‘Kanguva’ faces criticism for eardrum-shattering sound, Resul Pookutty says “no film will have repeat value if audience walk out with headache”

Suriya’s ambitious pan-India period drama ‘Kanguva’ is being heavily criticized for its loud eardrum-shattering background score. Now, Oscar-winner sound designer Resul Pookutty has reacted to criticism and penned a long note on his social media handle.

Sharing a screengrab of a news article that reads "The film is criticised for its excessive volume, with loud dialogue and music that detracts from the overall experience, making it one of the loudest films in the theatres,’ he wrote:

"A friend of mine, a re-recording mixer send me this clip…. It is disheartening to see a review about sound in our popular films like this. Our craft and artistry caught up in the loudness war… who is to blame?! The sound guy?! or the innumerable fixes comes at the last moment to satiate all insecurities. High time our fraternity to put your foot down and say things loud and clear. No film will have a repeat value if the audience walk out with head ache!"

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A post shared by Resul Pookutty (@resulpookutty)

As soon as he dropped the post, netizens flooded the comment section with their experience of watching the movie.

A user wrote, "I am an ardent Suriya sir fan Watched Kanguva at Broadway Cinemas Epiq screen , Coimbatore,but this film literally raised my BP and it also triggered the Migraine, at one point i thought of leaving the theatre . Never ever in my theatrical visits I thought of leaving the theatre due to bad Sound mixing, but this film made me too."

Another user blamed the director of the movie, “Even the previous two movies of the same director ( vedhalam and vivegam) were also noise pollution and caused me head ache.. I literally told the theatre staff in Vedhalam interval to reduce the sound.”

“Very well said. It was so hard to sit through the film and worried if we would even get hearing loss! High time film@makers stop making changes till the last minute,” another user wrote.

However, some users also supported the film. One wrote, “For me the sound was fine such movies taken in the backdrop of war and most scenes shot in the forest setup the sound was fine . I went for a 4am show came out of the theatre happily without Headache . Some movie needs to be loud.”