kamal goes decimal

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 :)