Kishkindha Kaandam Review | A Superb Screenplay Powered by an On-Point Treatment

There are certain characters in movies whose reality we learn at the end of the film would leave us in a state of overwhelming numbness. The character of Appuppilla in the movie Kishkindha Kaandam, played terrifically by Vijayaraghavan, is one such character. Powered by a spectacular screenplay that utilizes each scene to convey details that are essential to the plot, Kishkindha Kaandam is a brilliant character drama that excels just by using the craft of cinematic storytelling.

Minor spoilers will be there! Ajayachandran works in the forest department, and his own house shares a border with the reserve forest. Monkeys are frequent visitors of the house where Ajayan lives with his grumpy father, Appupilla, an ex-military man. Ajayan lost his wife to cancer, and before that, his son Chachu went missing. Sometime later, he opts for a second marriage and gets married to Aparna. Events that unfold in that house after Aparna’s arrival are what we see in Kishkindha Kaandam.

The screenplay written by the cinematographer of the film, Bahul Ramesh, is the real hero here. The pacing is very gentle, and from scene one, Bahul is putting us in a space of curiosity. They say how good movies give you a clear idea about what is going to happen in a very concise way in the opening scene. Here also, we get to see a random man surrendering his gun in the opening scene. It is really fascinating how Bahul and the director, Dinjith Ayyathan, keep the movie gentle and intriguing by not spoon-feeding anything to the audience. The second marriage, the missing case of the child, and the history of Appupilla, none of it are narrated to us in an obvious flashback manner. In fact, the character of Aparna, in many ways, is the representative of the viewer who is newer to this routine.

You can’t really fit Kishkindha Kaandam into a particular genre of films. In the initial bits, it feels like a relationship drama between a sensitive son and a stubborn father. But towards the middle, it takes a very drastic tone, and it almost gives you a feeling that the further developments will be predictable. But what really makes the movie top-notch is how the climax takes the story to a space where we are less bothered about what happened and more absorbed about what will happen in the lives of such people in the future. It is a difficult reality to process, and the more you think about Appupillai, it just becomes more and more emotionally unsettling.

Dinjith Ayyathan, who previously made Kakshi Amminippilla, opts for a totally different emotional space with this film. The graph of the screenplay is really brilliant. Bahul’s writing consistently unravels details through each scene, and it has that quality of understanding where the audience will go with whatever clues have been given to them. Just when you think that it is going to be a whodunit, the story takes a sharp turn and becomes an empathetic look at the helplessness of the main characters. With forest and police officials getting involved in the proceedings, the story definitely has a layer of investigation, but all those portions get a different charm when we backtrack the whole thing once we realize the structure of the loop. The Hans Zimmer-ish elevation Mujeeb Majeed gives to the key moments through his score gives a peculiar sense of grandeur to this drama.

For Ajayan, there is a layer beyond the sadness of losing the people he loved, and Asif Ali depicts that sadness and tension in his performance. In scenes where he tries to restrict the CID job of Aparna, Asif leaves space for a variety of possibilities by doing a restrained outburst. Vijayaraghavan, as Appupillai, gets a meaty role, and he makes sure that the character will haunt the audience for all the right reasons. It is a character whose arrogance will be observed from two perspectives. One, while we are watching the film, and the second when we are analysing the whole thing after the film. The script needs the anger to be in a certain way so that when you are watching the movie again, it shouldn’t feel like a fake performance. That balance was there in Vijaraghavan’s portrayal of the character.

Aparna Balamurali as Aparna is not burdened with the heavy lifting here, and as I said, she is very much the representative of the audience as we are getting to know a lot of things when she is doing the research. Jagadish gets to do a memorable character along with Ashokan, Nizhalgal Ravi, Nishan, etc.

Kishkindha Kaandam is probably one of those unique experiences where you would feel that cinematic wow factor because of the way it staged a traumatic loop in the life of a group of people. In interviews, we have seen writers getting asked, where do you think this character will be right now? Kishkindha Kaandam is able to manipulate you into asking that question in your head and hence the world and characters of the film linger in your head hours after the film.