Warning: The article has major spoilers including a discussion on the movie’s ending.
The phenomenon of the worship of Bhoothas (benevolent spirits) is imbibed deeply in the social fabric of coastal Karnataka. The divine power of these spirits is believed to both protect and punish. These spirits have their own backstories, and most times in their earthly avatars they themselves have lived battered lives. After a saturation point, they give up their lives by ‘disappearing’ magically, post which they become guardians of other living battered souls.
The life stories of these spirits are narrated in a folk song form locally called Paaddana; the spirits themselves are generally represented by abstract totems. The Kola ritual is an animistic form of worshipping these demi-gods wherein the spirits themselves are supposed to enter the bodies of designated mediums – invariably hailing from a lowered caste – and communicate with people giving them solutions to their worldly problems. Psychologists term this phenomenon Possession Syndrome – where a person has societal sanction to temporarily lose his/her identity and get tranced by an external body. Although Kantara, a recent Kananda film whose title means mystical forests, has no such rational world view, it does have as its protagonist one such designated medium.