Sahadev Kelvadi’s ‘Kenda’ is both muted and hard-hitting, a deep-dive into the life and mind of a “lowly” rowdy

The film is an impressionistic series of scenes that showcase the restlessness, the powerlessness, the confusion of an unprivileged man in a changing city.

In Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya, the protagonist is an immigrant to Bombay, and he is pulled into the underworld. Sahadev Kelvadi’s Kenda is set in Bangalore and its protagonist – Keshava (BV Bharath) – is from Bangalore, but he might as well be an immigrant. The story, like Satya, shows his descent into crime. The film’s time frame is not exactly stated, but it appears to be a time before the city became Bengaluru. There are no cell phones in sight, and the hot song of the season appears to be one from another Ram Gopal Varma movie, Rangeela. It appears to be the time that BPOs and IT companies began to invade our cities and began to widen the rift between the English-speakers and local language-speakers, the haves and the have nots. Keshava may be a local, but in a way, he is also an outsider.

You can read the rest of the review here:

https://www.galattaplus.com/sahadev-kelvadis-kenda-is-both-muted-and-hard-hitting-a-deep-dive-into-the-life-and-mind-of-a-lowly-rowdy/

You can watch the trailer / video review here:

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