‘Kanam/ Oke Oka Jeevitham’: Sharwanand’s time-travel film works wonders with its emotional beats
A delightful debut for director Shree Karthick, who gives us a compelling film that is also an endearing tribute to his late mother
(Originally published in The Hindu on September 09, 2022)
Even before the birth of cinema, artists and storytellers have always seen humankind’s endless fascination with time as a great narrative tool. The human condition exists due to the rigid linearity of time, and time-travel titles from recent years like Dark, Indru Netru Naalai, Russian Doll and Tenet continue to prove that it’s a sub-genre that can offer a plethora of possibilities to a storyteller. Debutant director Shree Karthick’s Kanam ( Oke Oka Jeevitham in Telugu) is one such attempt that refrains from using time travel as a mere gimmick. The play with time is intended to drive forward a bigger point here: the inevitability of fate.
Three friends, Aadhi (Sharwanand), Pandi (Ramesh Tilak), and Kadhir (Sathish) get a second chance at life after a chance encounter with a reclusive scientist Paul (Nasser), who offers to send them back 20 years in time in return for a favour. It’s a no-brainer decision for Aadhi, a man who struggles to move on from the death of his mother (Amala Akkineni). Aadhi wants to go back in time and save his mother from her untimely death. Though the film treats the causes of Pandi and Kadhir in a light-hearted manner, it never patronises their struggles; Pandi wants his younger self to focus more on education so as to not end up as a real estate broker, while Kadhir wishes to go back and woo his classmate. To them, these quests are as life-changing as Aadhi’s.
Throughout the film, you might think of some unconvincing reasonings and logical fallacies. Why didn’t Paul attempt this mission in 20 long years? Why didn’t he tell them about the repercussions of time travel? Or, how did a certain character escape from a certain place? The screenplay too, a straightforward one with little or no subversion, has its share of cliched sequences. However, Kanam is a film which makes you all the more forgiving of these flaws. There’s also an attempt right from the beginning — a conscious one, I assume — to tell us that this isn’t a film to look out for all those things. Kanam lends you a warm comforter, lets you revel in some of its well-written heartwarming moments, and proceeds to…
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Read the full article here: ‘Kanam/ Oke Oka Jeevitham’ review