Kaala Paani Star Cast/ Actors: Ashutosh Gowariker as Admiral Zibran Qadri, Mona Singh as Dr. Soudamini Singh, Arushi Sharma as Jyotsana Dey and Amey Wagh as ACP Ketan Kamat.
Kaala Paani Director: Sameer Saxena and Amit Golani
Kaala Paani Release Date: October 18, 2023
Kaala Paani Available On: Netflix
Kaala Paani Released/ Available In Languages: Tamil, Telugu, English & Hindi
Kaala Paani OTT Platform: Netflix
Kaala Paani Season: 1
Kaala Paani Number Of Episodes: 7
Kaala Paani Release Pattern: All episodes released together
Kaala Paani Episode Duration: 60 minutes
Kaala Paani Critic Review:
Wade through familiar waters where you hear, for the umpteenth time, the frog-and-the-scorpion story already popularised by Alia Bhatt in Darlings. For the nth time, it’s brought to the fore that the natives of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (A&N) were left untouched by the devastating tsunami of 2004 because of their instinct for self-preservation and their ability to commune with Nature. You hack through the same jungles you just saw in The Jengabaru Curse where tribals are treated like sacrificial sub-humans by greedy rich multi-nationals until the privileged get their comeuppance. And the cli-fi genre of Jengabaru that mixed fiction with climate change and environmental realities re-emerges in a new avatar as Kaala Pani. It says much the same as other cli-fi shows but with the background of a strange disease that’s spreading in A&N, strange because it’s not just baffling the medical world but also leaves unaffected the hardy Orakas, the original tribals of these islands.
Directors Amit Golani and Sameer Saxena with co-writers Nimisha Misra, Sandeep Saket and Biswapati Sarkar, take off with foreboding cinematography (Dhananjay Navagrah, Barny Crocker, Ewan Mulligan) that make the tribals look dark and devilish as they destroy a water pipe. Read ATOM on the pipe.
There’s relief from the dense, sun-less landscape as a variety of relationships draw you in before the disease takes over. A festival has been sponsored on the island by ATOM.
It is 2037. LHF 27, as the disease is called, has struck again. Evacuation of the healthy is imperative.
A few of the main players:
Crooked Wani (Rajesh Khattar), the ATOM bigshot, and bent cop Ketan Kamat (Amey Wagh) who care little for the Orakas.
Dr Singh (Mona Singh) with a limp who’s relentless in her search for the cure to stem the unknown disease that had appeared a few decades ago. Plenty of politically correct feminist strokes begin with Dr Singh and continue with a few more earnest women.
A resident family with a Tamizh-spouting mother who inexplicably cares and works tirelessly for the Orakas.
Admiral Zibran (Ashutosh Gowariker), the Lieutenant-Governor (LG) of A&N who has a connection with the Orakas but has to one day put into practice his lectures on “Will you flip the switch?”
A tiresome track of the Savlas, a family of four that’s visiting A&N, conveniently separated for much maudlin drama, topped with a precocious little girl called Kaddu (Aradhya Ajana). Much of this prolonged family plot could have been edited to make the journey less exhausting.
Juxtaposing Good Samaritans like a lady doctor and a female nurse who perpetually wear virtuous halos, with outright crooks like a tourist guide and Kamat the cop who come to the crossroads of their lives for the conscience to stir, the show jogs memories of Covid-19 when masks, isolation and a vaccine were bywords of the day.
The triumph of the Orakas as the Chosen Ones is a goal worth scoring with Ashutosh Gowariker suiting the part of the puffed-up LG who thinks he’s a cut above the rest and has all the answers.
But it is a dark and dense adventure with genes and caste and the arrogance of the privileged, also playing their parts. The writers bring in every conceivable emergency, pregnancy, death, loss, paranoia et al, some of it rather contrived. For instance, a red car appearing for one of the Good Samaritans to overcome her paranoia is just too pat. Deviating from a linear narration, there are flashbacks to explain what’s been happening all over A&N. So it’s not an easy watch.
Kaala Paani – Watch Or Not?: The social message, almost a repeat of The Jengabaru Curse, and the credible human frailties, make the show worth a focused watch.
Kaala Paani Review Score Rating: 3 out of 5 (i.e. 3/5)
Kaala Paani Official Trailer: