What is however interesting is that, Ranjith doesn’t just stop with choosing the colour black over Mani Ratnam’s white. Ranjith uses the colour not only as a metaphor for the sweat and toil of the working class but also as a symbol of resistance. From the protagonist Karikalan Kaala’s (played by Rajinikanth) clothes and jeep to the stylishly choreographed rain fight scene to the ideologically colour-sequenced climax to almost every frame, the colour black dominates. On the other hand, Ranjith takes the ‘black’ from his movie’s title and lends it to the entire movie. It certainly seems like an odd choice because apart from maybe the dabbawalas, when did working class people in Mumbai wear so much white on an everyday basis? In fact, some of the movie’s frames shockingly look like a pre-Independence Congress conference. But what is surprising is that even the supporting characters and the locations in Dharavi are dominated by the colour white.
For most of the movie’s running time, the protagonist Sakthivel ‘Velu’ Nayakkar (played by Kamal Hassan) is clothed in white. Mani Ratnam generously lends the colour white to his frames. It is in how both these movies choose to use the colours white and black. The most obvious and stark difference between Kaala and Nayakan is in the visual.
