Actor Vijay and Filmmaker A.R Murugadoss have never failed to entertain us through their collaborations. Their works focused on Social Issues that often were faced by people. In their second collaborative effort; Kaththi, they gave us a arthouse masala film which had a social message.
I rewatched Kaththi and as a literature student, I started to analyze the movie using the Marxist Criticism. Marxist Criticism is a branch of literary criticism in which we understand and analyze the works of literature from a Marxist point of view. Marxism refers to a philosophy in which we fight for our rights. It was introduced by two German Thinkers; Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels.
One of the characters played by Vijay named Jeevanandham is a communist ideologue as simplified through a scene where he defines communism in a dialogue using idlies as an example. His character represents a real communist who fights for his rights through a peaceful protest. In this film, it is depicted as a battle between communism and capitalism as portrayed in a scene where Jeeva locks horns with Chirag who is a greedy MNC holder.
Jeeva's lookalike Kathiresan decides to do something for the cause and when their attempts to get the media's attention go for a toss, Kathiresan decides to do something drastic by sitting on the water pipes along with the villagers which symbolizes that a true communist decides on drastic measures to make an unpopular issue reach the common man so quickly. The press meet scene has been described as the Greatest Scenes of all time where Kathiresan addresses the issues of the farmers that bring tears to every people.
Through this movie, A.R Murugadoss and Vijay delivered a thought provoking movie about Farmers and their livelihoods. Kaththi is described as A.R Murugadoss' s most sharp weapon against greedy capitalism that robs the farmers and people of their livelihoods.
