Dorothy

Acceptance. What makes one accept others? Is it their magnanimity, or education, or sensibilities, or simply empathy and compassion? Well, director Karthik Subbaraj’s Dorothy gives another reason as to why one might accept others. Because some people crave acceptance. Between this acceptance and rejection, two young boys, forced to be something they are not, somehow find what they think is… home.

Karthik Subbaraj’s Dorothy would like to believe that it has the kind of bravery that can singlehandedly cut wide open the possibilities of what mainstream Indian cinema can utter and traverse. There’s a swagger and bruised melancholy at its heart which almost seduces us. In its urgent, rallying reversals of the masculinity that trumpets itself through today’s cinema, Dorothy stands apart. Its eagerness to chart its own course, often unwieldy and turbulent and hypnotic, merits attention. Yet, it keeps chafing against its noble intentions. It opens against a landscape saturated with the violent, brutish excesses of men. We are plunged into the Madurai of the ‘90s. Even the flutters of a naïve friendship between two school boys, Subbu and Karthi, take place amidst bullying and the male prerogative to flex brawn.

Even before Dorothy could hit theatres, it made all the noise on social media. Thanks to the fabulous response the Karthik Subbaraj directorial received after the screening at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). A standing ovation, glowing reviews and what not! After working with industry greats, director Karthik Subbaraj is back in his most comfortable space with two promising performers, Rishikanth and Sananth.

Karthik Subbaraj has always insisted that he does not make films. He makes a padam, which, to be clear, is not just a literal Tamil translation of “film”, but is a separate ontological category. It says something hazy about genre, form, formula, and Subbaraj keeps theorising and re-theorising the padam with every new film he makes. Roughly, his padams chase moments of melodramatic coincidence, full of unwieldy ideas and wild insertions of plot, sculpted in camp excess and winking indulgence, with morality always at the centre of the story, where characters will ultimately revel in moral displays of affection.

‘Why did Karthik Subbaraj have to make Dorothy?’ It is a natural question for anyone who either loved or detested the film. Dorothy is a risk. It is a commercial, public relations and career risk not just for Subbaraj, but also for the cast members — especially the brilliant Rishikanth and Sananth. Which is why it wouldn’t be out of place to wonder, ‘why’. But then, it is also easy to see that Dorothy isn’t entirely uncharacteristic of Subbaraj. Dorothy is not the kind of film that can just bomb at the box office; that would be the least of its problems.