Dasavathaaram (தசாவதாரம்) – Beneath the latex waves
I had earlier recorded my outburst after seeing Kamal’s dasavatharam last year thus -> http://passionforcinema.com/dasavatharam-insult-to-intelligence/
Two weeks back I had gotten hold of dasavatharam DVD (rented from neighbourhood grocer) and decided to do a relaxed second viewing – mostly for lack of options to see movies in the place I live. I must confess that I kinda liked it on the second viewing. No – not that the film is growing on me – just that in a small screen the rubber torture was less pronounced and the content became prominent and the content overall was a clever one – neatly packaged and the core message of Kamal well concealed to deceive everyone into liking it (If and only if the execution had been good).
So what is the central message that Kamal wants to convey through this story that begins all the way back in 12th century and winds up on the most eventful day whole of South and South east asia have witnessed. I have read many blogs on multiple interpretations of the underlying theory of the story – If you ask Kamal the story and screenplay writer – he will give you a slippery answer and leaves much of it to be deciphered and understood it in the way any individual wants to. Since I have been appointed as the PFC author who has officially ‘lost it’, I shall begin my intellectual or pseudo intellectual exercise of excavating meanings, motiffs and other useless things from the one single movie that had one actor copy pasting himself across 8 latex cocoons.
If anyone is going to expect another exposition of chaos theory or butterfly effect on a movie portal, my suggestion is to have your brains checked. If straight forward explanation of rational and real issues in movies have not worked in a country where people destroy and rebuild their own homes in the name of ‘Vaasthu’, expecting a movie to explain chaos theory is a bit too much. So setting chaos theory, quantum gravity and strings theory aside and taking only cinematic clues let me proceed to separate the rice from the chaff.
For you to indulge in similar exercise – first thing you have to do is watch the movie with only one eye when the Narahasi kamal is in screen, with half eye when the ‘grand old lady’ Krishnaveni kamal is on screen and completely with closed eyes when Kalifullah kamal is on screen, for the make up and post production work of the movie when these Kamals are on screen is shockingly awful and can give any Japanese Godzilla movie a run for its money. So assuming that you do as I have instructed, after viewing once (preferably the second visit), the question to ask yourself is ‘So what is the point?’. Trust me – the film is badly executed, yet the movie is not an absolute failure at a creative level for the dialogues and symbolisms are carefully entrenched to make the viewer ponder and not just ‘forget’ what the heck happened for 210 minutes in your life.
Questions:
1. What is the 12th centure episode gotta do with this 21st century event except for the fact that the statue that was immersed 800 years ago has come back. – Is it a symbolism of God’s wrath for 800 year old injustice? If so why kill people of all faith? why cancel out a far more scarier retribution(virus)? What is God’s justice system?
2. What is the meaning of the events that suggest that muslims herded into a mosque for interrogation by a hindu RAW officer escape the effect of Tsunami? Why did the same force of chaos or Divinity let millions of muslims die in Indonesia which was the origin of the tsunami?
3. The real question of the movie – according to me – why should the dalit activist Poovaraghan die? He could have as well been shown as saving the boy and surviving. Did he die only to release the old lady’s purgatory tears? If so what is the purpose?
Ther are many other questions, but I shall not get into each of them and for my conclusion these three are sufficient (Hell I am not solving some pulsar’s – not the bajaj two wheeler – boundary equations here).
The one common answer to all the questions is – ‘Sheer frivolousness’.
Recollect Kamal’s Anbe sivam where Madhavan’s Anbarasan asks Kamal’s nalla ‘What crazy design is this – to kill the boy even after making the person with the rare blood group manifest on site of need?’.
This movie is a further exponentiation of that beautiful one minute scene.
What a frivolous design that allows people to slay each other in the name of religion.
What a frivolous design that allows people to invent newer and grotesque manner of harming each other (bio weapons)
What a frivolous design that allows people to invent a nauseating thing like caste discrimination?
What a frivolous design that kills people in times of natural calamity without any discrimination between good and bad?
Such a design cannot be termed ‘Intelligent’ and hence the presence/existence of a creator and controller is indirectly called into question. A very clever and stealthy argument for atheism placed in a commercial masala potboiler spewed with first layer references to the avtars of Lord Vishnu throughout.
This is the central conceit of the movie according to me and this time I am sure I have not lost it – even though I took a while to realise it in my tubelight brain. All said and done – there still is a feeling of betrayal when I watch the shoddy execution of a script that is very clever. It is clever because a cinema screenplay is by and large (even in the most masalaesque of movies) is a beast of causality where event B happens because of event A that preceded it and to write up a series of frivolous coincidences and drive them to a conclusion while showing so many characters on the way is nothing but a product of a very ‘clever’ mind.
Tags: Dasavatharam, Kamal Hassan, tamil movies
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
The movie may be intended with many qns, but it was a total crap at the end from Kamal Hasan, the over confident artist.
Its hard to digest still people are spending their time on this movie..
Totally agree, the concept is awesome, the execution has gone wrong terribly wrong.
Why would someone put in so much effort in trying to like a movie? If you found it an insult to your intelligence the first time, it should have ended there!
It had a lot of potential to become a great movie, but the end result isnt all that satisfactory.To be admired for the concept & the effort no doubt.And yes one of the most successful movies @ the box office in Kamal’s career.So thats how I see it.
So it took you a year to find out that Kamal is pushing an atheist agenda?LOL.
@bala – I knew it right away – but did not feel like posting it as the initial shock of the movie numbed every other observation down. Now having recovered from that – felt was a nice time to post about it – I had also posted in my rant about Vennila Kabadi kuzhu about the Dasa link (Vincent Poovaraghan’s demise).
The version that I saw did not conceal anything. The point you made in the blog is the English translation of the conversation between Kamal & Asin @ the beach after the Tsunami. Isn’t it???
Just that this time you “found” it…
@RB – That was one character’s statement – can’t treat it as the conceit of the whole film. My exercise is more trying to understand the conceit as it has been formulated by the script, not just one character.
Will finally get to see the film in theater in its Hindi avatar this weekend, will return to this post after watching it.
Intelligently written post VPJ.
Frivolous design, eh? Unique perspective. But I am not in agreement.
1. There are only two characters without prosthetic make up. Rangarajan and Govind. To both of them, the pair is Asin, in a double role. Doesn’t it suggest that both of them are rebirths? When they could not save their belief in the 12th century, they get their justice by saving their belief in 21st century.
2. It is to save Kalifullah from death. Why? The answer lies in the next question you asked.
3. Each of the 10 characters played, an attribute of one of the avathars is given to them. For example, Krishnaveni is Vamana avatharam, Narahari is Narasimha Avatharam etc. Poovarahan is Lord Krishna – Dalit, black in colour and he dies like lord Krishna – with an arrow in his leg. As Krishna is the only Avathar who met his demise, only Poovarahan died, therefore Kalifullah must live.(Rangarajan is Kurma avathar and therefore he does not die – he is sent inside the sea to save the world).
I haven’t watched the movie and frankly movies that get onto a broader level, I kinda take some time to view it but this is a good take VPJ….do keep it goin esp @ tamil films….
@Anand – The avtar references you have quoted are at superficial level – well discussed in Orkut and other forums – I did not want to rehash it or post a link to it – These are my thoughts on the 11th avtar of Kamal – the script writer – Though anyone can throw loads of chaos theory on the viewer and ask him/her to accept the randomness of it all attributing chaos theory, vishnu’s avtar – it doesnt work that way considering this is from the writer who wrote the amazing entertaining maze called Michael Madhana Kama Rajan. The randomness of vial reaching the grandma who also happens to underscore caste unity message in the end – is all an attempt at the script level to show how frivolous we all are, how flimsy are the rules of religion and society it is not an isolated message in Dasavatharam alone – Rewind back to mahanadi – you will see similar questions asked – the only difference in this movie is the message written as the structure of script – seemingly illogical – yet highly contributing to the ‘implicit instruction’.
@ Jaiganesh( cmt # 8)
The dialogue was mouthed by just one character. But it did sum up the entire movie’s point. Even Kamal and Ravikumar used that scene as a reference in many of the post-release interviews to convey the gist.
(off tangent cmnt)–>
btw,
One thing I can never understand is how Kamal feels when certain details like (Asin’s father in both the Janams being the same) go unnoticed and instead the glitches in the Make-up and colour correction become reason enough to ridicule his efforts
VPJ, I watched it yesterday. Sorely disappointed. It could have been a great movie. And I think you’re very spot on about the central argument!
@RB:
I always tend to delineate between the movie and the post and pre release interviews. So I am strictly going by what I saw and it was just a single person (who is an atheist and a scientist)’s POV – If you have to mount it as a conclusion then there need not so many good and bad characters and events – that guy doesnt change his stand point from the first scene to last and there is no progression from that aspect.
I somehow cant buy into this characters from previous birth concept if the script does not make a strong connection – by way of an episode of recollection or something – I felt the death of vincent poovaraghan (a martyr sacrificing his life upholding the concept of humanity) and its connection with the death of nambi who chose to end his life over his ‘religion’ – the death of a fanatic are studies in contrast – again a statement to say that we are in better times – where people choose to die over saving a life than to save an idol.