FRANKLY SPEAKING....

Now I’m no diehard Kamal fan but I must admit the man’s got oodles and oodles of talent – I loved all his movies except the ones that had a cascade effect of depression and sadness, like Mahanadi. I also took exception to the way the second half of Vettaiyadu Vilayadu unfolded, more like a sequence of thoughts lifted straight out of a masochist freak’s mind rather than an in depth analysis of the workings of a criminologist’s mind as he unravels a series of gory rape-murders - which is why I reacted with skepticism to every news item and all the media frenzy preceding the release of Dasavatharam.

After all the hype and hoopla, the film is going to be one damp squib, or so I thought. Even when the first few reviews trickled in from friends and family who had watched the movie, I was reluctant to believe them when they said it was good. Only after I sat through three hours of non-stop entertainment on a sultry afternoon inside the cool confines of an air-conditioned theater did I admit to myself that Kamal had outdone himself by weaving a masterpiece.

Of course, there were many things in the movie that made no sense, especially the miraculous cancer-curing bullet and the ten diverse roles – did Kamal want the world record so badly that he went so far as to don ten kinds of complicated disguises? Some of the roles looked like caricatures, especially the extremely tall guy and the old lady. The 7 footer also had the worst diction possible, coming off most of the time as slightly mentally retarded (the stiff layers of makeup contributing to a wooden face with no expression at all added to the stupid look).

But when taken as a collective whole, I walked out of the theatre feeling that yes, this is a good entertainer, thanks to the excellent screenplay – while Kamal the actor did not wow me with his ten different roles, Kamal the screenplay writer simply dazzled! He’s done a wonderful job of identifying the common thread that ties all ten diverse characters together and used it to hold the storyline in one cohesive piece.

At the end of the movie, in spite of having bravely endured Asin’s shrill voice in every frame, in spite of the nostalgia I felt when I compared Dasavatharam’s Govind to Punnagai Mannan’s Sethu (Oh, how handsome and romantic he was in that movie – in my book, Kamal outdoes himself in romantic roles), in spite of some parts of the story being so contrived as to fit in all ten characters, I was applauding the effort that had gone into the germination, the conception, the gestation and finally, the long-awaited birth of Dasavatharam. Sure, he’s indulged in a few excesses, the most notable one being that of the self, but isn’t he entitled to do so after his immense contribution to the world of cinema?