Idi Katha Kaadu begins quite unassumingly with Suhasini (Jayasudha), a recently divorced single mother embarking on a train journey from Bombay to Madras with her baby son. Seated next to her is a “normal” family who have no qualms pulling each other’s leg, where the daughter is in love with a guy, and the parents know of it and have asked them to get married once their education is done but the girl is unable to clear her exams because she’s always too excited about getting married.
In sharp contrast to them, is Suhasini. A Suhasini who isn’t interested in talking to the motormouthed lady sitting next to her. A Suhasini who doesn’t even bother react when the train she’s travelling in comes to a sudden halt- even when she learns that it was the suicide of a young girl under the train tracks. And when they say it was a suspected case of love failure, she only throws a courtesy smile, void of any real emotions. What we are introduced to is a woman who has developed a general apathy towards humanity, who has resigned herself to the bleak, purposeless void of existence.
As the next few minutes’ breezes through her past, we see a woman who once loved unabashedly, who had imagined a colourful future with her lover, Bharani (Sharath Babu). We see a reflection of the family that shared the train car with Suhasini.
Then we learn of her sadistic husband, Sudhakar Rao (Chiranjeevi), who systematically broke her down - chipping away at her self-confidence and hollowing out her identity, one word at a time. We are presented of his character as a montage, but one must imagine that it happens over time, where Suhasini goes through bouts of hurt and healing. By the time the relationship comes to an end, she is half the person she once was and her life has become as purposeless as can be. She also has a kid by then.
The rest of the movie is a carefully choreographed dance between Bharani and Sudhakar Rao, each trying to win over Suhasini in some form. While Bharani’s intentions are “pure”, Sudhakar has his own ulterior motives. The fourth wheel in this unbalanced love triangle is Janardhan “Johnny” (Kamal Hassan), whose unrequited love for her is a doing of his own devices.
One of the most striking features of Idi Katha Kaadu, is how life comes a whole circle- metaphorically and literally- for Suhaisni. Her journey begins and ends in a trains, and as a single mother. A motif that is carried over from another KB classic Antuleni Katha (Remade as Benkiyalli Aralida Hoovu in Kannada). In both cases, strong female protagonists are shown the promise of a picturesque future only to be robbed off it at the last moment due to circumstances beyond their control. KB traps his protagonists in a Sisyphean state of living where it is impossible to escape from life’s eternal problems. He creates a world where happily ever endings don’t exist, and in a way romanticises hardships and suffering that is all too familiar for the working class.
The songs are an integral part of the narrative in this movie. They are information dense and play a very important role in driving the story and the plot forward. Especially in the beginning of the movie, where the first song establishes the innocence and the romantic love between Suhasini and Bharani. Similar photography techniques such as framing, and double exposures resurface in a song later in the movie when Suhasini and Bharani get back together, essentially acting as an emotional ancho that reminds the audience to the simpler, happier times in both their lives.
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