By now, it is most evident that director Nag Ashwin’s futuristic mythology—a new genre has been conceived!—is heading towards hit status.
But how big a success would it be? Would Kalki 2898 AD be able to recover its 600 crore production cost? Doubtful! Already, there is a marginal drop even in the film’s Telugu version in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. This is really sad, considering the visual excellence that the film secrets with an ease and fluency that only a master creation can muster.
But then, while inventing a new genre of storytelling—the futuristic mythological!— Kalki has also fallen prey to a rare affliction: The Curse Of The First Half. Normally, this affliction pertaining to inertia, incoherence, or torpidity hits the second half of a film.
In Kalki, it is the pre-interval half that slides through the cracks. This is an audience-centric complaint that is spreading like wildfire and could damage the product substantially. The first half is largely incomprehensible to the audience, as they are taken on a journey that remains largely unfulfilling, puzzling, and irrelevant.
To put it bluntly, the film that director Nag Ashwin had visualised in his head couldn’t be put on the screen with the same coherence in the first half. What is the ‘complex’ where Prabhas’s character aspires to find a place by accumulating “points”? Some kind of oasis of hope in the parched desert is run by a villain who is more of a buffoon than a serious threat. Consequently, the first half feels like a film separate from the second.
In fact, if Kalki were to be re-edited with the pre-interval part cut out of the film, it would be a much clenched and more relevant work. The cinematics of the first ninety minutes are compromised. It is like a corrupted firewall, which drives a wedge between the filmmaker and the audience and prevents it from attaining the greatness it aspires to.
Also, the maha-irksome guest appearances by the director’s friends… Ram Gopal Varma, S. S. Rajamouli, Vijay Deverakonda, Dulquer Salman, and Rana Dagubatti….they add nothing to the presentation except giggles to the glory. RGV has confirmed to this writer that none of the cameo coterie received any money. This, considering the backbreaking remunerations of the principal actors, must have been some relief for producer C. Aswini Dutt.
Kalki is by far the most accomplished FX-driven film this country has produced. But it needs to return to the editing table to fix the first half. That’s where Rajamouli scored in Baahubali and RRR. There was unbreakable connectivity between his epic grandeur and the audience, tragically missing in the first half of Kalki.
