Kamal Haasan: A Cinematic Journey

by K. Hariharan

There was not a single family in Paramakudi who did not know Kamal. He would take the liberty of walking into any house at any time, receiving mixed reactions! He was capable of enthralling people with his antics, but would also leave behind a trail of damaged windowpanes and broken pots. One day, their neighbourhood doctor brought Kamal home with his right palm all bandaged up. Before the child could be admonished, the doctor said that the little boy was the bravest patient he had ever seen. He was the first patient to sit through six stitches without emitting even a whimper! The real story—that Kamal had gone to the doctor’s house and experimented with his brand-new shaving razor, which had led to the cut—was told much later.

Kamal child razor cut

Kamal’s curiosity regarding films was satiated by a member of his house staff, with surreptitious visits to the old thatched cinema talkies. Under the pretext of taking care of him, the worker would get him to watch all of M.G. Ramachandran’s and Sivaji Ganesan’s movies. An enthralled Kamal would come home quoting the films’ dialogues and earnestly mimicking all the actions. He would then create his own stories about a princess fleeing from enemy soldiers and how he, the hero, would come swinging down the vines of the tropical forest, jump into a well and rescue the damsel in distress. And then Kamal would add his special touch—the hero would promptly clean her wounds, dip into his satchel to pull out an injection and inject her with an antibiotic called Streptomycin to prevent any further damage. Obviously, his connection with the neighbouring doctor had gone beyond a few stitches!

Kamal mgr sivaji dialogues

This was renowned producer A.V. Meiyappan, who saw Kamal and immediately cast him as the main child artiste in Kalathur Kannamma (1960). The legendary producer’s son, A.V.M. Saravanan, fondly recalls, ‘My father was reading a book on his sofa with a table lamp switched on next to him when Kamal was escorted in. When my father was told that the child would be willing to act in his film, he looked up and sized him up. After a few moments he turned the table lamp on him to see his reaction. Kamal remained unflustered under the light. My father smiled and I knew that he had approved casting him.’ In a conversation later, Kamal remarked, ‘I truly consider myself fortunate that a stalwart like A.V. Meiyappan turned the spotlight on me, literally!’ When I met director S.P. Muthuraman, he reminisced, ‘This film about an orphanage was also my first film with the AVM banner as the seventh assistant director. Though I was supposed to be representing the editing department, I was also put in charge of the child artistes. Undoubtedly, Kamal stood out as a kid who was alert and inquisitive.’

Kamal avm saravanan

On the second day, elaborate preparations had been made to create an orphanage set inside the studio for a scene in which benefactors come to see the unfortunate ones and help them. In one scene, the legendary actress Savitri was supposed to feed Kamal, who was playing an orphan. The shot was all set and on hearing ‘Action’, she smilingly offered him some food. Kamal froze and refused to eat. Director A. Bhimsingh had to cut the shot and was about to reprimand him when SPM broke protocol and entered the shooting area. Quietly, SPM asked him why he refused to eat. Looking quite distraught, Kamal said, ‘This food can’t be real, right? It will get stuck in my throat!’ Savitri laughed out loud but Kamal was not amused. SPM had to eat some of the food just to prove that some things in the movie business were real too! Soon enough, Kamal later did the shot with the full emotion required of a starving orphan.

Kamal starving

Rajalakshmi would often get tired with all the domestic chores and managing Kamal was a task she loved to delegate. Combing his hair became one of Nalini’s onerous tasks, as she had to always appeal to his flamboyant side. If he was in the mood to appreciate Kalaignar Karunanidhi, then she would do a centre parting; when he was in a slightly wicked mood, she would oil his hair completely and flatten it out like Hitler’s hairdo. His favourite style was that of Pandit Nehru! For him, the white cap was part of the look. So she would gel his hair well and shape it like a Nehru cap. How proud he would feel when he looked into the mirror! And one can imagine how he would have reacted when he saw a photograph of Pandit Nehru without his cap, completely bald!

Kamal combing

And then one day Kamal produced and released a successful film called Kadamai Kanniyam Kattupaadu (1987) with Sathyaraj as the main hero. He invited me for the hundredth-day celebration. I was embarrassed to go for the function since I had not seen the film, but I went anyway. At the function, he invited Sivaji Ganesan as the chief guest onstage and then he invited another filmmaker called Manivannan. I was shocked when he called me over to the dais as well and made me sit next to Sivaji sir. The audience was visibly puzzled about my presence. Kamal explained that Manivannan was on the stage because he was responsible for bringing out the actor in Sathyaraj. Then, looking at me, Kamal announced that I was the person solely responsible for whatever he was that day. Listening to his fond remarks, I wept almost uncontrollably onstage. Who else would recollect and acknowledge an old friendship like ours with such warmth and love?’ When I went for the interview, R.C. Shakti was convalescing from a serious illness which required him to undergo dialysis on a weekly basis. I wished him all the best and left with a rather heavy heart, feeling sorry about the condition of one of the doyens of the avant-garde in Tamil cinema, yet amazed that he was still dreaming of making another breakthrough film! His Unarchigal was still not complete.

Kamal RC Shakti

R.C. Shakti passed away on 23 February 2015. A heartbroken Kamal said, ‘If I am able to direct films today, it is largely because of the confidence Shakti bestowed in me. I would have been a nobody if he had not entered my life and motivated me to open my heart and mind to the world of cinema.’

Kamal RC Shakti 2

Undoubtedly, Balachander was attempting to focus the angry discourse onto a new ‘rationalist’ platform. Around the time that he was entering this new cinematic phase in his career, a powerful critique by Periyar was published on the authoritarianism of Brahminic hegemony where he wrote: They have made us, 97% of the people, illegitimate children and invented religion, gods, commandments, and Dharma (duty), in order to keep us where we are. They have fortified their positions with ‘God’, Religion and Scriptures. Foreign rulers and the Brahmins sit on us and uphold caste and the disgraceful position that we are in with the words ‘according to laws’.3 Periyar’s rationalism at this juncture was to pinpoint that the root of Brahminic indolence, located in the community’s ownership of such gods and icons, was hypocritical and only used to subjugate the gullible lower castes to Brahminical authority. For Balachander, rationality and patriarchy were opposed to each other, and he took Periyar’s outburst into larger domains, attacking the hegemony of film financiers, hypocritical writers and conservative distributors by assembling a bunch of newcomers to ‘storm the Bastille’. Playing a character that his idol Periyar would have condemned made Kamal understand the true meaning of role-playing. But he faced another dilemma: is role-playing the unquestioned domain of the actor alone? How about the spectators? Aren’t they also indulging in some sort of voyeuristic roleplay when they ass...

Kamal Periyar

Rajini recalled this career-defining moment during a talk he gave: When I walked into this film, Kamal was already a well-known star, the cynosure of all eyes. And I was a nobody, at most an ordinary actor. All that was needed was a nod of disapproval from Kamal and my career would have ended. But symbolically, he breathed life into this terminally ill character and gave me a new path to walk upon. From that moment, I realized that if I needed to march further into the minefield of cinema, I needed to keep a role model, a mentor in constant observation. And how fortunate I was to have an actor like Kamal in my sight all the time.

Rajini about Kamal

Recalls Bharathiraja, ‘Finances were so tight that even the cheap ORWO colour-film raw stock was bought in small quantities from nearby Bangalore. One day we ran out of film. I could not reveal this to Kamal and Sridevi who were ready for the take, so cameraman Nivas and I decided to playact. But a few moments after I had shouted “Action”, Kamal paused during the take and said, “Hey! There seems to be something wrong with the camera. It sounds different”, and began walking towards me. I told him the truth. Kamal placed his hands on my shoulders and said, “You should not suffer so much to make a film. I will give you money for this raw stock. Let’s do the film well.” Tears came to my eyes, for I had promised my producer I would complete the film within the budget. However meagre, Rs 5 lakh was all that he had. And through Kamal I had to tell the film’s heart-rending story.’ In the film, Kamal’s real name is Gopalakrishnan, but he’s called Chapaani (the lame one), the name his aunt bestows on him. Why and how did the term ‘Chapaani’ come about? Was this name supposed to resonate with the name and persona of Charlie Chaplin or to recall the tragic ways that the Machine Age had dumped the innocent working class as cattle for slaughter in an assembly line? In the Tamil political situation, it seemed to represent the predicament of the gullible Tamilian who had by then realized that the heady utopia of the Dravidian Land, compromised by Tamil leaders during the Emergency, was a ...

16 Vayadhinile

Kamal wondered what he needed until Prasad pointed to a big ugly metal-strapped film box containing the fourteen reels of his magnum opus. He said, ‘Can you help me carry that box into the elevator?’ Strangely this great movie mogul had no office boy or servants that day. Kamal immediately said, ‘Of course, sir, I will carry it for you. You are not going to lug that heavy and slightly rusty box. It might hurt you!’ Kamal carried the 30-kg box into the elevator and yet again from the elevator into the boot of the ordinary Ambassador car waiting below. The car took them to a special screening at a preview theatre for a Delhi distributor. Prasad introduced Kamal to the gentleman. After the first reel commenced, Prasad excused himself and left, telling Kamal to get their guest some sandwiches and coffee during the intermission. Kamal sat embarrassed next to this pot-bellied distributor, trying to make small talk. But by the fifth reel even that was not required, as the distributor had fallen asleep. After a few more such screenings, a dejected Kamal flew back to Madras. How could Romeo and Juliet, the most famous of all tragedies ever written, fail to win attention in this accursed city of Bombay? Nevertheless, putting on a brave face, Prasad met with his dear friend Gulshan Rai, a prominent Hindi film distributor, and requested him to lend his banner for the first release. The North–South divide was not going allow for a risky film to be launched on a South Indian banner. Gul...

Ek duje ke liye 1

Prasad sat through each screening that weekend to study reactions. He saw audiences come out with tears in their eyes. Some people would tell him, ‘How could the world be so cruel to such a lovely pair? This is so unfair!’ Prasad realized that everybody had seen a wholesome tragedy after a long time on the Hindi screen and there was no difference in feelings between the Tamil audience he had been close to and their Hindi counterparts. Now sure that he was on the right track, he immediately called his son Ramesh Prasad in Madras to order for another forty prints to be released all over India the following Friday. The film went on to celebrate fifty weeks. Kamal flew down to Bombay yet again for a special function to celebrate the film’s success at the Novelty Theatre. This time he was a superstar, while his mentors Prasad and K. Balachander were still the same down-to-earth film veterans. They reached the theatre early and while inspecting the lobby, Prasad remarked, ‘The floor is really spanking clean and shining, isn’t it?’ Intrigued by this remark Kamal replied, ‘Yes, it’s clean but what is so special about that?’ Prasad replied, smiling, ‘Do you know, when I was twenty-six years old, as old as you are now, I used to be an usher here and between screenings I had to mop this very floor clean every day? I am happy such traditions are still being followed by the workers here.’

Ek duje ke liye 2

Kamal was deeply humbled, not merely by knowing this fact, but more by the casual way in which this great man had mentioned it to him. The film also got S.P. Balasubrahmanyam the National Award for the Best Playback Singer. This foray by a Southern artiste into the Hindi heartland was very significant, for it soon opened the doors for Yesudas, Chitra and others. The Hindi belt had found the Southern accent agreeable to its ears. This cross-cultural influx would continue—youngsters such as Chennai-based A.R. Rahman went on to make huge inroads into Bollywood even as Hindi playback singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle and Udit Narayan entered recording studios in Chennai and Hyderabad to record Tamil and Telugu songs. A few years and many more films later, Kamal met the legendary L.V. Prasad at the Prasad Studios in Chennai, which now had in its compound a brand new massive 70-mm recording and mixing studio, the first of its kind in Asia. Prasad stroked the side of the big building and told Kamal, ‘This big baby you see is thanks to you and all those who worked on Ek Duuje Ke Liye. I put all the profits that I earned from it back to serve the same film industry that had briefly lost trust in my capabilities to make a successful film!’

Ek duje ke liye 3

Kamal’s elder brother Chandrahasan, one of the producers, was also unconvinced about its fate. ‘With two big names like Kamal and Ilaiyaraaja involved, I could just about begin some business talk but everyone who heard the story was simply unwilling to lend any money.’ In fact, all of Kamal’s well-wishers at that time were very sceptical about this first production venture. Moreover, no actor in his or her right mind would venture into film production to make money since times were bad, they felt. Many in the industry even believed that Kamal was behaving irresponsibly by throwing away his popularity built on the success of his acting career. The films that Kamal did from the mid-1970s had positioned him as an archetype of the young Indian youth wanting to experience his independence through expressions of sexuality. Doing away with the sacred burdens of sacrifice, righteousness and patriotism, valourized by his senior Sivaji Ganesan, here was Kamal positing an appropriate antithesis to him by breaking through the conservatism, not as an indolent and sex-starved adolescent, but like a ‘mature’, thinking adult.

Raajaparvai 1

The last word lies with Rao, who has a way of assessing his work with detachment, unlike other directors: ‘The film was undoubtedly a critical success, had great songs by Ilaiyaraaja, but somehow did not do well at the box office. The reason could be two-fold. One, audiences had got used to seeing Kamal as the glamorous and dancing lover boy. And so it was a big risk on our part to put him in a sort of unsentimental, serious role like this. Two, the film was not an “achievement” story. It did not give the hero a certain goal to pursue. Even his interest in Madhavi is seen more at the level of wanting a companion. So his running away with the girl at the end of the film was not probably what the audience expected in terms of heroics. The film was more typical of the “slice-of-life” film genre.’ But was Kamal exploring the reality of Tamil people at that time? When cineastes would ask Kamal what, according to him, would be a successful film, he often said, ‘The success of a film cannot be measured by its box-office revenue but the way in which the film stays in the memories of its audiences much after the film has exited from its exalted status on the silver screen. You just have to ask a fellow Tamilian and I can assure you he would not have forgotten Raja Paarvai.’

Raajaparvai 2

Today when I revisit Sakalakala Vallavan, however, I can look at it very differently. I am able to contextualize the statement by its director S.P. Muthuraman who told me, ‘I had to work hard to convince Kamal to act in a formula film like Sakalakala Vallavan and make him realize the importance of restoring the star value of an actor. After all, we were both part and parcel of the same context, which nurtured us. Kamal’s first film, Kalathur Kannamma, when he was five years old, was also my first film as an assistant director when I was seventeen. We owed each other a certain right to enter the cinematic limelight!’ Let’s ask ourselves. What is a film driven by a star? This narrative of artists traipsing through commercial/popular art forms is now, for me and I am sure for many other scholars, a site which reveals the complex socio-political layers of any nation’s popular culture. Yet, why do India’s mainstream films get so maligned when compared to Hollywood’s popular cinema? How are they able to celebrate and seriously discuss their popular films and stars like Robert De Niro or Brad Pitt? Rewind and we shall know that this did not happen by chance but thanks to a concerted move by the Hollywood studio moguls in the 1940s to attack the censorship laws being imposed by the state. Studio owners like George Cukor convinced Iris Barry, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that she should buy copies of good Hollywood films and preserve them like other works of ar...

Sakalakala vallavan

In the public discourse, Kamal has always maintained his position as an atheist of a playful sort. ‘I never said I do not believe in God. I only said that I wished there was a God up there!’ With the Tamil landscape being literally packed with temples, mosques, churches, where stars have a fiercely ritualistic fan base cutting across all religions, Kamal is walking a tightrope. If he ever hurts the sentiments of his fans and loses his grip on their imagination, he could fall off that tightrope in an instant for good. Kamal sides with the rationalism of the early Dravidian movement and its patron saint E.V. Ramasamy Naicker or Periyar, who was a serious and vociferous atheist. His religious audiences cannot snap their ties with Periyar, their political patron saint, and at the same time, they cannot desert their icon, Kamal, whom they have nurtured as a symbol of popular Tamil cultural identity ever since he offered his prayers to Lord Muruga as a five-year-old child actor in Kalathur Kannamma. He is part of their imaginary set of icons/leaders, enshrined as the various heroic characters he’s played onscreen. Other icons include Sivaji Ganesan, MGR, Nagesh and Gemini Ganesan. Having acted with all of them, Kamal is seen as having been blessed by these patriarchs. The audience still expects him to break conventions and move forward, as would be typical of any heroic force.

Kamal periyar 2

Kamal never made such a wordless, nameless, plotless film again but with Singeetam Srinivasa Rao at the helm, he would go on to make many more comedy films, which would establish him as the superstar of the Southern masses. Though the film was meant for an all-India audience, the exhibition strategy had to be done in a localized state-wise manner. The rule says that a talkie has to be in a certain language. Therefore, in order to release this wordless film all over India, it was certified the same year by the censor board multiple times, in all Indian languages, with titles changed and new censor certificates issued in all languages! A comedy within a comedy! Pushpaka Vimana was the Kannada name, Pushpaka Vimanam in Malayalam, Pesum Padam in Tamil and Pushpak in Hindi; and, in the most ludicrous twist to this filmic experience, the film received the Filmfare Award for the best Kannada film that year and the National Award for the ‘most wholesome entertainment of the year’. In almost every city that this film released, it celebrated a minimum run of a hundred days. And such a film has never been made again in India. This was a species which became endangered immediately after its birth!

Pushpak

The 1980s were also the years when Kamal was releasing a film every month. Every town in Tamil Nadu had one of his films in the cinemas all the time. As a producer, this could seriously tell on the quality of the films in terms of attention to details such as make-up and set décor. The directors would have to rely on poorly paid art directors and craftsmen. Adding to this tension was the fact that Kamal’s second production, a big-budget sci-fi venture titled Vikram (1986) suffered on both critical and commercial fronts. His company had to comfort the distributors who had shouldered the risk of such an ambitious film. Selecting a proven hit like Arjun for a remake must have also provided the encouragement for financiers to invest in his third production. Yet again, this film was not going to be a family drama or a comic caper for it involved a lot of action scenes and crowded sequences requiring a lot of sets, props and explosions. That’s probably why the good old ‘remake’ strategy works, since the matrix has already been properly pre-developed by someone else. It seems like all one has to do is simply copy most of the shots from the old film with the necessary indigenization to make it look new and ‘Tamil’. But a closer look will reveal the complicated journey that an idea like Arjun would have gone through to manifest itself as Sathya. The writer in Kamal was very clear about constructing the protagonist’s agency and how to make the audience invest in the eponymous primar...

Kamal Satya

The film went on the floor with P.C. Sriram at the camera and Ilaiyaraaja doing the music, and had a grand muhurat, where some of the biggest dignitaries of the film industry came to see producer Kamal acting in his own film as a dwarf. Undoubtedly unconventional! However, after about ten days of shooting, everybody felt uncomfortable, realizing that this film was simply not working. Was it going to be another Raaja Paarvai about a physically challenged person struggling through the challenges of life? That’s when they took the story to a fine script doctor/confidante, Panchu Arunachalam, who was also a well-known producer and director. Panchu had written some of Kamal’s earlier hits like Sakalakala Vallavan and was reputed to correctly gauge the pulse of the Tamil audience. So, he heard the whole story and asked, ‘What does this wonderful and unusual hero achieve at the end of the film? Will audiences want to see Kamal lose?’ And without changing the destiny of the dwarf he came up with two solutions—the first, to give a strong motive to the dwarf of seeking revenge on the crooks who poisoned his mother and killed his father; the second, to provide the dwarf’s twin brother the scope to provide the glamour quotient necessary in a movie starring Kamal.

Aboorva sagodharargal

Thanks to the fateful discussion with Panchu on that day, Apoorva Sagodharargal went on to make box-office history all over India. What was destined to be a ‘non-achiever flop’ became a tremendous success, not merely in Tamil but also in Hindi and Telugu. The openness with which good filmmakers like Panju Arunachalam and Kamal function by exchanging ideas and other resources is the strength of our film industry. Kamal always takes great pains to finalize the characterization of his roles. There are two areas he focuses upon. One is his ‘get-up’ and the second is the voice culture, also called the ‘slang’ of that character. Most of the big stars, including stalwarts such as Sivaji Ganesan, NTR and Ranga Rao, would simply absorb the character, develop a few gestures and behave as if they were that character. And they were very effective in portraying a variety of roles and ages without much work on their facial make-up or their voice and accents. But Kamal is not like that. He provides a unique dimension and, without doubt, the audience notices all the nuances that he adds by working upon himself.

Aboorva sagodharargal 2

‘When I conceived the idea for Hey Ram,’ recalls Kamal, ‘it was developed like a crime thriller on the lines of The Day of the Jackal (1973). But after several readings, I felt that the approach of empathizing with the anxieties of Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, was very reactionary. I changed it around completely and made the story get some respect for the protagonist. Undoubtedly, the film got me a lot of respect, but it flopped. It’s then that you realize that perceiving one’s work is different from the reality of filmmaking, namely, this business of producing films and buying/selling tickets at the box office is not about respect.’

Hey ram

Was the ultra-disciplined Saket Ram another facet of Gandhi? Whose India was and is this anyway? Which of these visual layers/landscapes truly represent India? The oft-repeated saga of Hindu–Muslim antagonism becomes the primary dramatic conflict zone for this film. While most narratives play up the minority card and often show Muslims as peace-loving and religious, this film tries to see what transforms an ordinary Hindu into a fundamentalist. And this fundamentalist Hindu wants to kill Gandhi, another Hindu, for not being able to stop the Partition, which racked the nation from August to November 1947. Bringing a twist to the tale in the climax is Saket Ram’s Muslim archeologist, Amjad Khan, who has chosen to live in Delhi as a genuine Gandhi follower instead of migrating to Pakistan. Shah Rukh Khan was so impressed by the vision of the film that he refused to charge a penny for his performance as Amjad, instead deeming it an honour to get an opportunity to work with a legend like Kamal.

Hey ram 2

Shortly after Partition, Saket Ram is able to meet up with his beloved colleague Amjad but gets trapped in Amjad’s locality and is forced to fire upon Hindu militants who want to attack the Muslim ghetto. Credit must be given here to the meticulous attention given to the set décor by Sabu Cyril and his rapport with the cinematographer, Thiru. Together they brought alive a period which very few films have paid attention to. The architecture of Amjad Khan’s home and basement strangely resembles the Mohenjo Daro site, emphasizing the crucial narrative purpose of the film—a story can merely unearth some findings, but it depends upon the people who unearth it to decipher the codes etched into it. In short, the saga of the Mahatma’s assassination can be unearthed, but it depends on the viewers to determine its significance. At a cultural level of this conundrum, the narrative tries to deconstruct Saket Ram’s Hindu space. At first, he belongs to a secular space, which allows him to marry his beloved with simple marital vows and no religious ceremonies; after her rape and death, the subsequent marriage with Mythili, a lady from a Hindu feudal household, has no element of ‘choice’ and is formalized with a ritual-bound ceremony. Then he makes an intoxicating entry into the politicized all-male world of Hindutva, where the gun is supreme. All three events are further discussed below.

Hey ram 3

The music in the film was designed to play a crucial role. Kamal initially selected the renowned violinist L. Subramaniam. Not much used to composing music for films, Subramaniam struggled, using up hours of precious recording studio time. A few songs did get ready, but Kamal was not too convinced of their emotional power. So Subramaniam and Kamal parted ways and he went back to his old friend Ilaiyaraaja. This kind of substitution had never happened in Ilaiyaraaja’s career, but for Kamal’s sake, he stepped in and did something which no other musician could have done. He retained the original voice tracks but replaced the melodic music track arrangements to evoke the right mood to seduce audiences into the multiple layers hidden in the film. To give it even more depth, Ilaiyaraaja went to Hungary and had the music performed by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, a feat never before

Hey ram 4

The father dies outside while the mother delivers his child inside. Saket Ram’s ego is shattered when he hears the wails of the widowed wife overlapped by the cries of the newborn. And with those cries, his long surreal journey is over and the original Saket Ram is born again to share space with Amjad, who has fallen victim to a militant’s bullet. Amjad dies with a smile, holding the arms of his comrade, his brother Ram. From Indus Valley to Azad Soda Factory, it has been a torturous journey for all Indians and in the film, Saket Ram is just one among the millions who has been affected. On 30 January 1948, a repentant Saket Ram arrives at the Birla House to ask for forgiveness. In a brilliantly scripted scene, Saket meets the Mahatma along with the family of the slain Amjad Khan, who feel so touched in the presence of a great leader. Gandhi expresses his embarrassment at being called a ‘Mahatma’ and praises Ram’s valour for saving a Muslim family from assassins. ‘Even you are a Mahatma, my Ram,’ he says. Saket is unable to tell him his real background but can only say that he is not worthy of such acknowledgement. The film comes back briefly to the surreal coincidence of three times and spaces. An ashamed Ram watches the Mahatma walk to his prayer meet; the old, dying Ram is trapped in the 1992 crossfire of Hindu–Muslim riots; the British overseer at the Mohenjo-Daro site in 1947 tells Ram that it is pack-up time. Cut back to the present—the next day Ram comes back with te...

Hey ram 5

Who is this Ram supposed to be anyway? What is so sacred about this icon that it enshrines so many codes of conduct, notions of governance and other values attached to social relationships for the vast majority of Indians? Can Ram, the mythological sacred image, overpower the potential of a real character’s saga onscreen with all the emotions packed in? Dozens of film reviewers, commentators and scholars have, of course, discussed and deconstructed the film. Ravi Vasudevan reads the film as a giant digital game, while others have rapped it as a blatantly right-wing partisan film. A few have lamented about why the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) never protested the depiction of one of their fellows being shown as a cold-blooded assassin. Often when I read their cries about the lack of historicity and rationality in dramatic films, I wonder whether they know how to watch films in the first place as another artistic recreation with a lot of imagination mixed in with some local specifics. Films like Hey Ram evolve on the sets in highly organic ways with multiple contributors and cannot/should not be ascribed to one filmmaker’s intentionality.

Hey ram 6

And, like many of his experimental ventures, Aalavandhan left the audiences puzzled, wondering what just happened to their icon who had spun a superhit comedy titled Thenali (2000) just a few months earlier. The box-office response for this film was just lukewarm. And yet, after over twenty years of its inception, the film is remembered and even fiercely discussed. Many years later, Quentin Tarantino would see the film somewhere and decide to use the style of intercutting between 2D animations of action sequences with the live action version of the same scene in his films.2

Aalavandhan

Audiences left the theatres perplexed and deeply disturbed. It reminded them that there is a Nandu lurking in each one of us. But do Indian audiences like to be reprimanded, to be told that their silence makes them accomplices to the dystopia that they are living in? Unlike Indian, this film was a complete failure. Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy’s music could do nothing to elevate the phantasmagorical quality desperately needed. The graphics seemed to demand much more in terms of resources to look striking enough. Yet this film told the viewers the truth of their Tamil ecosystem and revealed their inabilities to challenge it. On par with the macabrish power of the theme song from The Phantom of the Opera, the film is still remembered for Kamal’s rendition of a song about the spectre that haunts the Tamil mindscape, ‘Half demon, half divine concocted together am I Animal in the open God while indoors an incomprehensible endless poem am I.’

Aalavandhan 2

A question that Kamal faces at almost every interview is, ‘Sir, you have a rather complex disposition towards God. Do you believe in the existence of God or not?’ He always replies that he has never said that God does not exist, but that he only wishes a god had existed! Kamal’s young audiences feel that he is truly cool, while the senior intelligentsia, however agnostic they may be, feel that a superstar like him should not misguide the young generation with such blasphemous remarks! In 2002, after giving three big comedy hits in a row—Thenali (2000), Pammal K. Sambandam (2002) and Panchathantiram (2002)—Kamal was about to ruffle some feathers again. The process started innocuously enough, with him announcing a new film to be directed by Sundar C., widely reputed for making successful comedies. Producers backed it because they firmly believed that it was impossible to go wrong with Kamal, the most powerful Tamil film icon of the twenty-first century, as often acknowledged by his dear friend Rajinikanth.

Anbe sivam

From the screenplay’s structural point of view, the film makes no attempt to define what the main protagonist’s motive or goal is. Sivam is depicted as an ugly yet funny person with a scarred face and crooked teeth, who wears thick glasses and limps. Recalls Madan, the dialogue writer, ‘You should have seen the excitement on his face when the mask arrived. It would show him as a person with a scar wearing big, high-powered spectacles. He opened the package like a kid unwrapping a birthday present, took the mask into the anteroom and in five minutes emerged with the new look. I could not believe my eyes—there really was a transformation. Was he the same Kamal?’

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Throughout the film we also see Sivam devoting his time to the labour wing of a communist party by staging provocative street plays (a tribute to the brilliant stage actor and director, late Safdar Hashmi) which criticize Kandaswamy, a big factory owner, for underpaying and exploiting his labourers. Considering the long history of the communist parties in India, one must admit that our left-wing leadership has completely ignored the potential of popular culture and the aesthetic use of the media. The founding communist party did have an autonomous theatre wing called the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), virtually defunct now, but as far as cinema is concerned, the party was simply blind to its potential. Was this Kamal’s way to provoke the left wing to do something about recognizing the significant role that performance arts can play, especially in a diverse nation such as India? Coming back to the film, we see that Balasaraswathi, the young love interest, played by Kiran Rathod, happens to be the daughter of the factory owner Kandaswamy, the ‘heartless’ capitalist played brilliantly by Nasser. The daring Bala gets Sivam to paint a giant mural on a wall in her father’s office lobby. Kamal pays tribute to Diego Riviera by imbuing the mural with various symbols chastising the capitalists for their cold-blooded attitude towards the working class.

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The critically injured Sivam is taken to a nearby Christian hospital. Can and will he choose to live or die? Will the world outside manage to save him, or can some evil forces prevail and terminate him? The cruel Kandaswamy also comes to the hospital to snuff him out but decides to let fate take its course when the doctor tells him that Sivam has only 10 per cent chances of survival. Kandaswamy traces his daughter in Kerala and informs her that Sivam died in the tragic bus accident. In the background plays an austere song sung by Kamal himself, which declares Sivam to be the follower of unbridled compassion and nothing else. An angelic old nurse nourishes him selflessly and treats him lovingly to move on to the less-travelled path. A few months later, when he recovers enough to be able to move independently, the first thing he does is to adopt that stray dog on the hillside. When he goes next to meet Bala, her father is shocked that the 10 per cent chance given by the doctor actually worked for Sivam. When Sivam expresses his desire to meet Bala, the father lies that Bala has gone abroad after marriage and is in fact pregnant. Kamal walks away from the comfort zone of the two systems (the labour union and Bala), quite unperturbed like the Buddha,

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Dialogue writer Madan admits, ‘It was Kamal’s dream and vision all the way. He was less a highly trained symphony conductor and more like a mom at home who can put together a delicious meal in the most casual of ways. I don’t recollect him quoting the Buddha or any other philosopher to make his point of view clear to every member of the crew. With his gentle persuasion, he could get everyone on location to bring out their best!’ In a recent interview, director Sundar C. was asked about how he got involved in such a complex film. ‘I got a call from Kamal’s production house to come over for a meeting,’ he recalls. ‘I was clueless about the intent. When I reached there, I was taken to Kamal’s room and I did not anticipate that he was going to discuss the screenplay he had written for this film with me as the proposed director. I was dumbstruck when he started narrating the screenplay in detail. It was just me and Kamal in the room and just that was enough to make me so thrilled that I almost felt like announcing to the busy world outside that I was being considered to be a part of this great legend’s project. That meeting is still so memorable!’

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Among the many details entrenched in this film, it is important to note two rather insignificant characters. They help us understand the larger philosophical context of Anbe Sivam. The first one is the stray dog, which Kamal adopts as his own son. Through this trope, Kamal chooses not to abandon the worldly animal instinctual drive as would have happened in a typical Buddhist mode. Instead, he adopts the Bhakti model which believes that the test of human endurance lies in its ability to deal with the existential while also realizing a higher mode of redemption. To make this more understandable, Sivam insists on taking the dog along with him in the car and asks Arasu, ‘Is it not interesting that dog is god when spelt in reverse?’ And a vexed Arasu snaps back, ‘Do you have to see some extraneous symbolism in everything that you encounter?’ The second and more significant aspect of the film is its discourse on God itself. Sensing Sivam’s rather cynical nature, Arasu asks, ‘Are you an atheist?’ and Sivam replies, ‘I have never said that. For me you are God. Just look at how you helped a complete stranger by donating your precious blood. I see God in that act done by you. It’s as simple as that.’ Arasu asks, ‘Then what about you?’ and Sivam casually replies, ‘I am also God.’ But he does not go on to elaborate how he too had helped a stranger like Arasu with no motive or desire to get anything out of it.

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Sivam arrives with Arasu at the marriage hall where Arasu is to marry his bride. This is when he realizes that the bride is actually his beloved Bala and that her father had lied to her as well, telling her that Sivam had died in the road accident. As he is about to walk away and let the marriage take place with no disturbance, the guilty father Kandaswamy spots him and drags him into a room, begging him not to mess things up. Sivam chooses this opportune moment and warns him of dire consequences if he does not sign the workers’ wage revision before the wedding takes place. Finding himself in a spot, Kandaswamy agrees. The union leaders assemble quickly and the deal is signed as we see Arasu walk away from the marriage hall.

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The evil Kandaswamy sends his henchman to follow him with a big machete and assassinate him on a lonely street. Sivam senses the presence of a stalker, turns around and stops, willing to die. The henchman comes close but drops his big machete as his eyes well up in tears. ‘It was I,’ he says, ‘as a loyal dog to my master, who wanted to kill you in the hospital. I had nothing to do with you and yet I wanted to terminate you. And fate chose to take my precious daughter away in return a few months later. Now I want you to do me one last favour. Please go far away and disappear. If my boss comes to know that I have not killed you, he will surely shoot me dead. I want to live and only you can give me back my life.’ Sivam says calmly, ‘Go on, I shall let you live.’ With that he limps away into the sunset, no plans or agenda in mind, his adopted stray dog accompanying him. Was he making that statement to the large number of his beloved audience who had chosen to stay away from the cinema theatres showing this film? Or was this Kamal’s way of stating that if Chaplin was alive, this is how he would have ended his film, walking away into the sunset? Madan recalls, ‘Three days after the release, I got a call from Kamal. He sounded deeply disappointed that the film was not doing well. Like Sivam, he had to move on without trying to do any post-mortem. I could only say, like most journalists, that this film should have been released by working a bit more on the promotional drive to get...

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He says, ‘It is untrue that Kamal is not conscious of audience expectations. In fact, the entire flashback with the suave moustachioed street-theatre dancer romancing with a pretty girl on a swing and later fighting off a horde of goons with an umbrella à la Jackie Chan was all done with an eye on the expectations at the commercial window.’ Many years later Madan would interview Kamal for a TV channel on his achievements, to which Kamal replied, ‘One cannot blame the world outside for one’s failures. I should have made such films ten to fifteen years (before 2003) when I was bursting with such themes and the audiences were ready for unique experiments. For example, I should have made Chachi 420 (1997) and Avvai Shanmughi (1996) much earlier. I should have had the guts like a K. Balachander or Bharathiraja to storm the walls of a conservative market. Working under massive market compulsions, I have just hesitated too much. And as a result, I can claim to have achieved just about 25 per cent of what I set out to do.’ Despite his apologetic tone, the theme song of Anbe Sivam, sung by Kamal and composed brilliantly by Vidyasagar to sound like the Gregorian chants of a Catholic church, continues to ring in every Tamil mind to date, as a nostalgic relook at the atheistic precepts left behind by Periyar and his modern interpretations of Catholicism and Marxism. Madan’s brilliant dialogues are still recited by Tamil cinephiles and quoted by young progressive writers.

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Looking back, we realize that it is to empower the scene where the selfish Arasu witnesses the agony of the injured masses being helped by the small number of medical staff led by a missionary nurse and this transforms his attitude and faith towards the world at large. Eras come and go and like many bewildered humans, Kamal continues to wonder about the grip that religion and godhood holds over the multitudes inhabiting this planet. The film Anbe Sivam may not have been successful for a variety of reasons, but the large number of madly passionate South Indian filmmakers that this film triggered off, post 2003, is testament to the fact that contemporary Tamil cinema is probably the most vibrant and experimental of them all.

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Virumandi truly heralded the new ‘new wave’ of Tamil cinema in the twenty-first century. Young filmmakers from M. Sasikumar to Shanmugha Raja aka Mysskin, from Prabhu Solomon to Vetri Maaran, all confess that this one film gave them the courage to go back to their grass/caste roots and catch the Dravidian bull by its horns, quite like the way Bharathiraja summoned the courage in 1975 to launch a frontal attack on conventional Tamil cinema with 16 Vaiyadhinale. From playing the blundering Chapaani in that film to playing the crazy dimwit Virumandi in this one, it has indeed been a long journey for Kamal. With Virumandi, not only did Kamal interrogate his own filmic journey but he also tried to tell the saga of Tamil citizens at multiple levels. In the opening sequence, interestingly, the film questions the Indian judiciary’s continuing endorsement for the death penalty, based on evidence provided mainly by the police and television news. This so-called objectivity is supposed to prove that the point of view of any complainant or defendant will always be limited, not just because of the very experiential nature involved but also because of the varied sociocultural contexts that colour our perspectives through the media. In this manner, the death penalty seems to get justified.

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The twist in this story is the fact that Virumandi, this powerful sandiyar or bully, has his own point of view, which sees him as innocent of all the crimes he is accused of, having transformed himself into a pacifist thanks to the sweet words of his beloved. What does this woman signify in this film? Why does this character have to listen to her? We will discuss it a bit later. Let’s get to the structure first. The narration begins with Kothala’s recollection about the caste-ridden machismo of his village, where Virumandi rules the roost at the local bullfight event. Then comes the rather complex sequence of several flashbacks, where Virumandi mourns for his grandmother, refuses to part with his newly inherited agricultural lands, his ‘needless’ rhetoric about being a farmer committed to his soil, his incessant drinking, his angry outburst at the panchayat meeting with Nallama Naicker, finally leading to the massacre after which Virumandi abducts Annalakshmi to escape the police.

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The film’s poster portrays the three lead actors—Kamal, Pasupathy and Napoleon—as playing equal roles in terms of the narrative scale. Somewhere it seems Napoleon has been truncated, possibly because he is the odd man out, having given up violence and thereby chosen to be the usual village headman. The story is akin to a Chekhovian narrative where one begins with certain preconceived ideas of morality and identities revolve around behavioural and societal levels of violence. Quite akin to Munshi Premchand’s rural stories, the narrators in this film too begin with the premise that certain rustic castes have a propensity to settle internecine conflicts through acts of violence, in the same way that Kurosawa’s samurais draw swords at the drop of a hat. The narrative works on the primary premise that caste in India dominates over one’s religion and the resultant behavioural characteristics of individuals in the context of their caste are almost part of their DNA. The issue of caste often escapes conscious logic and in modern independent and secular India, everyone aspires to rise to the level of the dominant upwardly mobile caste in their specific environ.

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This film is certainly one of the most powerful commentaries on the Indian caste system, where ‘typical’ memories and behavioural tendencies are perpetuated as if they are socially valid norms; where caste bonds are often stronger than bonds of one’s own blood. Transgressing caste lines, especially by the poor, can often be tantamount to crime. Somehow the affluent and Westernized Indian seems to have forgotten about these inviolable lines and from his/her point of view considers them regressive and even inhuman. The roots of Virumandi’s conundrum goes back to 1911 when several castes and tribes were notified as ‘Criminal Castes and Tribes’ so that the Salvation Army could step in and reform them with schools for the young and useful jobs for the elders. For such progressive Indians who framed these laws and continue to enforce them, Kamal chooses to question and interrogate the depths of what constitutes ‘real’ politics prevailing in Tamil society. How do we give up this prejudice and erase the idea that there are castes who are intuitively ‘wedded’ to ‘specialize’ in crime? The film seems to also express that this ‘killer’ complex, which somehow permeates even among the affected castes, should be removed. It is only in a society where the ‘outside’ perceiver and those perceiving from the ‘inside’ coalesce into a single unit that we can hope for peace and tolerance.

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Recalling this incident, Kamal said in an interview, ‘She [Jayalalithaa] has been watching me, my political stands and seen me as a potential threat. I didn’t realize this, probably because I was naïve.’ With the entire publicity build-up and release expenses down the drain, producer Ravichandran hoped that the sequel, which had already been agreed upon, would bring in some new financiers to compensate. The National Awards for Best Choreography and Set Design were small morale boosters, though, but not enough. The original plan was to start the sequel immediately, since Kamal had canned quite some footage for Vishwaroopam 2 during the earlier shooting. Since the sequel required a lot more money, the producers put the project on pause to raise fresh funds. It was tough. ‘I can raise more money only when I show my face on-screen and not across a negotiating table. At the same time, artistes also have the responsibility to sensitize and not sensationalize!’ Kamal would say. Kamal released Uttama Villain (2015), followed by Papanasam (2015) (a remake of Drishyam [2013]) and Thoonga Vanam (2016) in quick succession while his brother Chandrahasan was raising money for the sequel to Vishwaroopam. With very limited funds, he decided to keep his promise to Ravichandran, raised the necessary funds, took over production and directed Viswaroopam 2 himself, which released in 2018.

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Analysing Uttama Villain, which translates as ‘The Good Villain’ from the Dumasian angle, is therefore also about exploring an oxymoron—does the hero sometimes wear the mask of a villain? Can a good character deliberately choose to play his own evil twin? So, were director Ramesh Aravind, music director Gibran and cameraman Shamdat ready to meet all the challenges laid down by Kamal and the producers? To engage with such a narrative, screenwriter Kamal starts out by telling the story of a successful film star, aptly named Manoranjan (entertainment) played by him. This star is married to Varalakshmi (Urvashi, his co-star in many other films) and is the son-in-law of an equally successful producer, Poornachandra Rao (played by Kamal’s Telugu cinema mentor, K. Viswanath). At the pinnacle of his success, two skeletons roll out of the closet. He discovers that he has a daughter born out of wedlock with another woman with whom he was in a relationship before his marriage and who is now dead, and that inside his body lurks a malignant cancer that will kill him shortly.

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The successful star Manoranjan commences the production of a film within this film, based on the folk/Puranic story of how Vishnu takes on the avatar of Narasimha, half-man and half-lion, to eliminate a cruel king called Hiranyakashyapa who was torturing a young devotee called Prahlad. From here the film goes on a roller-coaster ride intertwining with developments in Manoranjan’s life—a young psychoanalyst, Dr Arpana (Andrea Jeremiah) who comes to counsel him; his co-star in the film, Karpagavalli (Pooja Kumar), who develops a soft corner for him; his children despising him for his vagrancies; the neurosurgeon who keeps warning him about his failing health; and his mentor egging him on to complete the film. The stylistics of Dumas’s The Man in the Iron Mask dominate the form of this film. Kamal decided to incorporate the traditional Keralite masked folk-dance style called Theiyam into his role. With some splendid make-up and costumes, the narration woven into the background score and songs composed by music director Ghibran, leaves the viewer spellbound. While the film ends with the hero dying of brain cancer and his mentor Margadarshi completing his final film, in reality, it was the opposite. K. Balachander did not live long enough to see the completed version of this film. He passed away on 23 December 2014, bringing an end to an amazing innings in Indian cinema. His son Bala Kailasam, a brilliant documentary filmmaker and TV producer, had also passed away a few months ...

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appreciation for Kamal’s efforts. It was their tribute to him. Kamal