There’s a moment in Priyadarshan’s Kalapani where Govardhan played by Mohan Lal stops a british lord from trampling an Indian servant on his way to entering his car - "An Indian’s back is not a footboard." he exalts. (Such a petty way of personifying patriotism don’t you think?)
Making cocktail movies about Patriotism, history, romance with a multilingual ensemble cast was a trend of the 1990’s.. Witness Mani Ratnam’s Roja, Bombay.. 1942 A Love Story etc. Enter Kalapani directed by Priyadarshan, the undisputed king of the malayalam box-office of the 1990’s.
The movie is about the personal experiences of the inmates in the jail Kalapani situated in the Andaman Nicobar islands during the 20th century british raj period. The film was years in the making and was touted as a landmark in Indian cinema, with a truly multilingual cast; it purported to show the history of the penal colony in the Andamans. Such a damp squib, ultimately.
Why so?
Priyadarshan unfortunately uses too many cinematic liberties to tell his blatant tale. In his review of Lagaan, my dear friend in ms jmathur came up with wonderful point :- "The villain of Lagaan is a villain in his individual capacity, the British rule has not been shown as a villain."
The same shall be said about the villains in Kalapani :- they are villains because the film needs villains but not because they are true villains of the british raj period. When Govardhan finally sets out to take his revenge on general Mirzah khan (Amiresh Puri) and David Berry (Alex Draper) you can’t help but feel that that revenge is more personal than patriotic.
As a director Priyadarshan fails to match his commercial brilliance in inculcating history by the scrub of its neck. It is very dissappointing to see him downplay everything either through patriotic Dialogue or crowd-pleasing one-liners instead of doing more research and coming up with something more poignant. Tabu’s romance story with Lal seemed more gimmicky and forced into the story & not entirely convincing to say the least.
Kalapani however is not entirely unwatchable. It is in fact compelling cinema thanks mainly to Priyadarshan’s ensemble cast starting from Annu Kapoor (as Veer Savarkar) Amiresh Puri, Alex Draper, Kochin Haneefa, Tabu, Nedumudi Venu, Sreenivasan, Sankaradi and Prabhu. They are all outstanding. Its movie heaven to watch this cast at work. And when the patriotic storylines gets tangled up and meander a bit, Mohanlal arises as a messiah camouflaging the film’s flaws and compelling you to take everything for granted even when blatant historical inaccuracies stood out like a sour thumb. His running commentary was so good that you actually thought that its an ex-freedom fighter doing the commentary and not a thespian.
Another merits of the film includes Ilayaraja’s haunting background score, Santhosh Sivan’s epic cinematography and last but not the least Sabu Siriyan’s unmistakable art direction.
All said and done, Kalapani has its flashes of brilliance and a touching human story to back it up. If only Priyadarshan put more preference on art over craft, this would have been a home run. It is still good though. Very good.