There’s a greater-than-thou nobility sprayed across every frame of director Vijay Milton’s Kadugu . It’s Milton, wanting us to remember him as the guy who made Goli Soda, hoping that we overlook 10 Endrathukulla, his star vehicle that crashed and burned.
Like Goli Soda, the core of Kadugu too is a David versus Goliath battle. If the former was about four kids taking on the local system, here it’s the simpleton who fights the local bigwig. This simpleton calls himself Puli J Pandi (an interesting performance by filmmaker Rajakumaran) because he performs the dying art of puli versham, and in his own words, he is one of artistes dying along with his art form.
Pandi is the embodiment of goodness. When he sees a school girl getting punished for wearing torn shoes, he can’t help but buy her a new pair, only to secretly place it beside her. Later, when he notices a lady looking for her lost money, he leaves some on the road and convinces the lady it belongs to her.
- Genre: Drama
- Cast: Bharath, Rajakumaran
- Director: SD Vijay Milton
- Storyline: A David-versus-Goliath battle set against the theme of child abuse
Just when you feel all this goodness is getting to you, we meet Nambi (Bharath playing his greyest character yet), the film’s real protagonist. He’s the blue-eyed boy of his town, a boxer and an MLA in waiting.
So when a minister visits the town, Nambi lobbies for him to stay at his place and arranges a grand show for his welcome. But when Nambi spots the minister molesting a little girl (she is dressed like a deer to signify she’s the prey to the minster’s predator) he chooses look the other way, only so his political future remains smooth.
It is at this point we discover the protagonist was never meant to be Pandi. As Nambi battles with the guilt of turning a blind eye to such a crime, we feel a hint of his guilt too. Fresh off the murder of a seven-year-old in our own city, how can we not?
Even with all this potency in its writing and its relevance, the viewer still needs to exert a lot of effort to deduce what the director meant. Sub-plots involving Pandi’s love/friendship for a local school teacher and another between Nambi and a college student, just take up time without really fitting into the central conceit. Kadugu ’s filmmaking is all over the place and its melodramatic narration gives a very present issue an outdated feel.
And it’s these flaws that pull down a powerful film, simply to an ordinary one. For a true thing, expressed poorly, can only be a lie.
