Kaantha

Should an artist refine his craft for art’s sake, or can he adapt it to suit audiences who respond with applause and make the work commercially viable? And what happens when that applause begins to blunt the craft itself? Kaantha, the Tamil film written and directed by Selvamani Selvaraj and produced by Dulquer Salmaan and Rana Daggubati, poses these questions through a narrative that moves from psychological drama to whodunnit, while consistently acknowledging the art of cinema.

The opening credits of Selvamani Selvaraj’s Kaantha play over behind-the-scenes photographs of classic South Indian cinema from an era when films were mostly made in Madras and a handful of studios produced all movies. These were Modern Theatres (based in Salem), AVM, Gemini Studios, Vijaya Vauhini and Prasad, and the artists and producers tied to these studios made films across Tamil, Telugu and even Hindi. Kaantha creates the fictitious Modern Studios headed by a young second-generation producer, Martin Prabhakaran (Ravindra Vijay), and borrows the “Thiruchengodu” from the real-life Modern Theatres founder TR Sundaram and gives it to its protagonist TK Mahadevan, played by Dulquer Salmaan. We enter Kaantha in media res, the dramatic stakes already high at the epicentre of the conflict. Ayya (Samuthirakani), a modest filmmaker, is still waiting to make his shelved magnum opus ‘Shaantha’ — a horror film based on his mother — and the current sensation (and Ayya’s apprentice turned nemesis) TK Mahadevan’s willingness is all it takes to get it back on the floors. After a quick conversation in Martin’s office with Ayya, Kaantha starts off on day one of the shoot with Ayya and Mahadevan’s hostility fresh and glistening.