Kasaai Movie Review: Mita Vashisht’s Sterling Matriarch Act Cannot Save This Mess

Noble intentions when cloaked into a  cascade of clichéd  socio-political issues can prove calamitous in a  film. Kasaai proves it. For all its well-meaning jibes at patriarchal tyranny in rural Rajasthan, the film is as parched and dry as the wells in the deserts. Whatever its honourable purpose of existence, the film falls apart completely as it limps towards a finale which sets our teeth rather than our bums on the edge. Helmed by Gajendra Shanker Shrotriya, Kasaai stars Mita Vashisht, Ravi Jhankal, Richa Meena and Mayur More in pivotal roles. 

The main purpose of watching this film is the exceptional Mita  Vashisht who plays a  fiercely protective grieving mother of a slain son (Mayur More). On paper, this must have sounded like a dream role for the underused actress.  In execution, the subject spins out of control and there are segments in the narration where the screenplay is so clunky  I could hear the sound of the plot falling to the ground. A marital rape shows up as an afterthought in the litany of socio-political grievances.

At one point the writer wants to bring the three main female characters together to demonstrate  Nari Shakti. The women converge as though they’ve bumped into each other at a bus stand. There is no feel of momentum, no sense of innate drama in the cinema.

 The episodic movement of the story suggests a Doordarshan serial chopped and arranged into a 90-minute film that feels  60 minutes too long. What we are meant to feel is dread. What we experience is a narrative that is dead.

 There have been some exceptional films on honour  killing in recent years. The one I recall as being unusually chilling and unforgettable is Rahul Dahiya’s   G Kutta Se. In Haryanvi and partly in Hindi, the language of oppression that debutant director spoke  in this bludgeoning masterpiece left me speechless. This extraordinary film derived its unhampered persuasive powers not from posturing but from ripping apart all our perceptions of what cinema is and should be, by entering the nervous system of  a patriarchal community where women are still not given the right to choose their partners.There is no   honour in honour killing. But there is an illimitable amount of honour in a film like this.

 Kasaai robs the theme of honour killing of  all drama and dignity. Some of the actors try hard to  breathe  life into the inert drama. Except for Mita Vashisht, no actor seems comfortable in the environment of artificial tension. One of the actresses who plays the dead son’s girlfriend wears so much makeup as though to compensate  for her co-star Vashisht’s stark appearance. 

The film is streaming on ShemarooMe, and it premiered on October 23.







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