Nag Ashwin’s Kalki 2898 AD has nearly all the hallmarks of what might be deemed a ‘pan-India blockbuster’.
A star cast comprising names from all film industries which have a significant footprint in the country, a deluge of green screen (used to concoct futuristic, dystopian landscapes with all the depth of a Windows ‘98 wallpaper), a few slick action sequences, and the promise of a saviour who will deliver us from evil.
You can tell a lot about a film’s collective smartness with the way it employs its star cameos. In Kalki 2898 AD, Ashwin gets two famous directors to make appearances in stray scenes. In a better film, this might have elicited laughs. But here, it is a sorry testament to Ashwin’s pummelled vision as a filmmaker – as someone possibly bogged down by the pressures of being at the helm of a Rs 600-crore project. The cameos eventually feel like winks at die-hard fans.
All the chatter around Ashwin’s region-agnostic cast reminded me of a time in the early 2000s when I watched Amitabh Bachchan, Prakash Raj and Sabyasachi Chakraborty in Rajkumar Santoshi’s Khakee (2004). There was sheer electricity in the way three stalwarts of their respective film industries inhabited a scene, playing off of each other’s charisma. Those moments stood the test of time even two decades later.
I had hoped to feel something similar when Bachchan showed up here, and shared screen space with Prabhas and Pasupathy, and also potentially set up a face-off with Kamal Haasan in the future. Unfortunately, everything appeared so stage-managed that it hardly evoked feeling.
Kalki 2898 AD is, after all, not a film, but a ‘project’ in industry parlance. Such films are put together on a spreadsheet, with values ascertained to each popular face and how many audience members they will be able to draw. This is a legitimate way of making expensive films, but a viewer also hopes for some spark that would make them forget the money-mindedness with which such gargantuan productions are put together. The scale of Ashwin’s film is always front-and-centre in every scene, and therefore all choices are governed by its self-importance.
A still from ‘Kalki 2898 AD’.
Set 6,000 years in the future, after the last city has fallen to a narcissistic evil conqueror called Supremo Yaskin (Haasan), built along the lines of Thanos, the film opens in Kashi – the capital of his empire. The city of Kashi seems to be inspired from the wastelands of Blade Runner (1982) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). The currency to sustain a livelihood are ‘units’ – much like Andrew Niccol’s In Time (2011). Yaskin’s guards go around looking for fertile women, who are taken to ‘the Complex’ – the promised land hovering over Kashi (much like Neil Blompkamp’s Elysium), where the good life exists. There are a few rebels hiding and plotting to overthrow Yaskin’s reign. Like Fury Road, the dystopia thrives here because of how the antagonist preys on the people’s desperation. Most civilians are informants or bounty hunters, allowing Yaskin to maintain his stranglehold on society by capturing all dissidents of the empire. Most of them are seduced by the promise that their ‘loyalty’ will eventually be rewarded with a life in the Complex.
Prabhas, playing Bhairava, is a wayward bounty hunter – who plays along with anyone who will pay him enough. When a pregnant surrogate from the Complex, Sumati (Deepika Padukone), escapes, she is pursued by all the bounty hunters of this land. Except, she also has the rebels looking after her, and trying to smuggle her to a place called Sambhala – a haven for the rebels who believe in a folk tale about the second coming of a god. So far, so conventional.
A still from ‘Kalki 2898 AD’.
But one place where Kalki 2898 AD differentiates itself is the reintroduction of Amitabh Bachchan as an action superstar. Bachchan’s character as Ashwathama seems almost entirely computer-generated, except for his close-ups. A lot of the ‘trickery’ to make Bachchan seem like an able action star is visible, especially how the camera cuts before a kick or a jump. However, his role reminds viewers of how good Bachchan is at playing the silent brooding type, where he communicates far better with a close-up of his eyes, than with reams of dialogue.
The film’s politics generously borrows from the Mahabharat and Ramayan. It phrases the second coming of the saviour as the arrival of a bhagwaan (god). It employs the agnipareeksha (trial by fire) to ‘cleanse’ a surrogate and turn her into the mother of god. The sound of conch shells and bells of temples become the background score for key action sequences.
But what I found most perplexing is how despite this co-opting of Indian epics and folk tales, the key narratives always appear derived from existing Hollywood blockbusters. Very rarely do these stories have something truly original or even Indian. It made me wonder if the makers are simply exploiting the fantasy of a ‘Naya Bharat’ – where India is the America of the world. This communicates an insecurity – where one beats one’s chest with pride, while wanting to become someone else. Ashwin’s film might want to be revered as a ‘risky’ film, but its derivative aspects tell us how little of uncharted territory Kalki 2898 AD wants to explore.
A still from ‘Kalki 2898 AD’.
Which brings me to the film’s biggest liability – Prabhas. A decent action star, the 44-year-old has made little to no effort to differentiate his characters in this post-Baahubali phase of his career. Few expect him to become a method actor, but audiences do expect him, at the very least, to try to play something other than ‘the chosen one’. Prabhas is little more than an ultra-macho hero, who sports big biceps and goes through his lines with a Southern drawl.
As Sumati, Deepika Padukone seems to have perfected the art of the playing the weepy, strong ingénue in the blinding, male-centric blockbuster. She did something similar in Jawan last year. Even here, despite all the distractions on screen, she makes her presence felt – something which feels like an achievement. Pasupathy and Anna Ben appear in small roles that feel like a disservice to their talents. Saswata Chatterjee’s role as the campy henchman for Yaskin is not self-aware enough to be enjoyable. An actor of Chatterjee’s sophistication could surely find a way to subvert audience expectations and take even a badly written role in a fresh direction. Kamal Haasan as Yaskin is chilling, channelling his psychopath voice, which he perfected in Aalavandhan (2001).
Kalki 2898 AD is not an offensive film (like say, Adipurush). It has ambition and the scope of an intriguing franchise. But the problem here is its lack of voice, regurgitating ancient tropes (like ‘The One’, which has been punctured in The Matrix and Dune franchises only recently), and employing technologies whose impact cannot be maximised on screen. If Nag Ashwin is really going to make a ‘game-changer’ – which is being used to describe the film in its overwhelming promotional material – he will have to undergo a steep learning curve before the next film.
