Kaantha Review | Excellent Performances and Extensive World-Building, but Falls Short on Impact

The thing with whodunit thrillers these days is that there is a tendency among the audience to find or guess the killer. So when you have a limited character pool, it becomes challenging on a cinematic level to create these surprising twists that the viewers couldn’t have imagined. Kaantha, the new retro thriller that feels like David Fincher’s Mank meets Agatha Christie, is an attempt to dress up like a whodunit and work its way to make us look at the why aspect of the central conflict. The world-building is extremely impressive, and the grey shades of the characters keep us interested in the movie. Kaantha would have had a lasting impact if the transition from who to why had been more impactful.

The Story is set in the ’50s. Renowned director, whom everyone addresses as Ayya, is about to make his new movie named Shaantha. But the project gets a bumpy start when the current superstar, TK Mahadevan aka TKM, decides to step in as the male lead. With the studio badly in need of a hit and the director having a rough history with TKM, the stage was set for a major ego clash. How all that leads to some unfortunate incidents is what we see in Kaantha.

Director Selvamani Selvaraj has clarity on how to present the olden days to today’s generation. The kind of aura film stars had during that time, the way the performances were a bit on the theatrical side, etc., are portrayed in a way that feels compelling to the modern-day audience. There is a flow to the events in the first half, and you could see the drama getting built through character equations. Since the second half of the movie has a whodunit nature, Selvamani Selvaraj gives us enough details about each character. When the movie comes to the second half, the Rana Daggubatti show makes the investigation bit fun to watch. But like I said, the movie’s risky zone comes after that, where it has to make the audience focus on the guilt the characters go through.

The movie’s visual language felt pretty unique. The very first shot in the film had that Hitchcockian vibe with thick shadows and eerie settings. Even after that, the cinematography by Dani Sanchez-Lopez uses light in a way to create a shadow play. Since the movie has this layer of characters being driven by ego, that style matches the tone of the Story. The editing is pretty sharp as it maintains the movie’s mysterious essence. Like how they didn’t choose to make the characters behave like characters from the films of that era, they are not trying to recreate the musical style of that period for the background score. That contrast of vintage visuals having new-age scores felt refreshing. The writing is what keeps us excited about the developments in the film. But somewhere, I felt the writing was struggling to handle the melodrama in those revelation scenes. Empathizing with the characters after they acknowledged their flaws was not happening. The movie’s sound design, with all those retro studio elements, has a major role in pulling us into that world.

The role of TK Mahadevan is easily one of the most challenging ones in Dulquer Salmaan’s career. He is playing a star with the ego of that era, and he also has to play this loud acting part, too. The confidence, the arrogance, and the regret of the character were performed very effectively by him. There is a bit in the movie where actor TKM finally delivers a clap-worthy performance in front of his mentor. Dulquer manages to do that old-school acting without the aid of any background score. I wouldn’t say Samuthirakkani, as Ayya is being challenged here in any way. It was one of those roles where you feel the casting itself made the job easy for the actor and filmmaker. Bhagyashri Borse, as Kumari, actually gets a very prominent role in the movie. It wasn’t about just being pretty. There is a certain level of drama that she needs to pull off convincingly, and with the help of dubbing, Bhagyashri was able to do that. The most fun character in the whole movie, the character that really shifts the gears of the narrative, was played by Rana Daggubatti. He is like a disobedient version of Hercule Poirot. The fearlessness and obsession to solve the case of this character bring a lot of energy to that part of the movie, and it felt like Rana was having a ball performing as Phoenix.

There is a curiosity factor associated with Kaantha for its entire runtime. While the studio culture of those days is what keeps us intrigued in the first half of the movie, the second half becomes an investigation where we are constantly wondering if there is anything more beyond finding a culprit and knowing the reason. In fact, the reason we eventually get to see is an interesting one, where everyone is somewhat guilty, as the ego had a role in making the characters take hasty decisions. But somewhere, the filmmaking wasn’t enough in those portions to make us empathize with the characters in those key areas.