Plot Summary – An angry young man fights for the rights of his oppressed people. Can he save them from those who weild power and weapons?

Language – Tamil

Where to Stream – Amazon Prime Video (with English subtitles)

★★★★★ 

Watched on 14 May 2021

I have never felt the overwhelming urge to review a film as much as I did after watching this film. Mari Selvaraj’s Karnan is the best film I’ve seen in 2021 so far and I was absolutely amazed by what I saw. Within the first five minutes, I knew that I was in for an absolute visual treat of a film. Every second of the film is captured so gorgeously. The close-ups, the wide shots, the still-frames, every single thing that was done with camera was done perfectly. Just as a feast for the eyes, this film is enough but it goes so far beyond that. Selvaraj helms this film spectacularly as he slowly takes you through the struggles of a village. It’s more of a death by a thousand cuts than a single stab as the inciting incident. I think the script does something extremely interesting with the conventional three act structure by making the inciting incident come later in the mid-point rather than in the end of the first act. What this allows is time for Selvaraj to elevate the conflict to a point where the audience feels the actions of Karnan are justified. The way the film handles Dalit and lower-caste politics is simply brilliant. With even names having so much significance, we see our lower-caste characters with names like Karna, Abhimanyu and Duryodhana. These are the protagonists of our story and yet they are named after the antagonists of our mythology. Meanwhile, the villain is named Kannabiran, a regional name for Lord Krishna. Karnan’s love interest is ironically named Draupadi. All these elements add a layer of commentary to the already rich screenplay. The symbolism of the film is also something I really admired. It is like watching poetry in motion as you see so many references and instead of reading between the lines you will be watching between the frames to pick up as many references as you can. Whether it is the scene mirroring Arjuna’s Swayamvara for Draupadi or a representation of a donkey breaking it’s restraints to that of Karna unleashing his inner spirit. Karnan is such a multi-layered, multi-faceted film that I’ll be thinking about for years to come. I absolutely loved this film and I think everyone, irrespective of what your taste is, irrespective of your silly language preferences, should watch it. It represents a dark reality in our country and it’s a must-watch in the truest sense of the phrase.