Ten avatars and tons of talent

Yes, it is about Kamal Hassan’s magnum opus Dasavadaram. The movie is just a showcase of talents of one of our best actors. No doubt, Kamal has given a stupendous performance to distinctly differentiate all the ten characters played by him. The make up,the dialogue delivery, modulation of different dialects are all done to perfection.

Still something is amiss in this great effort. It appears a conscious effort was made by Kamal to work for an international recognition. Apart from the Tamil, Telugu and Hindi audience World over, it is very evident he had targeted International viewers also.Seems he is yearning for an international acclaim, rightly so. With this in mind,all the 10 characters were selected by the script writer kamal. That could be one of the reasons that, four out of the 10 characters are foreign nationals, thus giving an international flavour. That has given him the scope to target the international audience and showcase his histrionic talents. As a result he has tailor made the story to suit his 10 characters. That has ended in a run of the mill story with usual stunts, car chasing and all other ingredients of a masala movie, unlike a Kamal film.

Kamal is an actor with great passion for innovation and doing something different in all his movies. On that score he has succeeded. Secondly, an actor playing 10 different characters in a movie is first of its kind in world cinema and is unique. We can be proud that something close to this feat was done by another great Tamil actor Sivaji Ganesan decades ago in, Navaratri, donning nine roles. But that catered Tamil audiences only. Obviously Kamal wanted to better Sivaji’s record of nine roles. For commercial reasons he might have made it a trilingual film.

Kamal is a professed atheist. He does not want to antagonize millions of devout and piousViewers amidst his fans and the general public. So he has done a tight rope walk by making the characters talk, for and against religious beliefs and faiths. He has taken care to mouth the atheist dialogues himself, thus maintaining his atheist personal profile in tact. He has also made sure all three major religions of India, namely Hindus, Muslims and Christian characters are portrayed and their religious sentiments are not hurt by any of the dialogues.

The theme is about biological weapons, and might not be comprehensible to every viewer. Care was taken to start the story with a local 12^th century anecdote, rather than the Hollywood style alien scenes at US. To make the story travel to the present times from 12^th century and in many other places in the film, the script writer has to resort to voice over to explain the audience. It is a pity, Kamal has also succumbed to cheap gimmicks and has shown the ex Chief Minister and the current Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in the movie. It is obvious many compromises have been made and care is taken not to antagonize any section.

The Rerecording by Devi Sree Prasad is good in patches, especially in the initial scenes and car chases shot in US. Otherwise there is nothing special to mention. Couple of songs by Reshmiah are good. Since Kamal is omnipresent in the movie, he has taken care to give lot of small roles to many others of note. Stars galore can also be witnessed in this film in a host of small roles. All of them have done justice to their roles.

On the whole it is a milestone movie in Kamal’s career and will find a place in record books of world cinema. Kamal has proved once again, he is an international cinema material. Given the hype created by the media , much more was expected .