Kathal: A fabular ride about a rollaway fruit

Kathal, a short comedy film by young director Amit Ashraf, moves at the breathtaking speed of an action movie but ends with the biting insight of a short story. Two young boys from the wrong side of the Gulshan-Baridhara area, Hasan (played by Ishrak Turzo) and Javed (played by Poushal Chowdhury), make their way into the wealthy neighbourhood of Baridhara in search of wonders, for it is a place, they have heard, that has "everything". A literal wall stands as a barrier between the slum area–the boys' home–and Baridhara residential society. The boys crawl through a hole to get into this guarded, gated paradise.

But from the beginning, they are not welcome. From the moment of their entry into Baridhara, we see this residential area through a lens of exclusion, from the perspective of all those who are not allowed within.

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The circus ride of the movie begins when the boys find a fabulous, larger than life jackfruit hanging from a tree (the titular Kathal) and cut it down, intending to carry it back home and eat it. But the hole is too small to let anything so wonderful from Baridhara pass back into the poorer neighbourhood, of course.

The problem with the hole is reminiscent of the quandary of the door in Alice in Wonderland, but also serves as a pointed criticism of the wealthy neighbourhood – it is as mean and stingy a place as it is rich–you can't take anything out.

Hasan is a big fan of the cricket player Shakib and has an impossible dream to own a Shakib jersey like the one he has seen in a Gulshan shop, costing BDT 500. He gets the idea that instead of taking the fruit home they can sell it in Baridhara for money.

That's the essential plot of the movie, with the adorable boys running through the wealthy neighbourhood, with the security guards of Baridhara in hot pursuit of the kathal-stealing thieves. Shockingly, no one in this ultra-wealthy Bangladeshi society seems to be able to come up with the money for the boys, even in exchange for the fruit they are offering. That's a great retort to all the society people who might look at a beggar child and say, why doesn't he do some work, sell something? The boys are trying to get money in exchange for something (albeit, a stolen fruit), but they are still being exploited. Everyone they meet wants to use them and exploit the fruits of their labor. No matter how clever these two children are, or how adorable they act, or how much they bargain, the wealthy people don't ever seem to have anything to offer them.

It's also surprising that the owner of the fruit, who set the guards on the boys in the first place, doesn't even care for the fruit or count it as a loss (he offers to give the fruit to the guards if they can find the thieves), providing an even more somber frustration of logic.

Why chase the boys at all if the theft is not a loss to him? The suspense of the plot comes from this very essence, who will buy it, at what moment, for what price?

I was stunned by the class criticism of the film, which is definitely more satire than feel-good comedy. There is a familiarity for Bangladeshi viewers in the neighbourhoods and buildings and also in the way the scientists, writers, women, and other characters are revealed to be cruel, heartless, and ultimately, frauds.

There are so few movies made about children or for children (I watched Emil-er Goenda Bahini and Chhutir Ghonta on repeat with my daughter while she was growing up), that it's a gift just on that account. Kathal is a thoroughly enjoyable, smart movie that the whole family could watch together.

It's good action and great comedy (I couldn't help laughing at the covey of women who are ever in search of how to get young, who reminded me most about myself). But what stunned me the most was its biting criticism of Bangladesh's Bhodrolok society through the sharp contrast between those outside of the gates (the beggars, the slum children, and the daily-wage workers) and those deposited comfortably within its boundaries.