What happens when the success of a restaurant comes between two brothers?
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One restaurant. Two brothers. One betrayal that changed everything. 👀
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They built a restaurant together.
They built a family together.
But greed turned brothers into enemies.
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Some thoughts about the indie film, Kinaru:
___
I've got to confess that I rather enjoy watching films set in villages. There’s an idyllic character to life there (which seems rather aspirational for me). All that expansive land, the intimacy with nature. So, when Kinaru opens with four kids goofing about and diving into a well, I felt quite full. Something joyous about children acting their age and co-existing with nature. But of course, if there’s something Mari, especially, has trained us to expect in these spaces, it’s that not everyone is allowed to revel in such rural pleasures. And so Kinaru sets off when these kids are not-so-gently shooed away (for their own safety, they’re told).
Perhaps because the film begins with such conflict, I was a little surprised to note how long it is content to simply watch these children amble about. I was also unsure about the choice to treat them almost like… adults, a common misstep in our cinema, I suppose. They’re, in fact, plotting literal murder at one point. One child knows of a local poison; another calmly collects it in a bottle. But perhaps the point is that these children, raised with minimal supervision and no adults who are living as examples, are forced by circumstance to grow up far too early? Maybe that's its own tragedy? I mean, these kids do clean houses and do manual labour just to eat decent food. And yet, it’s odd that the music sells all of this as cutesy and magical.
The whole film, from that opening scene onwards, is about these kids deciding to create their own well in their own land. This sounds like a fairytale, and the music tries to make it one too, and yet the film never achieves this dreaminess. The dialogues are often expository, and much is conveyed through convenient conversations, a bit out of the blue... like that Vivek Prasanna monologue, for instance. It’s a great idea, especially because his own tragedy is tied to water (the film’s motif). There’s poetic potential in a man repairing punctures... water, bubbles, you get the idea... and yet these remain as ideas, not as powerful emotional moments.
In such low-budget films with mostly fresh actors, of course, there's going to be a certain rawness. (I didn’t mind how the film was shot at all, btw.) What this needs though is for the writing to punch well above its weight. Harikumaran’s film seems a bit too eager to stay accessible through humour. I didn’t mind the boy’s hand getting stuck in a rat trap, but the phone-in-water gag, the Christian man-chanting-prayers… There were many other moments where I wished the film would take itself more seriously and not worry about creating laughs.
Even when a tragedy seems to have befallen Pethappa’s grandmother, the film quickly readjust and reinterprets it as a ruse. I thought there was enough material here in this film, enough interesting character types, to create something more emotionally resonant and textured. But yes, Kinaru does offer many samples of rural life: raw mangoes, coconut superstitions, 'kolinji' juice… As I said, I do enjoy films set in villages, but I only wish that in this film about some boys digging a well, I’d welled up far more than I did.
#Kinaru [4/5] :
Set in a small village, it follows four children who are shamed and denied the right to play near a neighbour’s well - but their spirit refuses to break..
Their dream becomes a journey of courage, faith, and unity - told through the purest lens: childhood.
@actorvivekpra has acted well.. So are the boys..
Music by @Bhuvanesh_1989 and DOP @im_geevee 👏
Excellent work by Writer/Director @harikumarandir9
Kinaru is a film for every child within us. ❤️