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In the case of Mari Selvaraj, I have felt that whenever the canvas is on the smaller side, his craft takes the driver’s seat, and such films have managed to create a lasting impact. Even though almost all the films in his filmography have made an impression, my personal favorites among them are Pariyerum Perumal and his last outing, Vaazhai. Those movies effectively used the visual craft of films to enhance the things those stories wanted to say. Mari Selvaraj, who always talked about caste discrimination through his movies, once again does that, and this time he places the Story against the backdrop of Kabaddi. His new movie, Bison, is an elaborate sports drama that prioritizes verbal communication over visual storytelling.
The Story happens in the 90s. Our hero Kittan is an aspiring Kabaddi player. His father, Velusamy, used to be an ardent admirer of Kabaddi. But when something unfortunate happened to his favorite player, Velusamy realized the dark side of being a Kabaddi player who belongs to a lower caste. What we witness in Bison is the journey of Kittan to become a professional Kabaddi player, facing all sorts of hurdles.
The structure of the narrative here isn’t that complex. Mari Selvaraj uses the flashback trope to show the audience the various kinds of struggles, ranging from the field to life, Kittan had to go through before he could represent the country. Because this is the journey of a man from school days to becoming a national player, there is scope to include various shades of problems he may have gone through. The philosophy that fuels the screenplay is to break the barriers and achieve bigger things so that others can also aspire to reach what you have managed, an idea we have previously seen in Asuran. In the movie, we see that Kittan has this tendency to run whenever a problem arises, and the movie uses it as a metaphor for what the underprivileged had to do when oppression happens.
The Story arc here has no major surprises. Kittan achieves all this through that natural progression of playing for clubs, district, state, and eventually country. Mari Selvaraj is actually adding drama to the Story by throwing hurdles of various natures at Kittan. He is also building a larger world of rivalry, which isn’t directly connected to Kittan, but the events in that world have consequences in his life. Like I said in the beginning, when the scale is minimal, Mari Selvaraj’s best comes out, and his frames would talk. In the case of Bison, the canvas is so big that Mari prefers a more obvious communication of politics, and too many things are literally spoken, rather than expressed. And because this is an elaborate plot, some of the tracks in the film don’t get the required space for us to feel for that character. One such track is the romance in this Story. It is clearly a key track in Kittan’s life, but in the crowded scheme of things, it doesn’t get an adequate space.
When it comes to the politics of the movie, there is an interesting way of putting the hero in the grey zone when he gets support from the opposite side purely based on his merit. In the larger picture, the leaders of both sides were actually rooting for his achievement, and I thought Mari was implying how sports have this way of uniting people. But again, the film is using a lot of dialogue to communicate all these things. The visual choreography of some of the dramatic moments was, in a way, a derivative of Mari Selvaraj’s own filmography. There are sequences designed similarly to what happened to Karuppi, and we are also reminded of the whole bus set piece from Karnan. More than a tribute or callback, it felt a lot like a repeated trope. The scripting and execution of the various Kabaddi matches in the movie made that journey of Kittan look organic on screen. Nivas K Prasanna’s tracks were impressive, especially the Rekka Rekka track sung by Vedan.
Dhruv Vikram, as the central character Vanathi Kittan, really uses body language to a good extent to communicate the reclusive nature of the character. There are only a few moments in the movie where he has space to perform the emotional outbursts of the character. In most areas, he has to express the Kittan’s feelings in that restrained manner. Pasupathy, as the concerned father Velusamy, was fine in his role. Rajisha Vijayan, as the sister character, delivers a really good performance, and the dubbing of Raveena Ravi contributes to that. Ameer and Lal are playing the roles of the leaders of different groups in this movie. Anupama Parameshwaran’s performance (if I am not wrong, it is her own voice) in this movie as Rani is really solid. But the casting was a bit of a problem. The age difference between Anupama and Dhruv is only one. But in the Story, that gap is really big, something the society of that era can’t accept. And to make it worse, they have cast an actor (no offence) who looks older than Pasupathy as her brother. It was a case of great performance and wrong casting choices, and since that track has significance in shaping the character, it really affects the flow of things.
Bison Kaalamaadan is a movie that has a pretty extensive world-building happening on a script level. While it helps the movie to make the audience understand the backdrop and struggles of someone like Kittan, the political messaging is a little too on your face, which reduces the cinematic high it could provide. If you are okay with dialogue-heavy storytelling of political subjects, Bison has enough in it to keep you satisfied.
Review By: Digitpatrox