‘Karnan’ movie review: Dhanush and Lal make a fantastic pair in a film that resists, rises and revolts

Mari Selvaraj’s follow-up to ‘Pariyerum Perumal’ is even more assertive, even more aggressive, and twice as painful to watch and introspect

Deities seem to have given up on Podiyamkulam near Melur, Madurai, the place where Dalits have been ‘allowed’ a pocket of land in a hamlet; it is where Mari Selvaraj’s Karnan is set and the inhabitants are the people who have resisted systematic oppression the most. More than giving up, it appears the deities are tired and worn out. It is another thing that the people of Podiyamkulam never die — at least in their unified spirit against oppression. They become a small deity in face of death. . Karnan, in fact, opens with the death of a young girl succumbing to epilepsy on a main road, with buses and cars on either side. Nobody stops and she ends up looking like a run over dog on the highway, from a top angle. When the camera zooms on her, Mari Selvaraj resists showing her face; she gets a deity’s facade instead. Even the deities that people of Podiyamkulam pray to are faceless, or rather without a head.