Kalki 2898 AD: Nag Ashwin's Magnum Opus Straddles Epics & Epochs

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NAG ASHWIN’S KALKI 2898 AD, a potpourri of mythology, fantasy and dystopian science fiction futurama, works in remarkable dual contexts. For one, it mixes Hindu mythology with science fiction by marrying 6,000 years of storytelling and history with technology, wizardry and old school sci-fi world building. A cycle of time and how history repeats itself. But we can also look at it by passing popular Indian cinema through an intertextual prism considering the names involved. Let’s go through the laundry list here: Kamal Haasan, Amitabh Bachchan, Shobana, Rajendra Prasad, Brahmanandam, Pasupathy, Saswata Chatterjee, Deepika Padukone, Prabhas, Anna Ben, and Keerthy Suresh (as the voice of Bujji the droid). More if we include the various cameos. That’s over 50 years of several star powers combining for a gargantuan metatext. As Ashwatthama lives through Kali Yuga and emerges from his curse to protect an unborn child, so do our stars, still surviving, from K Asif’s time to the era of Rajamouli. Epics wrapped in epochs.

It will help if one goes into Nag Ashwin’s ambitious project with some basic knowledge of the Kurukshetra war. However, he begins the film with the relevant days of the war out of the 18 like a refresher course, even though the washed-out graphic novel images stick out in a film with otherwise uneven but often stunning visuals. Ashwatthama (Amitabh Bachchan) is cursed to live forever by Krishna after he kills Uttara’s unborn child, and we quickly jump 6,000 years to Kashi, apparently the first and last city of the world. The year is 2898 and Kashi is filled with the destitute and the ragtag, dealing only in units, the currency to get by or to collect enough to transfer to Complex, the only livable, prospering part ruled by Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Haasan), the Darth Vader of this world.

Shambhala — knock yourself out googling the history of the place — is the secret hideout of rebels including Mariam (Shobana), sort of a mother superior reigning over a multicultural space harbouring and protecting people from both Kashi and the Complex. The film will invite analogies and comparisons; it will always be evaluated in relation to past pop culture for Kalki borrows heavily from everywhere — Indian epics, religious history, human history, Hollywood, sci-fi novels and more. The borrowing of tropes is not a crime (though plagiarising artworks is one, as alleged by a South Korean artist when the trailer and posters dropped), it is what they do with it.

Nag Ashwin does a lot. For one, there is a commendable montage in the beginning of the film. It shows the decrepitude of Kali Yuga, and the animated visuals cover everything from wars to the Holocaust to religious crimes. An image of a woman in green attacked by men followed by fire raging all over did surprise me. Nag Ashwin really went there, the film even includes images of lands usurped from indigenous people. These are welcome inclusions in a film that is dealing in Hindu mythology.

There is also the concept of chosen ones in this genre. Here, we have Prabhas as Bhairava, a bounty hunter, whose introduction fight sequence goes on too long and is not half as inventive as it wishes. It lacks punch. Ashwin tends to over-stretch a very good sequence — chases go on longer than they should, as do duels. Great filmmakers respect lulls even in mad action films, an exchange of great import here, a shared emotion there… but all Kalki has is Kyra’s (Anna Ben) unnecessary treatise about marriage. Or even worse, Bhairava and Roxie’s (Disha Patani) tiring afternoon date in the Complex.

Deepika Padukone, within a year, finds herself in another prison and pregnant. After Jawan, Padukone’s SUM-80 here is a prisoner in the Complex where fertile women are captured like minerals and researched on, for Yaskin’s secret project. They are placed into embryonic pods to extract serum from their womb. There was a lot of talk about Yaskin and Kamal’s frail look from the trailers but when we learn about the greater implications and his motives, the payoff is worth the wait. Ashwin, clearly, is not foolish enough to rob someone like Kamal of his face and physicality. He does justice to all the stars here.

Amitabh Bachchan and Shobana get the meatiest parts — they deliver great lines as well as perform exploding action. They are drawn like real heroes. Kamal has less screen time but there is promise of more. Padukone is the anchor, the mother with the unborn child everyone must protect. The part that sticks out is Bhairava. Though Ashwin has a clever connection for his character to the past, the actor possesses the charm of sandpaper. In a canvas of well-drawn roles, Bhairava lacks character and Prabhas lacks the talent to make it work. He is saved by the legends surrounding him. While Santhosh Narayanan could have lifted him with a resounding score, he too comes up short. For a film as epic in imagination as this, Narayanan’s music and score are forgettable at best. It’s probably his least appealing work.

Kalki 2898 AD lives up to the promise of a solid sci-fi outing from Telugu cinema. It is a rare film that offers equal billing to all the big names involved. There are a lot of unanswered questions. Like how did Shambhala come to be? Where do they get their resources and where do they draw that power from? Can Prabhas, with an even more important part to play in the future film(s) borrow some talent from the rest of the cast just like Nag Ashwin has liberally borrowed from everywhere to create an engaging reimagining of mythology? There is only one way to find out.