Touch too obvious
Karnan was heavy from the word go. The film shows the climax and only then carries on with the story. So, we know the eventual was going to happen and whether it was purposefully done or not I’m not sure but there was a sense of uneasiness throughout the film. Generally, when a climax is exposed, the film takes you through the happy phase and finally bring it to the moment, thus making it impactful but here, the mood was constant and quavers around uneasiness, waiting for something bad to happen, in the league of a horror film.
This kind of troupe where the climax gets exposed, or a main juncture is exposed has become a constant feature of B – grade action films or films which doesn’t take itself seriously because we get to know that the characters come out of the situation victoriously. So, to see it happening in this movie was surprising. Guess Mari Selvaraj didn’t find any tool apart from it to keep the audience in grip. In fact, he does too much for this film in the guise of making it artistic. Too many animals, too many motifs etc. If it comes naturally of course its fine but quite a few are strikingly on the face and gets annoying after a point.
In ‘Pariyerum Perumal’ the beauty was its feel goodness and naivety before the main strike but here, if not for the subject, it’s just a hero worship film. Just like how ‘Asuran’ was made. At least Asuran can be forgiven for its audacity because it can be termed as a commercial film eventually, even though it tries to be otherwise. Here in ‘Karnan’ it was not an outright commercial film, at points it feels like a docu drama and oscillates between fiction and reality, that’s why it was difficult as well as irritating to see all the focus on just one person. For Dhanush this would have been a piece of cake, he’s clever and gets such roles but he couldn’t exhibit dynamism like he did for ‘Aadukalam’ because he had such great scope in that film. Here it was unidimensional and if not for his presence it’d have been even poker-faced character.
As soon as I saw Lal’s name and seeing him allying with Karnan (Dhanush) I knew that he was going to die eventually so it was no surprise and couldn’t bring the impact it had to. Similarly, there was the donkey scene with a rope tied. It was quite evident the knot would be removed at an “important” juncture and so does it happen for the interval. Between these two supposedly impactful scenes, clash between the villages happen and the story becomes generic.
May be if the movie had been made by Bala, he’d have given a different treatment. If the film had been made in a ‘Sethu’ way, it’d have been way more impactful because there was a lot of scope for showing people happy. In ‘Pariyerum Perumal’ there would be a brief moment when “Pottakaatil poovasam” song appears. The love feel was one of the best in recent days. There would be clashes, violence etc. happening in the background but just like how anyone who are so madly in love, they’d be oblivious to the surroundings. That was beautiful. It pushes us too in that zone. The emotions worked perfectly for both happy and sad scenes there. Whereas in ‘Karnan’ we were waiting for violence to erupt, we were waiting for Karnan to strike. And we know that it was going to happen. The climax especially when he decides to return to fight, it was ‘meh’. Of course, it was going to happen. It was pretty much a Rajni film masked in this way.
Except for Lal others don’t get much scope. Must pity on Rajisha, just a brilliant actor. Probably for me, the takeaway from the film is Yogi Babu’s acting. First time I was seeing him in a serious role, and he nailed it. Dhanush’s sister Padmini (Lakshmi Priyaa Chandramouli) was good but would have been nice to get to know about her better. Overall, the film was hurried and tried to come to conclusion and close it off. The troupes, making and music, while trying to be different couldn’t give necessary impact and fringed only on shock value.
constantscribbles 