Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1

It seems poetic somehow that Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1 releases in the same month as the 10-year anniversary re-release of Baahubali. Rarely since S.S. Rajamouli’s landscape-defining two-part epic have I felt this level of “how-did-they-pull-that-off” admiration at the absolute conviction, stunning execution, and thunderous scale of an Indian film. Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1—writer-director-star Rishab Shetty’s prequel to his 2022 film, which took the nation by storm,—has all the features of a typical “sequel”. It’s bigger, flashier, more scattered, and less potent. But strictly as a feat of filmmaking and painstaking craft, it’s a thing to marvel at.

There’s a scene in Kantara (2022) where you know something is going to happen to Guruva, who is Shiva’s cousin. He’s the voice of God, he’s the good one. And, before that, you see flashes of who Guruva is. So when landlord Devendra travels with him, you instinctively know Guruva is going to be the sacrificial lamb. Despite that, when you saw it on screen, the tears flowed. Because, you cared. Because, by then, they’d told you who Guruva is. You know what the loss of that life meant.

Seldom does a movie leave you speechless. Sometimes, the impact is awe-inspiring and words fail you. Sometimes, you are so impressed you can’t stop talking about it. Sometimes, it hits you so hard that you just revel in its magic. But when a film manages to do all of this at once, it isn’t just a masterpiece - it is a cultural phenomenon. That is what Rishab Shetty’s ‘Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1’ does to you.