Kali Analysis

 Kali (2016)

Directed by: Sameer Thahir
Written by: Rajesh Gopinadhan
Starring: DQ, Sai Pallavi
Streaming on Hotstar.

It's a film about a guy who has extreme anger issues, and how his wife and he suffer because of a roadside tiff they have on a highway. The film establishes them, and pretty much nothing happens for the first 30-40 minutes and yet it feels okay because of the funny scenes. Shoubin Shahir is hilarious, the way he pats his back, it's so irritating even to us, but we later end up feeling bad for him when he gets slapped. It's so easy to generate humor out of a character like this, because anything irritating that happens to him - we already start laughing because we know the gap between this guy and what's happening is so huge. One would assume the film to be about Siddhu learning to deal with his anger, a coming-of-age film where a character overcomes his/her flaw - and here others would benefit out of it too. But the film isn't that. It's a survival thriller. After a series of mishaps by Siddhu, Anjali leaves him and walks out - he takes his car and tells that he'll drop her. From there, Wild Tales (2014) happens. Yeah, the road rage is so well done. For some reason, the tension is so much with these road rage conflicts - perhaps because the threat is so visual, and also the fear of unknown.

Sai Pallavi is just terrific. The scenes where she is alone driving, and is being chased by the lorry - and when he comes down, breaks the window and forces her to get out - all these scenes felt so so real. I remember Sai Pallavi saying in an interview that she felt traumatized after shooting for this film, I can imagine why. The beauty of this film is that the plot unfolds at every step, for example, we get to see a knife in Siddhu's hand which would be a totally different film - but it holds consistent to his behavior. Later we get to know that something else happened. There is unpredictability along with consistency in character and that's such a rare feat. There was a lot of anticipation in the ending for the very same reason. Had it been a character arc film, they would've just gone away. That's what I loved about the film. The characters aren't also like psychopaths. The thing that scares us is what they could be capable of.