KAVAN

K V Anand | Vijay Sethupathi, Madonna Sebastian, T Rajendran | 2016 | Political Thriller

National award-winning Cinematographer turned Film maker K V Anand’s sixth film Kavan, starring Vijay Sethupathi, Madonna Sebastine and T Rajendran in lead is set on the backdrop of Media and Journalism’s darker sides. Kavan is the film maker’s second film on the similar plot lines of media after Ko which spoke about the politics, press and media’s manipulation both positively and negatively. After a well-received KO, the filmmaker joined hands with his favourites Subha (Suresh and Balakrishnan) along with Kabilan Vairamuthu who are the writers of the film. K V Anand is one of the few filmmakers who prove collaborations bring out different and strong dimensions to the story, in that case Kavan is a classic example of well researched and technologically strongly written film. With ample research on the media and its darker sides, Kavan opened up the heights of media’s manipulation in our opinions and thoughts. Right from Breaking News to Reality shows to Advertisements to Political propaganda to Embedded Journalism, the film touched almost all aspects possible.

            Detailing and Cinematography perspective to the story is what makes K V Anand stand out from the rest Kollywood filmmakers. In Kavan, his story telling ability through cinematography has played a major role in showing the minor media nuances which has added strength to the story flow and the screenplay as well. To branch it down, the film has multiples layers and character lines which have effects to the main story plot and travel. Thilak’s (Vijay Sethupathi) perspective towards journalism and its ethics with align with Mayilvaganan’s (T. Rajendran) intake in media and failed progress in keeping up with the commercial media channels and ideologies have played a key role in the film’s travel of social activists Adbul (Vikranth) and Kalpana’s (Darshana) conflict points with politician Dheeran Maniarasu (Bose Venkat) and his pesticide company which affects a whole generation which lives nearby the factory’s discharged wastes. On the other side the corporate media minded Zen TV and its mains try to create sensations by twisting the reality and manipulating the news as per time which has outrightly shown the sides of media which never comes in the screens. Generally, in a film, the conflict between two ideologies or perspectives when crossed each other creates a conflict which is the crux of every story said, in Kavan this is one of the major positives which turned out to be the base for all other character’s line to flow on.

In short Kavan is a conflict between two sides of media where on says you need to manipulate the content negatively to make it reach the audience (Zen Tv Kalyan and Bavana) and on the other side original news can be given to audience with the same interesting way without twisting the content or cutting down its originality. The battle between both these sides with perfect technical balance in terms of screenplay and story flow is what makes Kavan interesting and unique. Starting from the insider fixing done in reality shows to keep the most popular contestants alive in the competition to grab audience viewership for TRP and Advertisement attraction, a lot many channels cut down the talented ones. This reality show manipulation includes Negative comments from judges to spice up the show and sledging and insult comedy anchoring techniques were shown abruptly. On the other hand, creating news to make it a breaking news and catch viewership, media and journalism ethic died. As portrayed, there are multiple ways of handling news, cutting down the whole news into pieces to manipulate it in the name of media freedom is a crime. This has been one of the major issues in the media industry. The talk show’s real faces were surprising, the influence media has on the public’s opinion is massive and talk shows can easily build an image as well as break it down into pieces in one show. As quoted in the film “The one who wants to prove his point yells at a heated talk show and the one who wants answer stays low and gets it the way he wants, the tone of your words don’t decide the authenticity of the point being argued”, this is one many sense that is lacked in the media right now.

The political perspective and Embedded Journalism ideologies have played a key role all throughout the film in the story plot of Abdul, Kalpana and politician Dheeran Maniarasu. Portraying a person good or bad can happen in just second with media and the intensity of this is severe, else none of the political parties would have started television channels to for their party propaganda. Interval scene of Kavan is one of the iconic Interval interviews ever, although the scene reminds Mudhalvan Raghuvaran and Arjun’s interview, this scene stands out for its cause and intensity. Media knowledge such as a CCTV can’t record audios, video camera mic’s range can be used as a tracker and spiral of reality programs that are copied after the successful experiment on one channel are all eye openers to the audience. Music and background music have been a key all throughout the film, especially the reality show which induced Mahakavi Bharathiyar’s poetries. Editor Anthony had one the tedious jobs ever and the film cinematography had multiple perspectives which kept swapping from different media tools, yet did a fulfilling job with a runtime of 160 Minutes. In short, Kavan shows us what the happens behind the camera.