Madras

There is a wall in north Chennai, the side of an apartment block, and who gets to put a poster on it has been a fight between two political groups for years. The wall is a symbol showing who controls the neighbourhood. Kaali works as a computer engineer and wants to stay out of it. When his friend is killed he cannot. Pa. Ranjith writes and directs. Karthi plays Kaali. Its politics are open. Ranjith is a Dalit director and among the first names in Tamil cinema to take on caste directly; the neighbourhood fight here is not a gang story but the story of young men doing the subcontracted work of politics. The wall is the film's best idea: concrete, everyday and entirely symbolic, with all the violence in the narrative coming out of a blank wall. The location is real. It was shot in the neighbourhoods of north Chennai and many of the cast come from there. The music is by Santhosh Narayanan and the songs function inside the narrative, used as part of the culture of the place. The weaknesses are the romantic line and the length; the narrative stretches in the second half. Who it is for: viewers who follow Tamil cinema and films about caste and politics. Who it is not for: the violence is heavy, some scenes are incomplete without the local political context, and it runs long.