Saturday, July 05, 2008

Dasavatharam (Dasa-aparaadham)

The storyline:
Flashback :- A Tamil king who has recently converted to Sivism is determined to rid his kingdom of all Vishnu deities from temples. Kamalhaasan (No.1) is mighty pi**ed of with this and performs a few Dishum-dishums with the guards and tries in vain to stop this major-league sacrilege. The king decides to teach this chap a lesson and ties our hero along with the Vishnu deity and throws him in the sea.

------Spoiler Alert
Present day :- Kamalahaasan (2) A Tamil scientist in the US develops a biological weapon that can practically destroy the world. The weapon (a glass vial kept in a flimsy metal box !! ) can only be diffused by pouring "NaCl". ("Tonnes and Tonnes of it" as another Tamil scientist mentions in the movie). Of course this chap who landed in the US last month conveniently forgot what NaCL is in Tamil.

The hero tries to stop the vial of germs from falling into the wrong hands. He travels to chennai (of all places) pursued by an ex-CIA Fletcher (Kamalahaasan No3), FBI, CBI, and local police. After much running around a few dance numbers and a couple of rather good dishum-dishums, the vial of germs is broken. Strangely this happens on Christmas day 2004, the very day a tsunami struck the east coast of India. The deity that was thrown into the sea in the initial Flashback also washes up along with the tidal wave. Apparently this was how Lord
Vishnu saves the world from destruction. The End.

------End of Spoiler Alert

Dasavatharam is one of the most expensive ego-trips in the history of ego-trips. A film made to satisfy one man, Kamalhaasan.

As the name suggests Dasavatharam is an experiment on how much money one can spend on sub-standard make-up with Hollywood horror film make-up artists, and dish out a poor storyline.
The excruciatingly long (3 hours !!!!) film packs more characters than one can deal with. There is no attempt at character building. In fact there are several unnecessary characters in this film that have absolutely no place in the film. For all the money these guys spent on shooting in the US they could have hired some good actors to perform as George Bush and the ex-CIA villain. This would have turned out to be an interesting action thriller if a little bit of common sense was applied. But Noooo !!!.

A George bush that looks more like a Mardi-gras puppet, the stereotypical flat-faced Japanese (Shinghen Narahasi ) guy who looks like he ran into a truck, The tall guy (Kalifullah Khan) who looks more like Dr. Frankensteins Monster on stilts and the Punjabi singer who doesn't have much to do other than spit blood at every occasion. An old women (Krishnaveni) who looks like Freddy Krueger .

There is nothing worth watching in this film, since most of the story is high funda nonsense, mixed with a whole lot of Kamalahasans running around wearing cheap makeup. There are a few attempts at humor by the Balaram Naidu character (also played by Kamal) which tasted as flat as last weeks beer.

Mind you this is not the first time Kamal has hired horror-film makeup artists from Hollywood. Last time it was the infamouse Pizza faced old man in "Indian". I feel Kamal has lost focus on what he wants to achieve. Its acting and entertainment what we pay for not a spot-the-Kamal competition.

Dasavatharam is more like Dasa-aparadham. There are however a few exceptions. Although the character doesn't have much relevance in the story, the makeup team did manage to disguise Kamal as the dark-skinned environmentalist, Vincent Poovaraagan and as Inspector Balaram Naidu quite well.

The Tsunami scene at the end of the film was rather spectacular and did not have the usual cheap Indian animation feel to it (probably because it wasn't done in India by our IT geniuses !!). But hey wait a second, we didn't come to see the tsunami or wax-faced dummies, we came to see Kamal acting in ten different roles. Unfortunately under all those prosthetics, rubber, botox and paint we can't see any Kamal. All we see are some zombies, and a pathetic storyline.

Kamal Haasan was a great actor and entertainer. He gave us "Hey Ram", "Mahaanadi", "Virumandi", "Avvai Shanmugi". This is perhaps the beginning of the end of good Indian Cinema and the arrival of the manufactured products for entertainment from film technicians.

9 comments:

  1. i must see this movie 2-3 times to understand fully.:).some frnds also told this. i think kamal hasan might be thought the same.if each person see this movie more than one times then only he get the money what he spent.:)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thats probably because every time they go to see the movie they somehow fall asleep

    ReplyDelete
  3. Safely, I am yet to see the film. However, keeping up with the mallu tradition, I am rather dead than not be not saying just "2 words" about this decca-manifestation that decapitates the da..de..di..du(phew)..

    The Tamilian inside the dark 'takkees' is a phenomenon and a half with hundreds of same old die-hard fans mobbing the front benches for the dozen-th time feeling only tooo goood after craning the neck 600 times an hour tracking the daredevil superstar to all the farthest exotic corners of the screen.

    By comparison, the modest white flock watching volleys at a Nadal-Federer Grandslam expends one thousandth of the calories sacrificed by the Tamilian at the most decrepit of the theatres in interior tamilnadu.

    These tamilian film fans. They beat my logic. Let me salute them as the last resort.

    As for Dashaavathaaram, I choose to simply succumb to Kaippally.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes Kaippally, i value ur feedback on the film. when you spend so much money, why dont you use it for choosing right people, make-up, script.. etc..


    you can see a similar kind of feedback here:( http://www.rediff.com/movies/2008/jun/16shobha.htm )

    see the giants from different film industries attending the music lauch of the film... (http://specials.rediff.com/movies/2008/apr/28sld2.htm )

    ellaavarude munnilum naanam kettenkilum dear kamal, we still love you becoz, we still have few nice charectors to remember..

    ReplyDelete
  6. thanks for such open criticism. I avoided this film as long as opinions are not good about this film.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I saw this "dasa-aparadham" last week and I share all the points mentioned by Kaippally. There is no need of 10 roles for Kamal. It seems it is done for the sake of doing it. Real waste of time, money and energy. And the direction part is the worst. Photography also was not upto the standards IMO. When we have cinematographers like Santosh Sivan and we have seen many of his films... we expect more from this kind of big budget films. Kamal - Please stop this kind of no-sense films - and stop dreaming about oscars - if you are going to make such films in the future too.

    ( in the last song , where the directory of the film featuring, he even sings- oscar award is not far away from Kamal -- what a joke !.

    ReplyDelete
  8. If Kamalahaasan had any idea about the relevance or meaning of Dazaavathaaram ( varied manifestation of the same persona justified by situational demands) he would not have dared to seize all the characters to be portrayed by himself. Nowhere there is an indication that he wanted to project the idea of multi-faceted human nature being the behavioural ramification of a single person. If he meant this to be, such a personality is not there, since it is replaced by the actor himself. Thus all the characters are not the avathaaram of one human being, but avathaaram of Kamalhaasan. Very pitiful.

    Megalomania your name is......

    ReplyDelete
  9. എന്താ എല്ലാരും ഇംഗ്ലീഷില്‍?

    ഞാനീ പടം കണ്ടില്ല. കണ്ടിട്ട് പറയാം അഭിപ്രായം.

    ReplyDelete

ഇതെല്ലാം വായിച്ചിറ്റ് ഒന്നും പറയാനില്ലി?
ഇതിനെപറ്റി എന്തരെങ്കിലുമെക്ക പറ..