By Aman Basha
This time, revisiting or taking advantage of a great text format found in this blog’s archives
- At the start of 2024, I’d never have imagined to see the man, Mr. Cinema himself, become the butt of jokes and memes on the internet, first for his now legendary yapping that sent co-interviewee Rehman to sleep and next for his much hyped reunion with Mani Ratnam. Much ink and tears have spilled on that misfire, and I’ll spare the readers any more words on it (although that kuthu muthu mazhai is a blast).
- Truth be told, I enjoyed the memes and jokes a bit too much. Kamal’s absurd contention of making people forget Nayagan (they did, because now he was the star of Thug Life) had it coming, although the Malak bit was an old tongue slip, claiming Kalam spelled in reverse meant Kamal (Malak has to be the most inventive celeb nickname though) 🙂
- To forget Malak, and remember Kamal, and mostly pass time during a boring summer, I went on a random Kamal movie binge. The anecdotes and wisecracks in the Apoorva Singeetam series were a greater impetus.
- Singeetam is a most curious director, finding his greatest success in his second decade. Some would take this as proof that he was yet another chair warmer for Kamal, but even without Kamal, the witty old man did make a time travel adventure in the 90s, with Balayya no less, that bore little influence from Back to the Future.
- But what is one to make of the credits Kamal bore in these films, from screenplay to actor to producer, and how quintessentially Kamal Haasan these films are? I suspect that Singeetam’s role in these proceedings, and one to which Kamal is visibly grateful, is to ensure that Kamal never ceased in creating a sense of wonder among his audience. It’s amusing to notice that Kamal’s idea for Apoorva Sagodharargal and Singeetam’s idea for Pushpak were initially tragedies till they both decided to have fun. Both clearly brought out the best and most fun out of each other. Singeetam’s dark sense of humor, for one, never found a better avenue than Kamal’s films.
- Watching these assortment of films, from Rama Shama Bhama to Apoorva Sagodharargal to Virumaandi, I wonder if the versatility of Kamal the writer has been undersold. To be the same mind behind the corpse fight in Magalir Mattum (one of the zaniest moments I have seen) to the umbrella fight in Anbe Sivam and the Annalakshmi romance in Virumaandi, is insane.
- A contention among Kamal critics is that Kamal the actor is a very affected performer, shining best in “special” roles like Guna, Senapathy or Appu but is not very natural when playing more normal characters. Color me surprised, for when I watched Apoorva Sagodharargal, I ended up enjoying the hell out of Kamal’s Raja, how he keeps bumping into Gautami (to the detriment of his car), eventually romancing her and a corpse on a truck. Incidentally, it’s interesting that two villains are named Anbarasu and Nalla Shivam, an Anbe Sivam double murder by the dwarf Appu.
- Appu is an absolute great, especially in the portions where he bullies his hapless sibling, but those Kamal critics should really watch this and more importantly, Saagar, a typical love triangle elevated purely by Ramesh Sippy’s filmmaking and Kamal’s extraordinary performance to get the gist of Kamal’s brilliance.
- A shallower observation through these films is just how much Kamal seems to enjoy, apart from being beaten up, being in a state of constant undress. Perhaps it’s a deliberate choice to show more body than any female lead, to the point of being in his drawers in even a throwaway scene to nothing more than a loincloth in the Marudhanayagam clip. There’s only Ranbir today who is taking forward that part of the Kamal legacy.
- A more serious observation from these films, one that I did not find anywhere else, is the void of the mother that dominates these narratives. Kamal’s own mother, who dearly loved this late spring of a child, passed away before Kamal hit any heights in his career, and thus the mother figure in Kamal films is conspicuous by its absence, from Thevar Magan to his directorals, Hey Ram and Virumaandi whose protagonists wrest with the trauma of a motherless childhood and Vishwaroopam, where a mother exists, only with no memory and recognition of her son. Why, even Abhirami in Thug Life suffers from the same Asthma that plagued Kamal’s mother.
- Speaking of Abhirami, I have to confess that no other movie in my life perhaps has so grown on me in a second watch as Virumaandi. The first watch left me baffled at its reception, as it came across as another rural set, sickle included revenge drama with a Rashomon structure that explicitly favors its protagonist.
- This time around, I was blown around by how well constructed the screenplay is, fragmenting incidents into halves and playing them at separate points of the narrative to represent two different perspectives. One perspective is explicitly favored, as the film is not an ambiguous narrative like Talvar, but an explicit political statement against capital punishment. Virumaandi being Lokesh’s favorite Kamal film is no surprise, given how inventively its action sequences are staged, especially in the jail riot where water pipes become clubs, toilets become cannon balls and spires are flung as spears.
- Hey Ram’s greatness grabs you immediately, by want of its classic making style, theme and taking but Virumaandi, the film and character, are deeper than they appear. Kamal’s assertion of Virumaandi having a better flow as screenplay is also true, featuring a better formed lead character and a more organic animal association with the bull than the elephant metaphor in Hey Ram. I only had my mind blown even further as I read up on the socio-political context and religious metaphor Kamal weaved in here.
- For an artist so rewarding with every examination, it is disappointing that there is only one book that critically assesses his filmography. It’s even amusing to note this book, about an artist never too shy to hijack a platform for his pet peeves, is similarly hijacked as an exhibition for the author’s pet film theory.
- It is enjoyable to read these postulations in the context of Balachander, but by the time Sivayya from Swati Mutyam is supposed to be an NTR stand-in, the contortion is too much to take, leaving the book an unsatisfying read. Reading brief nuggets of a young Kamal and his childhood heightens the disappointment, as a conventional biography may have been a better option.
- All hopes are not lost, for there is Baradwaj Rangan who, I hope, fills in this void with a book for the ages, so that his bibliography can be the Kamal-Mani double cinephiles were promised and fans deserved.