Revisiting Kadal as Mani Ratnam turns 67: Ace director’s attempt at making a biblical epic

Kadal, the debut of Gautham Karthik and Thulasi, was panned by the audience and critics upon its release. In retrospect, people failed to see its merits as it was drowned in hate.

A still from Mani Ratnam's Kadal

Written by Kirubhakar Purushothaman

Chennai | Updated: June 2, 2023 02:56 PM IST

6 min read

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In a way, Kadal (Sea) and one of its protagonists, Father Sam Fernando (Arvind Swami), faced a similar predicament. The film is a well-meaning work that wanted to profess abundant love like the sea. Father Sam, on the other hand, a true believer of the tenants of Christianity and Jesus, tries to cure a small fisherman village in South Tamil Nadu with faith. But both the film and Father Sam received too much hate from the people despite their noble intention–which is similar to what happened to Jesus himself. Many didn’t see Kadal (leading to the film becoming a massive blow to Mani Ratnam’s career), but a lot heard RJ Balaji’s scathing review of the film, which went viral even back in 2013. Balaji, who was yet to become a full-time actor then, was extremely critical of the film. He called the film inaccessible and overindulgent. Though there’s some truth to it, the crucifixion of the film, in retrospect, feels harsh. I still remember watching the film in a single-screen theatre in Trichy, and when the title card rolled as Arvind Swami screams his heart out mouthing the song Anbin Vasale, I came out with goosebumps; the feeling lasted all through my ride back home. However, the horrendous mainstream reception to the film made me doubt my taste and understanding of cinema. Yet, revisiting the film now, the end created a similar effect that I had a decade ago.

Kadal starts with a prologue when Sam Fernando and Bergmans (Arjun Sarja) are in theological college. While Sam, hailing from an affluent family, calls his path ‘Dhyaanam’ (meditation), for Bergmans it is just a means of survival. Bergmans is Satan incarnate. He admits this to himself more than once. He is well-versed in Bible, but he refuses to bend his knee before the almighty when Sam outs his cardinal sin. Thus, he commits hubris and becomes a fallen angel pushed out of paradise. Like Satan, he also swears revenge. Thus, begins the battle of good vs evil. Perhaps, this cliched storyline overpowered the subtle layers of the film. On top of it, Kadal was starkly different from the screenplay structure the mainstream is used to. In a way, Kadal was the most brutal and experimental film of Mani Ratnam, which was based on the story of Jeyamohan.

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Now, anyone familiar with Jeymohan’s literary works would already be used to the violence and the biblical overtones, and Mani Ratnam tried to capture the same in the film. Right after the prologue, we get introduced to the childhood of Thomas (Gautham Karthik). Thomas’s mom, a sex worker, is dead but the kid, who has no idea, continues to sleep hugging her body. One of her clients Chetty (Ponvanan), who is also the father of Tom, carries her body and buries it in a broken wooden box used for carrying fish. When the body’s leg doesn’t fit the box, he breaks it. It is the most horrific and violent scene one can find in Mani’s entire filmography. What follows is the childhood trauma Thomas goes through for being the son of a sex worker. He is treated as untouchable, and he grows into a violent brat giving back as good as he gets. By doing monstrous things, the village ends up creating a monster. But Father Sam keeps taking his abuse, and repays it with love, Thomas gets baffled. Thus, Thomas grows up to become a decent human, but when Bergmans comes back to exact his revenge, Father Sam pays huge price and gets jailed. Satan turns Thomas into one of his fallen angels; he becomes a demon again. His resolution comes in the form of Beatrice (Thulasi Nair), who is a mentally-challenged but vibrant nursing student. She is an angel incarnate, but the big reveal is that she is actually the daughter of Satan himself.

A superficial look might make the film seem like an ordinary age-old story. For instance, the very fact that the film’s heroine is the daughter of the villain is the most done-to-death trope across the world. But Kadal is more than its story. It’s an attempt at creating an epic story about finding the good even in evil. At one instance, when Thomas asks Sam to leave the village and let him carry on with the path of Bergmans, the priest asks him, “I will go if you tell me you haven’t even seen a spec of light in anyone or anywhere.” The scene cuts to Beatrice. In the end, even Satan finds light in her, making him lose the ultimate showdown that looks like Mani Ratnam’s recreation of the climax scene from The Dark Knight. Like Joker (Heath Ledger), Bergmans is also suspended on a rope. Father Sam loses the fight and chooses to cut him off and let him drown in the sea below. “Kill me. You will live with defeat and I will die winning,” Bergmans scream. But Thomas saves Sam from becoming corrupt by Satan.

However, Kadal tried to recreate everything that Jeyamohan seems to have written, and hence, a lot of times, we could ‘read’ his writing in the film, making a lot of dialogues sound heavy. Also, Kadal is a dense film; a lot happens. It is not just about Bergmans vs Sam, but it also has the love story of Beatrice and Thomas. It is also about Thomas’s father. A novel would have had the space for all these arcs, but as a film, things don’t get fully etched out. Perhaps, like Ponniyin Selvan, this also needed a series. Yet, despite its shortcomings, Kadal is easily a bold attempt by Mani Ratnam that might be realised later or might sadly continue to be the forgotten work of the filmmaker.

Kirubhakar Purushothaman

Kirubhakar Purushothaman is a Principal Correspondent with Indian Express and is based out of Chennai. He has been writing about Tamil cinema and a bit about OTT content for the past eight years across top media houses. Like many, he is also an engineer-turned-journalist from Tamil Nadu, who chose the profession just because he wanted to make cinema a part of his professional life. ... Read More

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