Tamil cinema’s current epidemic is directors auditioning themselves as leads, and Lokesh Kanagaraj is its latest carrier. In Arun Matheswaran’s DC, Kanagaraj is Devadas, a wronged hero discarded by society. He beats, shoots, maims and kills, but doesn’t like to be called a rowdy or a gangster. There are no backstories in DC; Das and his gang are a strange mix of delinquents with revolutionary blood running inside them. They have a leader, Arasu (Thalaivasal Vijay), whose aims and ideologies are equally nebulous, but in the first few scenes in the film the gang accosts a police vehicle to steal a weapons consignment.
An inadvertent act by a cop leads to the gang exacting revenge by savagely murdering him, which in turn launches a more stringent manhunt. The police officer giving orders to the team entrusted with this task signs off with two words: be brutal.
Written by Matheswaran and Arun Ranjan (with additional dialogues by Franklin Jacob), DC begins by paying respects to Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, author of the original Devdas. Early in the film, there is an awkwardly staged scene between Das and his friend Sebastian where Sebastian yearns for a wife and family which Das quickly dismisses considering their life on the run. But we know that, before long, Das is destined to encounter both a Paro and a Chandramukhi.
The manhunt launches the film into a roadshow as it grazes Chennai, Vellore, Gobichettipalayam, Erode, Namakkal and more. In Chennai, Das meets Parvathy (Sanjana Krishnamoorthy), another jettisoned soul with an undercurrent of tragedy, her singing a deterrent to Das’s impulsive bravado. Their story might only fit half a page, but these are DC’s quieter moments that lend gravity to the triangle at its center. Matheswaran and cinematographer Mukesh G film tender conversations between them, be it over the bar counter or another one—a real job for the focus puller—in front of a mirror. Anirudh’s score too possesses just the right cadence for their incomplete conversations, creating a veneer of emotion that we know Matheswaran is about to shatter.
One of the better decisions in the film is not to follow the same blueprint for Wamiqa Gabbi’s Chandra. Here Matheswaran favors montage—scored to Anirudh’s bouncy Bum Baa Diga Diga—switching between Chandra’s life in an insidious brothel and Das suffering custodial torture. There is something quaint about Matheswaran trusting that this sleight is enough for everything to follow in the film. It is arguably one with the film, the stylistic tendencies overtaking character work, but the conviction is admirable, especially in a film that’s more about the human condition and relationships and less about any larger life mission. Anirudh’s score towers over even the shotmaking here, the ambush in the brothel shrouded with his Raga of Revenge, a deceptively spirited track that conveys life amidst death.
Matheswaran makes his inspirations clear. While Devadas is front and center, the Chandra storyline begins almost immediately after we see Moondram Pirai play on a television in a scene. And then there is the Bonnie and Clyde poster in Chandra’s room. Das and Chandra reflect the outlaw pair as they go on the run, projecting a shared camaraderie even as they dream of a peaceful life long after this is over. The dream of a family and a normal life simmer at the backdrop of this film, Das’s troubled relationship with his father is an eternal regret and in Chandra’s case, kinship as a lethal deception. DC even wants us to feel for the cops, making one of them a softer family man longing for something similar. But it comes off as unwieldy in a film where there's only black and white and nothing in between.
DC is a mishmash of genres, part gangster melodrama, part pulpy grindhouse noir, Matheswaran’s schooling quite obviously American. But its several shootouts and kills are a lot less bloody compared to the Arthur Penn film, the handheld shotmaking scrambling for room in a chase with frantic and rushed cuts. Another noteworthy aspect of the film is its masculine coda, aggressively traditional, the men acting as if the guns are extension of their members and boiling with rage whenever a character demeans Chandra in the context of her sex work. Tamil filmmakers use women like they use a visual tool like shot-reverse-shot, to reinforce blatantly obvious things in the context of their men. Instead of saying these men simmer in anger at the ill-treatment of women, they could try and write a flesh and blood woman. Or at least one without lip sync and dubbing issues.
'DC’ is in theatres.
Aditya Shrikrishna is a Chennai-based critic.