who would rather farm than rule, a grieving husband who has no interest in romance. Such details make him more real; such details create attachment, by association or by admiration.
Kanguva could have been compelling if it weren’t so distracted by grandeur and a bizarre notion of speed. The core ideas—a love that transcends time, the cycle of birth and death, inexplicable attachments to strangers, even a father-son bond between unrelated individuals—are emotionally potent concepts. Siva has handled emotions more gracefully in his better work, but here, Kanguva seems weighed down by its own lofty ambitions.
Even in depicting the father-son-like bond, the film fails to hit moving emotional notes. There’s a song, Mannippu, that suggests a slower, more introspective mood to the film, but as soon as it ends, the film plunges back into its relentless pace. Immediately, we’re thrust into a scene where Kanguva motivates a group of women to fight their own battles—a potentially powerful idea, but then, we have no emotional connection to these women, no prior understanding of their relationship with Kanguva.
Has Kanguva generally been one to motivate people from afar? What’s his view of the role of women in his ancient society? We don’t know. The idea of the fight is great, but it’s hard to care when we know so little about those killing each other.
There’s a cameo at the end—you already know who it features—and the film teases a sequel. I understand the temptation. There’s a vast, ancient world waiting to be explored, stories to be told from a forgotten era, a setup that promises to bridge a thousand years. But amid all the sharks and crocodiles, the eagles, the constant leaping between timelines, the unending stream of kills… will we learn to pause, if only for a moment, to focus on a human or two? Has there ever been a spectacle that impressed without a soul?
Movie: Kanguva
Director: Siva
Cast: Suriya, Disha Patani, Bobby Deol, Redin Kingsley
Rating: 2/5 stars
(This article originally appeared on Cinema Express)