I decided not to write without any substance in my blog, time kept passing, but I never got the topic on which I wished to blog on, and then came Friday the thirteen, Kamal Hassan’s Dasavatharam was released.
Kamal Hassan s like old wine, he only gets better at the act every time around. Constantly innovating and experimenting new concepts in storytelling and acting. This man is a true genius and constantly ups the bar of expectation as to what one can expect in a movie.
Coming to the movie, I watched it at Sathyam multiplex on Sunday evening. Though the movie is a simple Si-fi chase sequence movie, the screenplay is fantastic. Kamal Hassan has gone a step ahead in moving the story on the basis of the chaos theory. (Has even used an animated butterfly to show this) Chaos theory was first demonstrated by Manirathnam in Yuva (Ayutha Eluthu in tamil), explaining the life of 3 different different dis-joint individuals. Kamal, has taken that concept not only as ten different charecters, but also across a vast time line, starting from the 12th century to the Tsunami in 2004. Brilliant!
Dasavathaaram has made me think about the concept explained in the movie and say “Wow”! It’s not easy to explain a scientific theory to an audience whose average intelligence is used to 6 songs, 4 fights and a retried storyline of one man saving the day.
So for those to want to appreciate this movie, please read about chaos theory or Butterfly Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect before you go and watch the movie. Chaos theory or “Butterfly effect” has been shown in movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life”, “The Jurassic Park” etc… Kamal does the same with Dasavathaaram. Butterfly effect is the technical notion of chaos theory which talks about how small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. In Dasavathaaram, Kamal links what happened in 12th century to what happens in the climax of the movie.
Coming to Kamal, as the actor(s), the multi-faced characters and their language and expressions; be it Nambhi, the old lady, detective naidu, the Japanese martial arts master, the dalit leader, or my favorite role of Christian Fletcher. Simply said Fletcher rocks! Be it the accent, the body language or the action. It felt like he was a natural, and like he’s done tons of movies being a big American bouncer. Bravo.
A couple of things were spoilers, Music by Himesh Reshmiah (Lets not talk about it) and graphics. Did someone say this movie has world class Hollywood technicians on visual effects? What the hell? Who spent so much of money on such stuff?
The Kumudham review for the movie said “Unaga Nayagan padam, ulaga tharam, uyar tharam” (The universal hero’s movie, world-class, exceptional) I guess I could not say it better than that. At the time of the end credits, all that I could do was give it a standing ovation.