Nine takeaways from 'Kabali' first day, first show

1. There’s only one Superstar that counts in Tamil lands and hearts

I’ve seen Tendulkar make several centuries at the Chepauk when Test matches were sold out. I’ve witnessed a full strength Brazil football team, in the flesh, score three goals and lift a trophy. The noise levels were nowhere near that for Kabali’s first day first show in the Bengaluru theatre I was at. The per capita decibel levels when the lights dimmed was at least several times higher.

Not a word of the dialogues could be heard for the first five minutes. But that didn't really matter. It wasn’t even Chennai. The eardrums hurt even now.

2. The ring of cash

The takings from parking lot fee and popcorn sales on Kabali’s Day One would be more than Linga’s total collection.

3. The Unmusical

The mandatory, hagiographic Rajini intro song in Kabali is the most tepid ever. SPB’s ‘Oruvan oruvan mudhalali’ (Muthu), ‘Vandhenda Paalkaaran’  (Annamalai), ‘Basha paaru’ (Basha) or Malaysia Vasudevan’s ‘Podhuvaga en manasu thangam’ (Murattu kaalai) are veritable Rajini anthems.

The Kabali song is pretty forgettable. Roughly from that point on, you start pining for Superstar films of the years gone by. In fact, Santhosh Narayanan, a talented music director is wasted in the film. The one melody song ‘Maya nadhi’ is perhaps an ode to the Ilayaraaja classic ‘thendral vandhu’ (Avatharam). The background score, if there was one, was rendered useless by the incessant sounds of gunshots.

4. The uber cool look

The superstar looks super dapper in the white-beard-salt-pepper-hair, three-piece worsted suits, linen shirts ( more on that in a bit) and John Lennon sunglasses Kabali avatar. The film’s stylist Anu Vardhan seems to have nailed the look. It also helps that Rajini, for a major part of the film, plays a character close his age, unlike in Sivaji, Baba or Lingaa.

5. It’s a Tamil film that’s not a Tamil film

Either Rajini can feel his stardom on the wane in India or it’s a clever ploy to expand his franchise. Kabali is a film shot in Tamil (the variety spoken in Tamil Nadu), but it has nothing whatsoever to do with India or the state of Tamil Nadu.

It is set entirely in Malaysia and tries (ham-fistedly) to ride on the identity struggles of Tamil plantation workers in the country in the British colonial era. Think Velu Nayakar, Matunga-Dharavi. Erm, actually don’t.

6. Rajini remix

Kabali is a Nayakan-flavoured 153-minute mashup of many Rajini films of yore. It tastes a bit like cheap Indian whisky that’s nothing but scotch-flavoured molasses.

Every single character in Kabali, you would have encountered in Nayakan, a true classic, and Basha, one of Rajini’s best. So bereft of ideas is the director that even the character names are a throwback to Basha. If Basha’s best friend and Man Friday was Anwar, Kabali’s sidekick is Ameer.  

If Antony was his bête noir in Basha, Tony Lee it is circa 2016. Some of Rajini’s best formula films rested on the hefty counterpoint offered by villains such as Adikesavan (Suman) in Sivaji and Antony (Raghuvaran) in Basha. The Chinese version, Tony Lee who often breaks into incomprehensible Tamil, is a featherweight caricature of the evil men the Superstar heroically vanquishes.

7. A ‘commercial’ film

Kabali is a very, very long advert for the following: gun and pistol makers, Mercedes Benz, linen shirts, Tourism Malaysia, Air Asia, high-end liquor, chunky men’s jewellery retailers… The list is almost endless

8. Playing from memory

Rajini in Kabali is a bit like watching a 65-year-old Vivian Richards turn up to play a game of beach cricket, swag somewhat intact but not the stroke play. In some early scenes that call for the nonchalance of an ageing don, Rajini plays perfectly, almost from muscle memory. But alas, that’s just about all that he can manage to pull off.  It’s hard not to wonder if the Superstar’s standard sarakku has all but emptied.

9. Mudiyala Da

 As a Tamil, the hype around Rajinikanth and his films as if they were seminal markers of culture, and the delirium exhibited by grown men makes me sick to my bones. It’s a joke gone horribly wrong, but we have made it an inalienable part of our identity. We may as well blow up our grand temples of Tanjore Taliban-style and erect multiplexes and monuments for the Superstar.

The opinions expressed are the author's own