The latest Kavin starrer Bloody Beggar, directed by Sivabalan Muthukumar and produced by director Nelson, is a wacky black comedy that fails to utilize its unique premise due to all these contrasting themes and treatments one gets to see in it. The film sort of dangles between being a black comedy to being a sentimental revenge tale, and that swinging sort of irritates you as a viewer. The quirkiness in the writing keeps us interested in the film to an extent, but after a point, it feels like a stretched-out version of a simple concept.
As the title suggests, it is the story of a beggar. He earns a living by begging, and to get the sympathy of the people, he fakes a lot of physical limitations. One fine day, a group of people comes to him asking whether he wants to be a part of an almsgiving function. The need for food makes him participate in that event. But after that, he gets trapped inside the mansion where the function happened. What all happens inside that huge mansion is what we see in Bloody Beggar.
Sivabalan Muthukumar has worked as an associate of Nelson in the past, and if you look at the writing of this movie, you can sense Nelson’s texture of humor. In some ways, one can even describe this as a quirky version of the typical family partition drama. There is a powerless ghost in the movie, and then you have these funny interpersonal relationships among the family to whom the mansion belonged. Things were looking interesting till the premise was explained to us. But once everything gets set, the screenplay is somewhat stuck, and there is no major progress in the story.
Sivabalan Muthukumar, who wrote the film, is trying to push the final act of the movie by adding a lot of chaotic comedy sequences. The problem is that most of them feel like those improvised bloated comedy bits that never needed that much space in this movie. The writing opts for this weird way of placing a wacky sequence in between sentimental backstories. The backstory of the beggar and the connection with the family actually had the scope for a gripping drama. But the obsession to make the movie a quirky one, makes the writing opt for a lot of slap-sticky borderline Aranmanai stuff. The framing and the dialogue are actually accentuating the humor. Even though the movie did not work for me, I would say I was happy to see Sivabalan Muthukumar trying to have a signature of his own.
Kavin tries something really different from whatever he has done so far, and in the initial portions of the movie where he plays this irreverent beggar character, the performance is really smooth. It was actually the vulnerable bits that came in the second half that felt slightly uneven. Redin Kingsley, with that one-dimensional dialogue modulation, is occasionally funny and mostly a reason for headaches. Aaranyakam fame Saleema plays one of the family members in this film. Sunil Sukhada, as the Malayali advocate, was fun to watch in his typical style. Anarkali Nazar and Merin Philip were the other two Keralites who managed to get fairly good roles in this movie, and they performed their part neatly.
Bloody Beggar had the scope to be a hilarious black comedy that sort of reimagines the idea of family dispute in a spooky way. But somewhere, the treatment got self-absorbed and overdid the fun stuff, making a mess of this refreshing premise. If you like eccentric experiments, there is a possibility that you would feel a sense of disappointment as you can see the opportunity they missed.
If you like eccentric experiments, there is a possibility that you would feel a sense of disappointment as you can see the opportunity they missed.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
