June 14, 2008

Dasavathram

I don’t remember when I last saw a Tamil movie in a theatre, may be 5 years before? Yesterday decided to go and see my first Tamil movie in Paris. First about the Theatre, anything in Paris linked with India means mess and delay, like the Indian embassy and even the theatre. The show was at 6, we reached there at 5:20 and they didn’t start giving tickets till 6:30(no one was there even to give us the reason for the delay) and finally the movie started almost at 7. And then a 30 minutes of interval and then again the movie was stopped for 30 minutes (again no reason was given) There were no place even to buy water; we were forced to buy their local bottled kola (a cola with k). It was after 4 hours since we reached the theatre, we have not even seen half of the movie, obviously people were annoyed and started smoking inside the theatre, to a add fun we were locked inside a smoky room without water and no movie, after some people screamed and threatened to call police , the movie was restarted. So we spent solid 6 hours to see a movie, dying of thirst and the suffocating smoke.

All this to see Kamel Hassan’s ‘Dasavatharam’ (meaning ten avatars). In Hindu mythology this refers to the ten incarnation of a Hindu deity, Vishnu and its believed that he reincarnates every time to save the world, In this movie the hero plays 10 different characters, obviously not to save the world as he even plays a role as George Bush! I went to see the movie with the curiosity how the different characters from a 12th century Hindu saint to George bush was linked in Tamil story. The link was well made, but disappointed to see so many flaws in the Kamel Hassan’s movie , the graphics was not so good, with so much of advancement in graphics, the flaw in graphics(in few scenes)gives the feeling of 80s movies. Out of 10 roles almost 7 roles were very well done, with wonderful acting and different body language, the rest three roles seems to be just a dummy with a mask, like the tall guy, George Bush and even that of the American ex-CIA. But Kamel’s acting and the comedy in the movie will make us over look all the flaws and enjoy the movie, even in the most horrible theatre.

4 comments:

ashgene said...

Seeing this movie, I was wondering, destroying a virus ( purportedly a bioweapon in the movie) isnt that great a task, simply throwing it in fire would do the job without trace. But sadly the whole film seems to be revolving around destroying the virus contained in a vial. Kamal taking drastic measures to keep it cold as thought it is somekind of a vaccine, eventually only to destroy it is ridiculous. Even more so, the climax shot where the RAW official sees the virus through a binocular from an helicopter is uproariously absurd. Kamal Hassan! please change your science consultants or if you are dire need and face dreath of good consultants you may give an SOS to me!

Uma Maheswari said...

hey! wait! i think they dont say that it is virus, its something similar to virus! but i agree whatever it is, but seeing that in a binocular is funny!

ashgene said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasavatharam
the plot here says its a deadly virus and I think they do mention this in the film. Whatever, but anything of such a material depicted in the film can be destroyed through incineration, unless ofcourse it is made from somekind of weird 'superbugs' from the magma of volcanoes. To my knowledge I donot think there is something existing or there is any possibility as such on earth!.
On a positive note I commend his GB character its funny and the mannerism is well depicted though the make up isnt that succinct. The movie is though enjoyable if we go with no questions asked attitude as to all bollywood movies.

ashgene said...

and ... to detail, the Bionocular said is a 'Bionocular tele-microscope' possibly patented by K.S.Ravikumar