Cinema Cinema

Disclaimer: There is no doubt about Kamal Hassan's genius... Fewer movies have made as much an impact on me as Michael Madana Kamarajan. But did he have to do these 10 roles?

So out of sheer boredom and fueled by the summer vacations, I ended up buying an account with one of the Tamil movie online sites. I chose Tamil thinking S and I could see a lot of dinner time favorites. I don't know about that but the first choice of the movie was also the most obvious, Dasavatharam. This Kamal Hassan movie has made headlines all over the world for a variety of reasons from budget to plot and obviously the most important being the fact the Kamal, the lead in the movie has played 10 different roles. Having heard terrifically rave reviews about the movie from tabloids to reliable friends, we were very excited to watch the movie.... for about 15 minutes. At the end of the movie, I was left gawking... and not in the good sense. It became very obvious that the script was tailored to somehow accomodate the 10 different roles that the lead man wanted to play and create history. And in that sense, he did. I don't think anyone is going to attempt anything like this for a long long time. But the worst part was that none of those getups were really required. He could've been content with just playing 2-3 of the main roles and hiring accomplished actors for the rest. Instead they spent a whole lot of cash, time and effort in creating 10 distinct personalities, 7 of whom were totally uncritical to the plot and a couple ended up resembling one another! Some of the get-ups actually looked like the human version of Shrek in Shrek II. And chaos theory as the central theme turned out to be too chaotic and the tsunami scene that people raved about was total disappointment. It was crazy. And Kamal Hassan taking up the screenplay as a 11th role was probably the big damper in the whole fiasco..

On a totally unrelated note, I acquired a DVD of Dhoom II and decided it was well worth a wasted afternoon to gawk at Hrithik. So subconsciously as I watched it, I counted him wear 8 different disguises - all of which looked convincing and looked great on him. While I reached no.8, my heart beat a little faster. What a humungous disappointment it would've been to Kamal Hassan had Hrithik equalled 10 in a totally unintended and unassuming manner. Lol!

Vettaiyadu Vilayadu

Disclaimer: These views are based purely on the fact that Kamal Hassan just plays a hero in the movie. It does not justify why someone of his caliber had to do such a movie.

Spoilers: There are spoilers ahead.. If you haven't already seen the movie and intend doing so, don't read any further.

Ok.. So last night Vidhs n I were sitting huddled over one laptop and watching a stolen copy of VV. And the first impression was that it was gripping. The cinematography was excellent... I didn't get bored one bit.. As much as I'd seen rushes of the movie, I wasn't prepared to see how much Kamal Hassan had aged. It wasn't the bags under his eyes... It wasn't the flab on his frame.. It was everything.. His voice.. His look.. His persona had aged. And in retrospect, I can't say why he had to do such a commercial movie... Why it wasn't an offbeat Kamal movie... Something of the lines of how I couldn't understand why Aamir did Fanaa..

That apart, the screenplay was good.. The cinematography excellent and the plot gripping. It seemed like a lot of inspiration for Gautam Menon about the psychopath serial killers came from the likes of 'Scream'. Gore and blood and gruesome murders are nothing new to English cinema. However imagining a psycho genius killer in a Tamil movie hit home and actually creeped me out a little. And as I watched the movie, I couldn't help comparing it to Kakka Kakka (KK), Gautam's last. And some things were obvious.. Like his fascination for the names 'Ilamaran' and 'Maya', both of which feature in this movie also.

The romance between Kamal Hassan n Jothika left a lot to be desired. In fact, it was very abrupt and when you think about it, downright stupid. The heroine had no role in this movie.. She was a psycho herself on some level, essentially an emotional wreck from a failed marriage and the shadow of a person she must've been. The effect is that Jo comes across as lifeless and totally dispensable. It seems that her only use in the movie would've been so she could be kidnapped by the villains to blackmail the hero, an age-old ploy, a repeat from KK. It was unfortunate that it was Jo in both cases as well. Besides, killing her seems to be an ending that Gautam Menon likes. Or so I assumed... our version of the movie ended there, where Kamal picks her seemingly lifeless body from that pit and weeps. I was later told by a friend that the movie continues to one scene more where a "6 months later" is flashed and goes on to show her live n well.. This is another thing that reminds me of my KK DVD which has 2 endings as you please. One with Jo living and the other with her dead(the directorial cut n the theatrical versions respectively).

The other two women, the one who plays Rani (the KK Thoothu varuma girl) and Kamalini (kamal's first wife) have both played nice li'l cameos along with Prakashraj.

another major complaint I had with the movie was its logistics... The time intervals discussed and the monetary affairs don't corroborate with the rest of the movie.

1) As medical students from India, first, the guys would hardly have gotten a US visa

2) When Amudhu punctured Raghavan's( Kamal) lungs, he told him he had half n hour to live, after which Kamal plummets down the window into the dumpster. That means that within half n hour he was rescued, and so the airports would've been warned about the escape of two "wanted men" and with a sure shot transit between the USA and India, they were bound to be caught before they landed on Indian soil and escaped through Mumbai.

3) Two medical students had the time and money to actually go all the way from the USA to India to kill a bunch of people and come back and go back again as they pleased. How??

4) How come Anderson's working alone with no other NYPD cop involved?

And a whole bunch more.... All said n done, I felt that Kamal Hassan was in the movie only because his English accent is unmatched by anyone else in the Tamil industry. The movie was more about the plot, than about the hero. Vettaiyadu Villaiyadu.. Worth a watch by those who don't get turned off by gore and psycho killers... atleast on screen.