Imaginations run wild in Balaji K Kumar’s new murder mystery, which explains its fantastic visual choice even before the film begins. A prologue lets us know that it draws its inspiration from literature. Kolai takes place in a metropolis we’re very familiar with, but it chooses to refer to it as Madras. The film is centred around modern-day Tamil-speaking characters, but they live in sprawling art-deco apartments with embellished interiors. A locked-room murder (the sort of impossible murders that crime literature revels in) unfolds in one such apartment, and the detective in charge is Vinayak (Vijay Antony). And as with the film’s ethos, nothing about this platinum-haired “Sherlock”, whose personal tragedy bears a resemblance with his case, is ordinary. Kolai’s eye for visual finesse is visible all through its MO ( i.e. production design, adept cuts and so on), but its motive, and by extension its writing, is watered down.
Balaji’s admiration for Hollywood film noir is palpable in the visual grammar of Kolai, which is based on a real-life unsolved murder case from 1923. So, when a young model and singer Leila (Meenakshi Chaudhari) has been found strangled in her apartment, with all evidence pointing to an impossible murder, we don’t get the usual gritty procedural treatment. The director is more interested in the “why” and “how” of things, rather than the “who”. Kolai plays out like a soft and slow musical that’s more concerned with the build-up to a crescendo than the crescendo itself. And Balaji makes this possible by making his visuals as literal and visceral as possible. Every little thought and vision that surrounds its characters is given imagery. For instance, when we see Leila survive a sticky situation and get out of a room, in the next shot she runs into a graveyard as she wonders if her story would’ve ended in the cemetery had she not entered the room in reality. When she’s performing a song about unrequited love on stage, we see that play out as two lovers share a passionate dance in her imagination.
A few of these choices — as stunning as they look — come off as heavy-handed, but a few others work when we’re struck by an idea. Like when Vinayak is describing his love for his daughter, the pivotal scene is brought alive with the two of them on a cliff, grasping each other’s hands. But who here is saving whom? Vinayak is one of the most interesting parts about the film. He’s a detective who is torn by a tragedy at home that he unkindly holds himself responsible for. When he realises that he can right his wrong with yet another person’s life, he finds hope. One tragedy brings him pain, while the other, purpose. But Balaji doesn’t show the same restraint in handling the case at hand.
Even if Vinayak does most of the solving, his job is to assist Sandhya, his protege and a smart new recruit who seeks his help, overwhelmed by the case. Vinayak is introduced to us as this complicated and relentless genius figure who has solved more than 200 cases in his career, so we know that an obvious transfer of power is underway. But Kolai takes the super obvious route by surrounding him with dolts. So, even if we’re told Sandhya (Ritika Singh) is a brilliant cop, what we are shown, however, are glimpses of her cluelessness — she is so cruelly oblivious that she doesn’t so much as ask to dust for fingerprints at a crime scene without Vinayak’s interference. And then there is your standard repugnant chief of police (John Vijay) who passes sexist comments about Leila, only for Vinayak to barge into the room and take him down with a “un ponnuku nadandha ipdi pesuviya? (Will you say the same if it happens to your daughter?)” sort of dialogue, diluting the entire point. Do women deserve decency from men only if they’re looked at as their daughters or sisters?
Even if the film is littered with smarts (Sandhya brings up the Nova theory to explain the coincidences in life, while an influential model agent quotes Rudyard Kipling’s Law of The Jungle to warn Leila of her life to come), the film doesn’t manage to leverage this into anything. So, when we do get to the “who” of it all, as mind-bending as the arc is, a small sigh is collectively let out.