Dasavatharam review and the trip

First the review and then about the trip. A few surprises in the trip section!

---Possible spoilers below----

Q. Why did Kamal make Dasavatharam?
A. Go ask him.

Q. What does Kamal try to convey through this film?
A. I presume you're on your way to Kamal's house; you might as well ask this also.

With my friends Rj, Nr and Sr giving scathing feedback, don't expect anything positive here.

Dasavatharam is about Kamal's ten roles which are tied together by a script which tries to inculcate religion, fate and some science. In the former(roles) the film succeeds; the latter is unflattering.

Full credit to Kamal for his portrayal in all the roles; Though his voice rendition may not be good, his acting surpassed standards such that you could dismiss them for a separate actor. The screenplay definitely slows down because of dialogue delivery; the action scenes were impressive and different.

I must mention one awesome piece of improvisation: in the scene when Poovaragavan is drowning, there is no water involved in the shooting - it is air being blown on him, which gives the effect of flowing water. Of course, all his makeup would have been undone if that scene had been really filmed underwater.

My junior Bk warned me that some of his friends had hated Asin; how true he was.

Consider someone dragging their nails across a blackboard; her antics and mannerisms proved as irritating, ultimately. Screech, screech, screech was all she said throughout the film save the final frames. I don't blame Asin; it's whoever described that role to her.

Ultimately I want to know what I am supposed to comprehend and instill in my thoughts from this movie? I could think of only this: Kamal is justifying the tsunami. By claiming that this act might have thwarted an even larger catastrophe, he says losing a few thousand lives is bearable when compared to the millions that could have been lost.

Why does he say this? The movie is peppered with his philosophy - that of an atheist and that he accepts God for the sake of others - which brings to my mind the temple scene from Sigappu Rojakkal(there is a YouTube clip of it).

Speaking of temple, the opening scenes from the 12th century were promising, we thought the movie would have a link to this period and lead to it ultimately... but it didn't. I wonder which river would be just ankle deep, in the middle, and that too a short distance from the sea. They wanted to move the idol from the temple to the ocean; probably dragging it over land would be difficult; so they decided to carry it over a river; but the king also has follow, on his elephant. What to do? Make the river so shallow an elephant can walk but a boat carrying a huge idol won't touch the bottom... Then bring it over to the beach, rather than carry it along with the current to mid-sea, so that there can be a final condemning of the guilty, and carry it on two boats which have amazing control over the waves that they can balance the huge idol between themselves. So cool.....

Don't get me started on the graphics. Not only were they bad in the opening, they were equally awful in the end during the tsunami. I can't come to terms as to why they couldn't make better graphics(the scenes involving multiple Kamals were well done, though).

The next major flaw is the makeup. Applying masks takes a lot of time, but, if you ask me, it wasn't worth it. When we saw the makeup Kamal had for the CIA agent(Fletcher) and Bush, we were very disappointed and would have permanently held our hands to our forehead if it hadn't been for the Naidu avatar. That was the only fitting role-makeup which was passable. Bush was not too convincing; his dialogues tried to reflect the original Bush's much potrayed image of a simpleton.

Segways inside a lab? Are you kidding me? Even if in some corner of the world they are using it, I say it is unnecessary. Maybe in the hallways, yes, but inside a lab, which has so much equipment... no way! Probably they wanted to show the use of Segways(which are wonderful things, by the way) somewhere, and ended up showing them inside this laboratory.

The trick Kamal uses to make sure that he isn't the last guy in the lab while stealing the last vial of virus was well done.

I smiled at the notion of killing off unwanted characters - be it Kamal's colleagues, his friend Ram, Mallika Sherawat or Fletcher's driver. Atleast you don't have to get confused by additional characters.

A tamil song in a posh Vegas hotel.. I definitely wouldn't go there. Looks like a Mr.Q was borrowed from the Bond saga as was Fletcher's appearance from the Terminator. In the scene towards the end where Bush is travelling in a motorcade and waving to people, we were scratching our heads, wondering if we were supposed to believe it was India, because it definitely looked like some foreign country.

Let's see if we can explain the inclusion of the characters in the movie:

Japanese pro: to make an excuse for someone who knew martial arts and who could recognise a tsunami and provide adequate cover when hit happened.

Singing Singh: I don't know. Maybe to include a Sikh and make an excuse for making Himesh the music director

Kalif Ullah: Again, not needed apart from the religious standpoint. Agreed, but, there are several gaffes in the movie: because of his height, he had to be included via computer graphics; this meant the actors in the movie had to imagine him while acting out the primary scenes, making them look up, but this makes so many people look somewhere up but not at Kalif. In simple words the actors didn't end up looking at Kalif but elsewhere. An effort to make a different voice ended up screwing up the already screwed character.

Poovaragavan: Another religious inclusion but didn't make sense. My friends were saying this was a sort of appeasement towards a politician. His role of an activist-cum leader just didn't add up.

Grandmother: Someone short. A wonderfully done role, save the makeup; why she cries in the end over Poovaragavan and why she remains in the jeep when it is in the police station without getting down, is not explained.

By far the best Kamal apart from the original and the 12th century was Naidu. A brilliant reflection of a Gulti-bureaucrat; this provides the comedy relief in the movie, notwithstanding the 'mokkai'(banal talk) between him and Kalif. Another of the mokkai scenes was Kamal vs Kalif vs Asin; my friends would put all Kamal and Asin exchanges in this bracket. Even the slow, comic Naidu couldn't sustain the onscreen charisma he generated initially and became just as tiring as the others.

Now for the politics. Why include JJ, Karunanidhi and Dr. Manmohan in the movie? Maybe including K implied the inclusion of JJ to balance the scales and Dr. Manmohan for a national feel. What's with the stadium in the opening and the ending? A full stadium... for a Kamal speech which made no effort in clearing the doubts we had, a few Tamil words Bush spoke which seriously noone understood. Maybe they all came to see KS Ravikumar dance. On that note P Vasu has done his role well.

With so many politicians, I pray Kamal doesn't have any ideas about entering politics. On the religious side, the idol containing the vial is so badly mistreated in the movie(thrown around, being lassoed by Fletcher,) Nr is predicting numerous legal challenges; I realised it only when he said it, and it could come true given there was a case even before the movie was released.

Reviews across the board have been cautious - The Hindu was a positive one - considering it was out the next day, it may have been purposely made so. Rediff - proved that you have to believe just the opposite of whatever is written there.

Overall, playing ten roles is no mean feat; unfortunately Kamal was let down by makeup, a nagging dialogue, irritating Asin, third grade graphics and unwanted characters.

I would like to quote Nr here: he said, 'Yes, Kamal tied all the loose ends, but there was no need for so many of them.'

Rj was saying that if home was anywhere close by, he would've walked out of the theatre half way through the film.

Sr and the others were so eagerly waiting for the film to get over.. such was the 'torture' of sitting through it, not knowing what bitter dialogues and jokes laid ahead.

Somehow, that excitement we had after Billa was missing. Full marks to the actor Kamal. Nothing for the others.

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The Trip

Long before we decided to go to Cleveland for the movie, and save a last moment mix-up for my ticket, we started off in two cars, discussing about gasoline prices, public transport in between guiding the other car via mobile. First stop was a Shiva-Vishnu temple on the outskirts of the city. After seeking blessings we waited outside, chatting, shooting each other with the cameras, for Sv who arrived with a friend. Meanwhile it was discovered that Sr had forgotten his proof of purchase of tickets, and got them with a little help from Nr and the temple personnel. All the while we debated where to head for a meal and after much deliberation headed to Chipotle.

My first experience there, it was good. We headed right away to the theatre, one and half hours before time, only to be told that the theatre would not be unoccupied anytime soon. And so off we went to the nearby mall, going around the food courts. Bh and Sn ordered ice creams which they couldn't finish, giving Nr the opportunity he was waiting for: free ice cream. Then they disappeared, apparently gone shopping. A good 15 minutes after our planned time of departure we left, only for us to find the theatre brimming with people - we cursed ourselves for not leaving early.

It was then that we noticed two Kollywood personalities: Kasturi(younger Kamal's sister and the older Kamal's daughter in Indian) and Abirami(female lead in Virumandi)! Apparently Abirami is studying Psychology in Wooster, Ohio, and Kasutri was managing the movie release here. I was wondering whether or not to approach them for a snap, but did. Abirami was standing outside, caught in the web of an apparently ardent fan. I wished her and asked her if she could stand for a picture, she obliged, only to be called aside by an elderly lady who asked her about a rumour, which turned out to be an old one(something to do with Gautham Menon?). She also mentioned enjoying the anonymity. Talking her way out of that conversation using my photo-op as an excuse, I took a snap with her; the other 'ardent' fan also took the opportunity and wished me to take his photo and send it to him. I told her I loved her role in Virumandi; she played it down, I said Kamal is always himself, it takes someone else to make a film more special, she played it down yet again; I asked her if she would come back to the industry, she said she would if she got a good role(all retired persons say that). She has put on quite a lot of weight, by the way.

I was happy to have gotten the snaps and showed it around to my friends who were standing in the so-called queue. We waited for Iron Man to get over, and the doors were opened for the crowd to move while the credits were playing, so we got to see the last scene after the credits roll.

Then we got inside and sat in what was to be the second occupied row from the screen. The reel played, but without sound, so they replayed it again with sound, from the beginning. Bh, as he had done in Billa, got up and started dancing for the Kamal entry, making our gang squirm in our seats for being the friends of a crazy guy dancing in the hall.

Before the intermission, during the Mukunda song, I decided to relieve myself, and was joined by Sr(who, as I mentioned, wasn't having a good time). On our way back we saw Kasturi doing a few calculations regarding the movie, the both of us asked one another whether to ask for a photo op. We did, she agreed, letting her hair down, saying 'This is a good time, right,' acknowledging the fact that we were the only people outside the hall, minimising the chance of everyone wanting a photo op. We took two photos each, getting to know that she would be there only for a further one week, while Sr and I told her the university we were from. And so we headed back for the remainder of the film.

Both pictures are on my Orkut profile.

None of us were impressed by Mallika's song(O_o), but were cracking jokes about the characters to kill time during the movie. Frankly, we were uneasy with a lacklustre output from Kamal.

With the movie over, we headed to our cars and on the way back we discussed what the film was all about, which, we couldn't derive. Nr, the super religious guy, gave a thorough discourse on the history of Vaishnavism and Shaivism(which I let in through one ear and out the other for most part) which Sr was very much interested in. Still, we couldn't arrive at a suitable logic for the film. Nr also presented his ideas about the political repercussions with the movie and they seemed very plausible.

A wonderful day albeit dampened by disappointment.