Mari Selvaraj’s ‘Bison’ is a beautifully told story of a sportsman and the violence around him

Dhruv plays a kabaddi player who faces hurdles not just due to caste but also due to the violence in the areas around his home. His long journey from local champion to representing India at the Asian Games is told with furious filmmaking energy. That was the short take. A longer review follows, and it may contain spoilers.

Mari Selvaraj may be the best genre-breaker filmmaker we have today. In Pariyerum Perumal, he transformed the coming-of-age template into a howl of anguish. In Bison, he takes the sports biopic and – through this template – he tells the story of how sport may be the only escape from hot-headed communities that hold on to old grudges and keep fighting. If someone asked you what the film is about, the surface-level answer would be that this is the fictionalised story of the kabaddi player Manathi Ganesan, who is called Kittaan here and played by Dhruv. And that is how the film opens: at the surface level. We are at the 1994 Asian Games in Japan, and India is playing Pakistan, and Kittaan is not selected to play. At once, we see both sides of Kittaan’s journey. On the one hand, he is representing India at the highest level, which is an opportunity very few people get. And yet, even at this highest level, he is kept out of the playing team. He is benched. Someone has to fight with the coach on his behalf to get him onto the ground.

You can read the rest of the review here:

https://galattaplus.com/mari-selvarajs-bison-is-a-powerful-beautifully-told-story-of-a-sportsman-and-the-violence-around-him/

You can watch the trailer / video review here:

GALATTA