Kuberaa Review

Beggars tussle with the ultra-rich in Sekhar Kammula's biggest film yet, Kuberaa. Starring a constellation of well-regarded actors from across the country, Kuberaa is a drama about corruption, inequality, abuse of power, and all those sinister aspects of Indian society that message-driven films have been wrestling with for decades. It is also director-writer Sekhar Kammula's most deliberate bid to jump onto the pan-India film bandwagon.

Deva (Dhanush), a beggar from the streets of Tirupathi, gets recruited by Deepak (Nagarjuna) as a benami agent for Neeraj Mitra (Jim Sarbh), an ambitious and cold-blooded industrialist. Illiterate and unaware of how the world works, Deva and several other beggars become pawns in a sprawling financial scam. Once their identities have been used to move tens of thousands of crores, they are eliminated. Trouble begins when Deva absconds.

Through sentimental vignettes, Kuberaa asks us to view beggars as human beings - no doubt a worthy aim for a film examining society's casual cruelty toward its most invisible underclass. But intentional or not, Kammula's characterizations appear to equate poverty with moral goodness.

So while the one percenters like Neeraj don't bat an eye about murdering hundreds of people in pursuit of more wealth (in the film's opening scene, Neeraj nonchalantly orders a wipe-out of an oil-refinery so he can buy it off and claim drilling rights), the poorest of poor like Deva are ready to donate the shirt off their backs. Deva and his fellow beggars are elevated to near-saintly status. In one scene designed to showcase his extreme altruism, Deva, despite being lost and starving, shares his food with two beggar children he meets on the road.

By extension, Deepak, a middle-class man, is neither as vile as Neeraj nor as virtuous as Deva. A one-time righteous CBI agent, Deepak is forced to the dark side when Neeraj bails him out of prison and hires him to run his scam. His compromises place him somewhere in the middle of the film's moral hierarchy, as a man who has slowly and reluctantly lost his way. He is arguably the film's most complex character, but also its weakest, due to Nagarjuna's clumsy performance. He never quite understands the layers in Deepak, and comes off as unsure, flat, and occasionally amateurish.

If Kuberaa feels refreshing, it is largely because of Sekhar Kammula's careful and unyielding handling of Deva's arc. A more predictable filmmaker might have turned Deva into a quick-witted survivor, giving him a dizzying personality makeover. But Kammula understands that self-esteem for a beggar is hard-won. It takes a series of extraordinary events for Deva to even dream that he may have agency over his own life. And even when he does act, there is no triumphalism. That restraint reflects Kammula's well-known commitment to realism.

Kammula's other strength is his exquisite ear. Devi Sri Prasad's score, particularly the revolutionary beats of "Naadhe ee lokamanthe..." that play to underscore Neeraj's cold-blooded cockiness, gets us riled up.

Dhanush may be the only actor who could play Deva with such depth and sincerity. He gives himself entirely to the character, refusing to cushion the indignity that the role demands. A more image-conscious actor may have balked at scenes requiring so much physical vulnerability. Dhanush disappears into the role, adopting the character's hunched posture and depressed mental state with total conviction. There is no wink, no moment where we see the star peeking out from under the performance.

Jim Sarbh, on the other hand, is saddled with a villain so exaggerated that there's little for him to do but lean into it. He goes broad, and often hammy, though he deserves credit for not completely mangling his Telugu lines which he dubbed himself.

Other aspects of film suffer mightily too. The oft-repeated beats and a frustratingly-scant plotting means the film drags itself to the finale with exhaustion. After Deva escapes from Neeraj, he runs into Sameera (Rashmika Mandanna), a stranger who grudgingly helps him out even though she has her own struggles. While Sameera's character infuses some much-needed energy in the interminably-long second act involving cat-and-mouse chase between Deva and Deepak, Sameera ultimately moves the story little.

Kuberaa's ending has a touch of old-school theatrics. Set in a sprawling landfill, the final showdown is suffused with symbolism. There is power in the staging, but also a sense of cynicism in the message. Despite the mythic tone of its last few scenes, Kuberaa doesn't pretend that systemic change is within reach. Kammula, a sharp observer of human behaviour with something of a Chekhovian gaze, seems to suggest that it is only individuals, in isolation, who can nudge the world forward.