Ravichandra stars in an interesting historical

Kannadiga

Kannada (Zee5)

Director: BM Giriraj

Cast: Ravichandran, Achyuth Kumar, Pavana Gowda

BM Giriraj's 'Kannadiga' is a fictionalised account of the first-ever Kannada-English dictionary, prepared by Ferdinand Kittel, a German priest.

The movie starts with the story of the Gerusoppe queen Chennabhairadevi, who is taken hostage by the Portuguese. A protege of her, Samantabhadra, dedicates his life to working on Kannada. He is given an island, which is later taken over by the Portuguese.

Around 300 years later, the fight for this island continues. That's when Kittel enters the scene by buying the island. His love for Kannada makes him a disciple of Gunabhadra (Ravichandra V in a subdued, yet refreshing role), while he is also obliged to promote Christianity. Gunabhadra's brother adds his own conflict to the narration and we get to see a drama that involves language, religion and freedom fight.

We see glimpses of caste dynamics and oppression, the influence of Christianity at the time (19th century), the rising resistance against this, and the Jain-Muslim unity. The Kundapura Kannada language in the movie stands out so does the tribal costume style of the South Canara coastal belt.

'Kannadiga' starts with powerful dialogues and above-average visual narration but fizzles out after a while. The first half suffers from poor screenplay but the second half makes up for it.

Poor sound design spoils the fun - the mediocre music overshadows dialogues in many scenes. The menace of bad subtitles that plagues Kannada movies continues to persist.

In Karnataka's history, Jains have played a major role. The movie offers a peek at a small part of this past. It also offers a nuanced view of who a Kannadiga is, beyond the cliched language politics seen today, and explains how the purity of language is a myth.