The Hollow Spectacle, When Cinema Evades the Politics of Crime

The Hollow Spectacle, When Cinema Evades the Politics of Crime

Introduction: The Allure and Abdication of True Crime

The intersection of cinema and real-life crime is a fraught and fertile terrain. For filmmakers, the stories of notorious criminals offer pre-built narratives of high drama, psychological complexity, and societal unease. For audiences, they promise a voyeuristic thrill tempered by the safe distance of fiction. However, this adaptation process carries a profound ethical and artistic responsibility. A film based on a true crime is not just a recounting of events; it is an interpretation, a framing device that tells us what the society that produced the crime—and the film—values, fears, and chooses to ignore. The recent Malayalam crime drama, Kalamkaval: The Venom Beneath, starring and produced by the legendary Mammootty, and its critical panning by reviewer Anna MM Vetticad, has ignited a crucial conversation about this responsibility. The film’s failure, as Vetticad articulates, is not one of craft or performance, but of political and social abdication. By focusing myopically on the magnetic male star and the stylized mechanics of murder, it drains the venom from a story whose true toxicity lies in the systemic oppression of women. This current affair examines the perils of depoliticizing crime narratives, the contrasting success of works like Dahaad, and the troubling pattern across Indian cinema where commercial and star-driven imperatives consistently eclipse the uncomfortable social truths that give crime its deepest meaning.

The Case of Cyanide Mohan: A Crime of Societal Complicity

To understand the failure of Kalamkaval, one must first understand the real crime that inspired it. Mohan Kumar, infamously known as Cyanide Mohan, was convicted for the murder of 20 women in Karnataka. His modus operandi was chillingly specific and deeply revealing. He did not randomly attack; he systemically targeted young, vulnerable women, often from lower socio-economic backgrounds, by posing as a potential suitor. His most potent lure was the promise of marriage without dowry. In a society where the dowry system places an immense, often crippling, financial and social burden on families with daughters, and where a woman’s worth is relentlessly tied to her marital status, this promise was a siren song. He preyed on desperation, on the societal pressure that makes women and their families feel incomplete, even disgraced, without a husband.

When these women went missing, the investigation was often lethargic or non-existent. In several cases, families, finding notes suggesting elopement for marriage, felt a sense of relief rather than alarm. Their daughter was “settled,” the dowry burden avoided; asking further questions was an inconvenience. Mohan’s longevity as a serial killer was thus not just a failure of policing, but a symptom of a society that devalues women. The women were victims twice over: first of a murderer, and second of a social structure that considered their disappearance, under certain conditions, a preferable outcome to their continued, burdensome presence. The “politics” of this crime are inescapable—it is a stark narrative about patriarchy, economic oppression, and institutional neglect.

Kalamkaval’s Missed Opportunity: Erasure in the Name of Entertainment

Kalamkaval takes this raw, politically charged material and systematically strips it of its essence. As Vetticad notes, the film transforms Stanley Das (Mammootty) into a generic, if chilling, psychopath who lures and kills women. The specifics of the dowry-free marriage promise—the very engine of the real killer’s success—are lost. The victims are rendered as shallow sketches, “widows or divorcees” mentioned in passing but never explored. We are given no insight into their social circumstances, their emotional landscapes, or the pressures that would make them susceptible. They exist merely as props in Stanley’s/Mammootty’s performance.

This erasure is compounded by a glaring, unexamined absurdity: the age gap. Mammootty, in his seventies, plays a character who seduces women young enough to be his granddaughters. The film presents this not as a commentary on power dynamics or societal oddity, but as a straightforward, believable reality—a common trope in Indian superstar cinema where the ageing male lead’s desirability is treated as an unquestioned axiom. This choice further distances the narrative from reality, where Mohan Kumar targeted women closer to his own age, making his deceit more plausible.

The investigative lens is also telling. The police protagonist is a man. There is no attempt to explore the crime from a perspective that intrinsically understands the gendered nature of the vulnerability being exploited. The result, as Vetticad concludes, is a “stylishly shot film” that serves as a “showcase” for Mammootty’s “formidable talent,” while being devoid of the “richly insightful and emotionally compelling” core of the true story. It becomes a film about a charismatic monster, rather than a film about the monstrous social conditions that allowed a real monster to thrive.

The Counterpoint: Dahaad and the Politics of Insight

The brilliance of what Kalamkaval could have been is illustrated by the 2023 Hindi streaming series Dahaad, created by Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar. Also inspired by Cyanide Mohan, Dahaad makes the politics of the crime its central subject. The series meticulously constructs the world of its victims—women trapped in a conservative, small-town milieu where spinsterhood is a curse and dowry a family-destroying demand. Their vulnerability is not a plot device; it is a palpable, heartbreaking condition.

The killer in Dahaad is a predator who understands this ecosystem perfectly. His success is directly tied to societal apathy. The families’ relief upon receiving “elope” notes is portrayed not as a character flaw but as a tragic outcome of systemic pressure. Most significantly, the narrative is not centered on the male killer, but on a Dalit policewoman, Anjali Bhaati (Sonakshi Sinha). Anjali herself is navigating the very same patriarchal pressures—pestered to marry, judged for her career—that made the victims susceptible. Her investigation is thus not just a procedural; it is a personal, political act of solidarity. Dahaad succeeds because it understands that the crime is not an anomaly but a logical extreme of everyday misogyny. It gives equal, if not more, prominence to the women’s motivations and the social machinery that grinds them down.

A Broader Pattern: The Erasure of Caste and Gender Across Industries

Vetticad’s critique places Kalamkaval within a disturbing pattern of political erasure in Indian cinema, though with an ironic twist. She notes that in recent years, Hindi cinema has been the primary culprit in depoliticizing powerful regional stories during remakes.

• Sairat (2016) vs. Dhadak (2018): Nagraj Manjule’s Marathi masterpiece Sairat was a searing, violent tragedy about caste persecution in an inter-caste romance. Its Hindi remake, Dhadak, directed by Shashank Khaitan, transformed it into a sanitized, almost caste-agnostic love story between two affluent families, draining the original of its furious social commentary and reducing it to a melodramatic teen romance.

• The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) vs. Mrs. (2025): Jeo Baby’s groundbreaking Malayalam film used the relentless drudgery of a housewife to critique patriarchy, Brahminical ritual purity, and the Sabarimala temple entry debate. The 2025 Hindi remake, Mrs. by Arati Kadav, virtually deleted the specificities of caste and religion, turning a pointed socio-political critique into a more generic, if still effective, drama of domestic oppression.

The motive behind these Hindi sanitizations, as Vetticad suggests, is a mix of industry apathy towards caste and a fear of offending hyper-vigilant right-wing groups. The commercial imperative to appeal to a pan-India “mainstream” audience (often imagined as upper-caste and politically neutral) leads to a flattening of challenging identities.

Kalamkaval represents a different, but related, failure. The Malayalam industry, rightly celebrated for gems like The Great Indian Kitchen, Jallikattu, and Kaathal – The Core that dissect patriarchy and social ills, is not immune to male dominance and star-centricity. For every film that offers profound portrayal, there is a bulk of output where women are marginalized, both on-screen and off. Kalamkaval’s problem is this very “Mammootty-centricity.” The need to build a vehicle for the megastar, to highlight his performance, overrides the need to tell the story with sociological honesty. The film’s irony, as Vetticad puts it, is that “the best thing about it is Mammootty’s performance, even as its Mammootty-centricity is what pulls it down.”

Conclusion: The Responsibility of Narrative

The debate over Kalamkaval versus Dahaad is more than a film critic’s comparison; it is a referendum on the purpose of art that engages with real-world horror. Crime stories, especially those drawn from life, are never just about the criminal. They are diagnostics of societal sickness. To focus solely on the pathology (the killer) while ignoring the host body (the society that enabled him) is to produce a fundamentally dishonest and less impactful work.

Cinema has the power to interrogate, to implicate, and to illuminate. Dahaad used that power to ask: What kind of society makes women so desperate that a stranger’s promise feels like salvation? What kind of system is so relieved to be rid of “burdensome” women that it doesn’t question their disappearance? Kalamkaval, in its retreat to star vehicle conventions, asks no such uncomfortable questions. It offers the thrill of the chase and the chill of a performance, but it “takes the sting off the venom.”

The current affair here is the ongoing struggle within Indian popular culture between commerce and commentary, between star worship and social scrutiny. As audiences become more discerning and platforms like streaming services allow for riskier narratives, the expectation for depth should rise. The success of Dahaad and the criticism of Kalamkaval signal that a segment of the audience craves stories that do more than entertain—they want stories that understand, that indict, and that remember the victims as full human beings caught in a web far larger than any single murderer. In the end, the most compelling crime drama is not the one that glorifies the monster, but the one that has the courage to dissect the world that created him.

Q&A: The Politics of Crime Narratives in Indian Cinema

Q1: What is the core criticism levied against Kalamkaval: The Venom Beneath regarding its handling of the true crime inspiration?
A1: The core criticism is that the film completely depoliticizes the source material. Inspired by the serial killer Cyanide Mohan, whose strategy relied on exploiting the societal pressure on women to marry and the burden of dowry, Kalamkaval reduces the story to a generic psychopath narrative. It erases the specific socio-economic vulnerability of the victims (the promise of dowry-free marriage), fails to develop the female characters with any depth, and ignores the societal complicity that allowed the real killer to operate for so long. It focuses on the male star’s performance at the expense of the story’s underlying social commentary.

Q2: How did the series Dahaad successfully handle the same source material that Kalamkaval failed to engage with?
A2: Dahaad made the social and political context the heart of the narrative. It meticulously detailed the oppressive, conservative environment that pushed women into vulnerability, explicitly highlighting the dowry burden and the stigma of being unmarried. The killer was a predator who understood this system. Crucially, the series centered on a Dalit policewoman, Anjali Bhaati, who personally understood patriarchal pressures. By focusing on her investigation and the victims’ lives, Dahaad became a critique of the societal machinery that devalues women, rather than just a procedural about catching a killer.

Q3: The review mentions a “role reversal” between Hindi and Malayalam cinema regarding socio-political commentary. What does this mean?
A3: Traditionally, Malayalam cinema has been praised for its strong social realism, while Hindi cinema has often been criticized for shying away from caste and politics. The “role reversal” refers to the fact that in recent high-profile remakes, Hindi filmmakers have stripped regional stories of their political essence (e.g., removing caste from Sairat in Dhadak, and caste/religion from The Great Indian Kitchen in Mrs.). Ironically, in this instance, it is a Malayalam film (Kalamkaval) that is guilty of depoliticizing a politically rich story, while a Hindi series (Dahaad) tackled the same material with profound social insight.

Q4: What does the unexamined, large age gap between Mammootty and his female co-stars in Kalamkaval signify, according to the critique?
A4: The unchecked age gap—where a man in his seventies convincingly seduces women young enough to be his granddaughters—symbolizes the unquestioned male dominance and star privilege prevalent in Indian mainstream cinema. It highlights a disconnect from the reality of the true crime, where the killer’s plausibility depended on targeting peers. In Kalamkaval, this trope serves the star vehicle’s requirement to showcase the male lead’s desirability, further divorcing the film from any realistic engagement with the dynamics of manipulation and vulnerability that defined the real case.

Q5: What is the ultimate artistic and ethical responsibility of a filmmaker adapting a true crime story, as implied by this analysis?
A5: The responsibility extends beyond dramatizing events for thrill. A filmmaker must engage with the societal pathology that enabled the crime. The adaptation should serve as a diagnostic tool, exploring the conditions—patriarchy, economic inequality, caste oppression, institutional bias—that created both the perpetrator and the victims. To ignore this is to produce a hollow spectacle that entertains but does not illuminate, and in doing so, risks replicating the very societal erasure that often allows such crimes to occur and go unchecked. The ethical duty is to remember the victims as full individuals within a social context, not merely as plot points in a killer’s story.