Sunday Special

New Delhi, 23 June 2008

Hassan’s Dasaavatram

UNIQUE EXPERIMENT, BUT SEASONAL

By Dr. Syed Ali Mujtaba

Lord Vishnu has been incarnated in various life forms through different ages in situations where Hindu religion was in danger. In Hindu mythology, there are ten incarnation of Lord Vishnu; Tortoise, Fish, Boar, Narasimha, Parasurama,Vamana, Krishna, Rama, Buddha and Kalki.

The Tamil movie Dasaavtaram staring Kamala Hassan has supposedly taken a cue from the 10 avtars of Lord Vishnu and its named as such. However, its storyline does not seem to have any linkage with the avatars of Vishnu and the movie is all about a deadly virus that find its way out of a well-guarded lab in the US, set to destroy the world. But its impact gets mitigated eventually by the killer Tsunami waves that had hit the Coromandel coast in 2004.

Dasaavtaram could really have been a great mythological film, if the 10 avatars could have been fitted into this story of good versus evil. Many movie goers who had gone to the theater with high expectations were disappointed saying it was a “mish mash” of a mega film having nothing to do with their religion.

The film had a perfect opening with much hype built around well ahead of its release. The Vaishnavites sect of Hindus filed a court case praying the movie hurt their religious sentiments. The Madras High Court rejected their plea on the ground that they were complaining without seeing the film. They moved the Supreme Court, which too rejected the plea saying the contention lacks circumstantial evidences.

This happened because the story line of the film was kept a well-guarded secret. Its promos tend to suggest that the movie had strong religious aroma but when it was released finally in theaters on June 13, the moviegoers came out saying Dasaavatram had nothing to do with the Hindu religion.

The movie opens with settings in the 12th century Tamil Nadu, which was a hot bed of intrigue between the Shaivite and Vaishnavite followers of the Hindu religion. The Shaivite King orders a Vishnu devotee Rangarajan Nambi (Kamala Hassan-1) to utter “Om Namah Shiva” (I bow before Shiva), who refuses and instead says “Om Namoh Nariyana” (I bow before Vishnu). Nambi is punished, tied with the idol of Lord Ranganatha, taken in a boat and thrown into the ocean. In the movie, this character of Nambiis over, only the idol of Lord Ranganatha resurfaces in the end, when Tsunami struck the Coromandel Coast three years ago.

Moviebuffs are left wondering about the connection of Nambi’s character with the rest of the movie. ‘Why was this there at all? It looked the last shot where the idol reappearing was meant to justify the opening,’ said Vijay who had seen the movie first day first show. He did not seem to be happy with the sudden end of Nambi’s character and called it a “patch work”, not meant for this movie.  “Perhaps Kamala Hassan was planning a period film and so shot this character with a different story line altogether. But that project could not materialise and thus this character was patched up in Dasaavatram. Such things are common these days among the musicians and this has happened in this case as well,” felt Vijay adding that the common people have been conned.

Another moviegoer, Raghav tries explaining this puzzle in a different way: “Kamala Hassan’s movies are like abstract paintings. One has to see this film from that point of view. Maybe the linkages of Nambi’s character could be traced at the abstract levels to seek justification.’

Dasaavatram’s release was hyped with the audio release of the film. Hollywood actor, Jackie Chang flew into Chennai with his bodyguards to attend the star- studded opening. So did super star Amitabh Bachchan. Controversy dogged the event, when Bollywood’s sex bomb, Malika Sharawat who has starred in the film, sat on stage in a micro-mini skirt.

The mega film supposedly made at a whopping cost of Rs 60 crore created enough excitement before its release. The movie is learnt to have sold its audio rights to Sony BMG for close to Rs two crore. Theatres across Chennai were ‘house full’ for the next 10 days with almost all the multiplexes having six shows a day. Regrettably, in the end, the promise of a cinematic extravaganza turned out just a flavor in the season of entertainment.

The film actually begins in the US where an Indian scientist Govind Ramasamy (Kamala Hassan-2) discovers that a deadly virus that could be used as a biological weapon goes missing from his lab. He launches a man hunt for it and the plot takes the line of the infamous campaign “War on terror.”

American President George W Bush (Hassan-3) makes appearances on the screen several times, urging the rest of the world to combat this evil design. The American president is shown as a buffoon contemplating a nuke war.

The most interesting part of the plot here is that the terrorists are not the Al Qaeda or the Afghan variety, as Hollywood movies tend to suggest, but are reputedly referred as American terrorists! The film tries to convey that the destruction of the world does not necessarily have to be in the hands of turban-headed Islamic jihadi, but that Americans wearing western clothes too could trigger catastrophe.

Hassan plays one character after another very well. The story, however, itself is not only weak but quite complex. Scientist Govind has an Indian friend, who has a Japanese wife. Terrorists come looking for the nuclear weapon to his house and in the process kill both Govind and his wife. The wife’s brother Narashashi (Hassan-4) is a marital arts expert in Japan and he plans to take revenge. Govind travels to India for the weapon, and is chased by a CIA agent, Christian Fletcher (Kamala Hassan-5). The bio weapon is parceled to India to an old woman, Krishnaveni (Hassan-6), who yearns for her son’s return. When Govind reaches India, he is hauled up by a RAW officer, Balram Naidu (Hassan-7), who is meant to provide comical relief to the audience with his light character.

The plot gets disjointed and the characters get connected through some unconnected events and others quite predictably in an accidental way. Out of the blues a Sikh pop singer, Avatar Singh (Hassan-8) comes up, the story then wavers to a social activist, Annachi (Hassan-9), fighting the sand mafia in Tamil Nadu. Whew! Attention then shifts to an eight-foot Tamil speaking Pathan, Kalifullah Khan (Hassan-10) a buffoon of a character.

The movie ends up in a high voltage drama centered on the Tsunami of 2004, when Fletcher tries using the bio weapon to destroy the world, but is sucked in by the Tsunami with its salt water neutralizes the bio weapon.

The fast pace of the movie, however, sustains the tempo of the film that does not allow much of thinking. Music is mediocre. The jumble-mumble, however, stands out for its excellent technical work and Hassan’s extraordinary performance in several characters. His make-up and voice modulation is superb that it is a difficult task picking any one character as outstanding. The Tsunami shots are perhaps an outstanding presentation in the movie. 

In the end: Dasaavatram may well go down in the history of Indian cinema as a unique experiment in the commercial circuit, but its span is unlikely to last beyond a season of entertainment.---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)