Anand Gandhi is a creative director writer and producer with an independent voice. His movies have won national and international awards and recognition. His comments on Kannada blockbuster Kantara have become controversial, with fans of the movie attacking the tweet and Anand. Supporting Kantara, many celebrities, like producer Shobu have voiced out that the tweet was in poor taste.
Keeping the opinions about Kantara compared to Tumbbad aside, many felt that being a person from the film industry, such comments shouldn't have been made. However, others are also supporting the freedom of criticizing, if not accepting, the statements of Anand Gandhi.
Anand Gandhi juxtaposed Tumbbad and Kantara and said that Tumbbad is about showing that parochialism and toxic masculinity as evil. However, he added Kantara is celebration of the same things. This statement, coming from the writer of Tumbbad needs to be understood as an individual opinion or boasting of a writer is one's choice.
However, there must be some decorum and minimal recognition for other artist's work. 24 crafts make cinema in a very stressful environment. Kantara got huge returns and people enjoyed it. Countering the movie can be done in a very constrictive manner than tweeting about it in a line or two.
Artists need to carry bare minimum mutual respect, especially when the film is so well accepted and treated as remarkable. This is not to imply that criticism is bad, there must be a healthy practice to do it. Also, there is self-interest here from Anand to elevate his film at the cost of the other. Both movies are good in their own manner.
Even if Tumbbad is greater in some aspect that doesn't mean that Kantara has to be put down by comparison. Decency pervades all. Probably, artistic expression would've been a better approach to criticize a cinema than a small tweet.
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