Aa Karaala Ratri


Aa Karaala Ratri is a 2018 Kannada-language suspense thriller film directed by Dayal Padmanabhan and produced under his own banner, D Pictures.
The movie is based on a Kannada play by Mohan Habbu which was translated from the tragic English play Lithuania by Rupert Brooke. Karthik Jayaram was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 8th South Indian International Movie Awards. The movie won the Karnataka State Film Award for First Best Film.

Cast

In an interior village, deep in Karnataka, a fortune teller visits a poverty-stricken family and foretells that their fortune will change overnight. A mysterious traveller visits their home on the same day and requests to be allowed to stay overnight. What happens during that one intense night forms rest of the story.
The movie starts with a view of a burning house in a village and the narrator narrates that this is the end of the story not the beginning. The scene shifts to a God man preaching about human desires to the villagers and how it is common for all living beings to have desires. He advises, as humans one should be in control of their desires though it is natural for all to have desires. Among the God man's audience, are villagers Gowramma and her daughter Mallika, who questions the God man's preaching to her mother's annoyance. They decide to leave the session midway as Mallika's taunts were annoying the mother and also since it was getting late.
Farmer Onti Maney Muthanna, his wife Gowramma and daughter Mallika, all live in a remote village where the closest neighbor is 3 miles away. They had pawned 9 acres of their agricultural land to a loan shark when unforeseen medical expenses befell the family and were since living in poverty. Farmer Muthanna is an alcoholic who drinks every other night, Gowramma works in the farm and also helps as a midwife to village women, expertly delivering their children, the daughter Mallika is an ambitious woman who rues of her misfortunes, constantly craving to marry and start a family of her own. She is frustrated and keeps taunting her mother about this.
One day a wandering fortune teller visits their house and predicts that they are about to see a lot of money, however warns them that they should look beyond the money. But the family drives him away and as he walks away from the house, a tourist visits the house asking for some water to drink. The tourist introduces himself as Chenna Keshava a traveler and writer. He seeks permission to stay the night over at Muthanna's house as the next village was very far and would take him over a day to reach there. The family reluctantly agrees since there is an unmarried girl in the house and may lead villagers to talk ill about them if they got to know a stranger stayed overnight. The tourist is very polite and generous towards the family; offers money to buy tea dust when Muthanna expresses a desire to drink tea, while paying a little extra for Muthanna's troubles.
The loan shark, to whom the land and house is pawned, visits Muthanna's house one day and demands Muthanna to pay more attention to the farm and its produce as the land is now his and he needs to reap profit from it. When there, the loan shark also hints that if people accepted his ideas, things could get better; alluding his interest in Mallika. Muthanna and Gowramma are furious at this but are silent; however Mallika expresses her disgust indicating she is not interested in him. Meanwhile, the tourist, Chenna Keshava overhears all of this and offers to help the family. He shows the family some cash and jewels while subtly pointing that he can pay off the loan shark if they would allow him to. The family is surprised but they refuse to accept his offer since he is a stranger. In the evening, the tourist requests for some chicken curry to be prepared and again offer money for the necessary ingredients and again a little extra so that the entire family can enjoy a good meal.
The cash and jewelry sows seeds of greed in Mallika and secretly wishes to keep all the jewels for herself. Blinded by this greed, she convinces her mother and father to kill the tourist and rob him of his money. While Muthanna goes to the local arrack shop, Gowramma and Mallika prepare the chicken curry and decide to poison it. Just before dinner, two policemen arrive at their house enquiring if they have seen any stranger around since there was a robbery nearby. Both women deny seeing anybody. The policemen smell aroma of the chicken curry and request themselves to be invited for a meal. Gowramma topples the plate with poisoned meal and brings the policemen new plates, thus avoids poisoning the policemen. The policemen leave after a good meal praising Gowramma of her culinary skills. Sadly, the pet dog eats the toppled food and dies of poisoning.
Later, the tourist finishes his meal and goes to sleep a happy man. Mallika realizes that her mother did not lace the new plate with poison after the policemen left their house. Frustrated, Mallika decides to kill the tourist herself. She slits his throat while he is asleep and goes out to dig him a grave. Muthanna, meanwhile at the local arrack shop discovers from the waiter at the bar that many people there know about the visitor at his house. He runs home only to discover that the women have already killed the tourist.
He weeps his heart out upon this discovery and reveals the true identity of the traveler, which he learnt from the waiter at the local arrack shop. The tourist had visited the arrack shop before going to Muthanna's house and had revealed his identity to the people at the arrack shop. The tourist was the son of Muthanna who had run away a long time ago in fear of his mother's beating.

Production

Development

The movie is based on a Kannada play by Mohan Habbu which was based on the Russian story titled The Return of the Soldier. Senior director S. K. Bhagavan had revealed that during the making of 1978 Kannada movie Shankar Guru, he had narrated this story to matinee idol Rajkumar.The film was planned to be shot in Ladakh and some preparation was undertaken, but in the end Rajkumar backed out as he felt the story was too dark.
Impressed by Mohan Habbu's story, Dayal decided to acquire the rights and make it into a full-length feature film. When Dayal entered the Bigg Boss house as a contestant his idea was strengthened when his fellow contestants JK & Anupama Gowda agreed to be a part of the film if it was made. Once out of Big Boss Dayal sprung into action and completed the entire script, along with co-dialogue writer Naveen Krishna, and narrated the full script to JK and Anupama once they were out of the Big Boss game.

Casting

Once the lead pair was fixed, Dayal zeroed in on Rangayana Raghu and Veena Sundar for other pivotal roles. Many of Dayal's contestant friends from Bigg Boss like Jaya Srinivasan, Ashitha and Diwakar are making character appearances in the movie. This film will be Jayaram Karthik's first release since his Bigg Boss stint as a lead and is going to be the second movie as a leading lady for popular tele-actress Anupama Gowda. Experienced Cinematographer P.K.H. Das is helming the camera. Sri is the movie's editor. Ganesh Narayan is composing the music for the film.

Filming

The muhurat for the movie is happened on 19 February in Oni Anjaneyaswamy Temple, Bangalore. Simultaneously Dayal's other movie PUTA 109, again starring Jayaram Karthik, is also being launched on the same day. The movie's shoot is to take place over 25 days in Balur, Chikmagalur Taluk.

Reception

The movie got 4/5 stars in TOI reviews. The Bangalore mirror rated the movie as one of the best movies of the year. Kannada Actor Sudeep said the movie was "gripping".
The movie has an 80% rating on BookMyShow. TheNewsMinute mentions that "seasoned" actors and "clever" director came together hand-in-hand to make an interesting suspense thriller flick.
Shyam Prasad S from Bangalore mirror said the movie is one of the best movies of the year and credited the convincing performances and brilliant technical execution for the success.
Cineloka credits the director's smart moves and decision to make a good movie after his recent failures to prove his mettle. Actors' performances and PKH Das' cinematography was praised too.

Awards