Caution: Read on ONLY if you are familiar with Kamal Haasan, Kollywood, Tamil, Bollywood, Hindi, and yes, necessarily in that order! If you have met the familiarity criteria, be further warned that this rant is a blast revived from my rambunctious past (circa 2001 actually). Your reading further should only serve to allay any doubts in your mind about the extent of your own vetti.ness. Vetti Vazhga, Vetti Valarga (Long live Vetti and may it flourish)!
Following is NOT content forwarded from another original mind. It is my own bootless endeavor to unfetter the mind of the abysmal ennui that the new week is already threatening to offer. Like some angel sang, “Rainy days and Mondays always make me cry ..”, that which I follow, assuming the approval of Mathematicians in our midst (truth tables are yonder my idling processor), it being a rainy Monday, cry I must and cry you will in trying to divine the sequitur of the rambling here under.
Lately, the more I try to ignore it, the more I find myself dragged back into the gravitic vortex of the man’s exasperating plenitude. Kamal Haasan(KH)’s recent initiatives irk me instead of offer something enjoyable or entertaining. The chappie is so full of himself now a days that the day he starts playing his own on-screen amore is not too far away. Perhaps, this was true in the past as well but inexplicably it did not bother me so much then. Of course, any smart ass can counter the *so full of himself* stuff with the *when a laloo, peter & kandan can pass off as being so hip that they cannot see below their respective pelvises, a KH’s abundance is well deserved and well placed* rhetoric. Then again, this will fall under Zen and the Art of vidhandaa Vaatham (arguing loud and hollow, silly!).
Anyway, I was scratching my head to list out his movies that I enjoyed in the last 20 years. Careful not to abet nature and heredity in the cause of my already accelerating androgenetic alopecia, I came up with the foll, listed in the order of how entertaining it was:
1. Avvai Shanmughi
2. Pushpak
3. MMKR (Michael Madhana Kaama Rajan)
4. Aboorva Sagotharargal
5. Nayagan
6. Salangai Oli
7. Devar Magan
Though I have given Pushpak a #2, I have to say it was probably the cleanest entertainer I have seen till date, you walk out half a stone lighter, spirits looking up, and, in this case, a silent(!) song on your lip. In recent times, only a Lagaan had a similar effect on moi, though the genres are quite dissimilar.
I have to admit that it is perhaps the TamBrahm element in Selbst (political correctness, vetti ramblings … oil, vinegar … get it … got it … GOOD!) that gets tingled every time I see an Avvai and/or an MMKameshwaranR. First I thought, it is but natural and biassed for people like Vishwanatha Iyer & Sethurama Iyer (where ignorance is bliss, think Gemini Ganesan in Avvai Shanmughi) to appreciate a movie like Avvai but after passive fact finding with the likes of thambi, berther & paandu, it occurred to me that our much heralded Mr. Bharath is preferred more in such a role than an Aadhi (of Kurudhi Punal) or an Ammavaasai (of some stupid, vakhra-budhi-padaicha movie he might come up with soon).
Mind also travels back to an article in some *zine analyzing why there isn’t too much difference between a Gulshan Grover and a KH and trying to understand what the big hungama was about. The thesis being if shaving off ur head, having a beard with a mottai look, mush off/on, Indian thatha look is all there is to greatness in histrionics then a Gulshan Grover should be in the same valhalla as KH.
In a recent interview, KH quotes unwarranted, incongruous, historical examples (jews, herod, sati, etc.) to support the premise of his story. Hear, hear!! Who would have guessed there was an occult method in contriving the Abhay madness. Granted interpretations are subjective but social and moral responsibilities should temper one’s predilection for the asura-budhi ..
Now, okay! All the thambis and bhaiyyas in des have awakened to physical fitness & rippling pecs. But the posters for Aalavandhaan (Abhay, in Hindi) in Madras reminded me of two movies: Mission Kashmir & Wayne’s World – the former, where Hrithik Roshan needlessly shows his biceps to clean a rifle, a frame that was as related to its adjoining ones as my Jeep Wrangler is to Karnam Malleswari (well, at least, as of how things stand today!), and the latter, where Mike Myers pokes fun at such scenes by displaying a “gratituous sex scene” subtitle in a bed room jaunt with Tia Carrere.
If Hey Ram, in which KH plays only one character, put him in every frame/scene there was in the movie, I fear what an Abhay, where you buy one to be shoved with one more, might do.
Abhay – is it the name of the protagonist of the movie or the frame of mind one needs to be in to willfully pay money and endure the infliction otherwise known as Kamal Haasan ???
Footnote:
- This is not a review of the movie “Abhay”. In fact, I have not even seen the movie yet! One poster and one e-review were enough to light the fire up my wazoo!!
- KH has become something like a thegatti-pona-theratti-paal, which ironically is a dish intended to make do off the excess.
- To quote ShivajiGaneshan Bhai (Gani Bhai, to stadtWaasis and their thambis), “paal kettu pochuNNa theratti-paal pannalaaam … aanaaa, antha theratti-paalEy kettupochuNNa …”
Tags: Jambajaar, Kamal Haasan, Kollywood, Movies
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