what does one do when in india for an extremely short amount of time, that too for a wedding - spend 3 hours at a multiplex watching sivaji's competition turn up a year late at the finish line and still manage to finish second. kamal spent 2 years making dasavathaaram, about 1.5 of which i am sure were spent putting his masks and wigs on and then removing them.
kamal plays god/fate of his own story as he unleashes several threads (10 to be exact) and then weaves them back into a small yet somewhat complete ladies handkerchief (what else can you weave with 10 threads). the magic of kamal is such that he manages to completely disappear in some of those threads letting the character take over the screen. balram naidu for one was outstanding. khalifulla on the other hand looked (and sounded) like one of the masked sivajis from uthama puthiran. with most of the characters donning prosthetics, kamal's vivid expressions were missed quite a bit. body language and voice only go a certain distance.
the story is indeed novel for a tamil flick and kamal does a fine job walking the fence between the mass and the elite. keywords (chaos theory anyone) are sprinkled to pique the interest of the elite while the mass is entertained with some good fight sequences and for a while by an ex-cia agent / part time stripper/full time killer who in addition to fluent tamil also knows the way to heaven. seeing her talk tamil was like watching jackie chan speak tamil in the afternoon star vijay movies (for those who havent seen police story in tamil, it is very similar to shriya speaking tamil in sivaji).both sections of the crowd are however bound to hate asin who screamed like a banshee whenever she opened her mouth. the music was a huge letdown. kamal could've at least courted illayaraja for some tunes.
all in all, a jolly ride. one of the two main aims i had when coming to chennai is now fulfilled :)
6 comments:
so, its one more guy who fell a prey for the hype and marketing.
Dasavatharam seemed to be kamal's chance of laughing at the people who saw the movie - atleast that was my feeling when I walked out after the movie and saw a huge crowd waiting for the 11 PM show.
The story (was there one?) was convoluted and made no sense. The makeup was hopeless (the bad makeup was how I found out what kamal's roles were) and the special effects - let me not say anything about them.
The saving grace was ofcourse balram naidu whose role kamal carries off quite naturally - i wonder what the telugu equivalent is.
arun, i am surprised that you still rate this as one of your aims for your chennai trip.
nope actually i had a really bad impression going in and came away a little surprised.
why r u surprised..you should never miss a chance to see thalaivar's or kamal's movie when u r in chennai. i wanted to make sure i saw this in chennai :)
i too had the same reaction as you did coming out of the movie theater. but if you think about it, the movie was not made for folks like us alone. yes it was kitschy and gimmicky. it had plenty of continuity errors and the graphics were only slightly better than our 12th standard pascal projects but the speed of the screenplay overtakes them all and that's why ppl will go in droves to watch it.
I suppose this might be a huge commercial success (or maybe it already is).
Deepu's comment after she walked out of the movie was possibly a good eye opener - she said she was now a big Rajni fan!
Both Sivaji and Dasavatharam had a lot of hype going into the movie, but Sivaji was clearly an entertainer for the masses as well as the 'elite'. Dasavatharam was a hodge-podge of a typical tamil movie ingredients.
Btw, you are probably lucky bcos you did not have to pay 15 dollars per ticket.
not that i have any authority but i welcome deepu to the worldwide rajni rasigar mandram.
you cant compare sivaji to any movie and i am not defending this one as being anywhere close to it. but compared to many other flicks that manage to get released into our theaters, this was more entertaining and definitely held my interest throughout.
and i dont agree with the 'typical tamil movie ingredients' comment. i think u forgot the segways. those alone make this movie more hilarious and different than many i've seen :).
which theater did you watch the movie? karrupu ticket-a?
mayajaal, the ticket that includes free popcorn,pop, a packet of chips and ringing ears for 30 minutes after
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