Kamal Haasan: A Cinematic Journey review: K. Hariharan deconstructs ‘Bahurupi’ of Indian cinema

But Kamal, who self-deprecatingly calls himself a ‘reluctant’ actor, often tried to drop the ‘dancing lover-boy’ image and instead revelled in challenging himself playing deranged, delusional lover; a limping, mentally challenged orphan; a tormented buck-tooth, heavy-powered spectacled philosopher; a don, a dwarf and a crazed-elderly vigilante, a nifty Bond spy and even a voluptuous Brahmin ‘mami’. In the midst of ‘mass films’ ruling screens in South India, Kamal Haasan stood out with his disruptive cinema that may or may not have worked. It was not commercial nor parallel art cinema, it was a genre of its own.

An introduction to the actor’s approach to cinema

It’s not easy then to cast this 69-year-old actor, whose oeuvre extends to 260 films, in a clear-cut mould. The actor, who emerged from K. Balachander’s stable, staking his place on Indian celluloid very early in his career, Kamal has also acted in many unforgettable films like Sakalakala Vallavan (1982) or Sanam Teri Kasam (1982). (But so did Naseeruddin Shah, arguably one of India’s finest actors, with Tridev and Vishwatma).

Kamal, however, left his imprint in delightful silent films like Pushpak, and delivered a masterful performance in Mani Ratnam’s don drama Nayakan — both released in 1987. His impish, energetic interpretation of a Brahmin nanny in Chachi 420 (1997) is unmatched. Undeniably, South India’s most popular and talented actor, Kamal Haasan’s choices of films can best be described as eclectic and sometimes not easy to comprehend.

To capture a slice of this complex ‘bahurupi ’ (masquerade man; this title, seemingly, is a reference to Kamal’s penchant for donning multiple identities and avatars) of Indian cinema, Chennai-based K. Hariharan, filmmaker and writer-critic has penned a book, Kamal Haasan: A Cinematic Journey (HarperCollins India), which hit bookstores last week. It is not a typical biography critiquing the actor’s celluloid glories and disasters or spliced with salacious stuff about his multiple love affairs.

Instead, it analyses 40 of Kamal’s films in the context of the events shaping Tamil Nadu and Dravidian politics in the 70s and 80s, and also of the shifting socio-cultural milieu in post-Independent India. Unfortunately, the author does not give the reader a Foreword on how he arrived at these 40 films that he dissects and also does not summarise the entire exercise in the end, which may have been helpful to understand the actor’s filmography better.

But, then, there are few books on a National award-winning star like Kamal Haasan in English. So, for film buffs, this book can be an introduction to the actor’s approach to cinema and his prodigious interest in other departments of cinema, besides acting like film make-up, technology, playback singing and screenwriting.

For those unfamiliar with his early Tamil films, this book will be an eye-opener. It starts with the birth of Kamal (predictably titled ‘A Star is Born’) in difficult circumstances for his diabetic mother and is peppered with tales of him being a precocious child. The story of how he bagged a role as a child actor in Kalathur Kannamma (1960) to dropping out of school and taking his first steps in the Tamil film industry in this chapter works as a brief curtain-raiser to this actor’s long and tumultuous journey under the limelight.

The natural flair for comedy

After this, without much ado, Hariharan plunges into discussing Kamal’s films with the actor’s mentor, the ace director K. Balachander. These early chapters are interesting as they give an idea of Kamal’s influences in his early career such as screenwriter Ananthu, (Balachander’s frequent collaborator) and the inimitable Tamil actor and comedian Nagesh.

From Ananthu, Kamal seems to have been introduced to French new wave cinema and Italian neo-realism, and Nagesh; he simply watched “dumbstruck”. Kamal was in awe of the way Nagesh played such a “variety of characters and lace them all with different intonations and exquisite gags,” writes Hariharan.

Hariharan delves into films like Bharathiraja’s cult film 16 Vayathinile; Raaja Paarvai (Kamal’s 100th film where he plays a blind pianist) and Moondram Pirai (Sadma in Hindi), the film that brought Kamal-Sridevi’s classic pairing to the fore to national audiences.

There’s an analysis of his baffling work, Gunaa (a melodrama about a tortured good soul unable to survive in an ugly world); Apoorva Sagodharargal (where Kamal experiments with playing a dwarf, something SRK too did many years later), Thevar Magan, a caste drama (which was later remade in Hindi as Virasat with Anil Kapoor) and his homage to classical dance with Jaya Prada in Salangai Oli.

The essays here are interspersed with quotes from Kamal’s directors like Bharathiraja (who had transformed Kamal’s image as a thinking actor), Singeetam Srinivasa Rao with whom Kamal made risky ventures like Pushpak and Raaja Paarvai, and commercial film director SP Muthuraman.

For example, director Muthuraman explains why Kamal did run-of-the-mill potboilers like Sakalakala Vallavan and Enakkul Oruvan (the latter is a remake of Rishi Kapoor’s Karz) and how he convinced Kamal not just to do ‘out-of-the-box films’ and ‘display his talents to the widest audiences possible’.

Hariharan tries to put Kamal’s commercial films in perspective, pointing out that such films should be viewed as ‘industrial products’. Kamal himself viewed “commercial filmmakers as simple and honest beings not governed by philosophies, moral or ethical”. Veteran film director GV Iyer advised him to keep out of the “so-called Kannada and the national art film revolt since it would flounder for lack of feed,” Kamal says in the book.

He adds, “I see infotainment as the latest political and artistic field of battle of ideologies and intend to be part of it. I see gaming and news interlacing into a neuro-plastic platform. I am glad I am alive and healthy to be part of that paradigm shift.” That gives us some idea of how the actor manages to successfully straddle both commercial and experimental cinema.

There’s not much new insight we get from the chapter on Nayakan except for how Kamal managed to stage that much-talked-about scene he enacts after he loses his son. But what is fun and enlightening is a short chapter on Kamal’s ‘astounding’ contribution to comedy and the making of his laugh-riot Michael Madana Kama Rajan.

Hariharan aptly uses a quote by the great comedian Cho Ramaswamy to describe Kamal’s natural flair for comedy. According to Cho, Kamal “works with situations in comedies in a highly Wodehousian manner”.

“What’s more amazing is the fact that he can come out of a serious film like Nayakan and jump totally into a slapstick barrel of fun and mirth. How difficult it must be,” mulls Cho. Kamal himself says he was inspired to enter the world of comedy due to the great thespian Sivaji Ganesan. After all, he had always seen himself as carrying forth the legacy of the great actor in South cinema in many ways. But where is the author’s take on Kamal’s rollicking, fun Avvai Shanmugi (1996)? That is a bit of a let-down, really.

Musings on the actor’s complex body of work

If you are looking for some film insider’s snippets, it comes ironically in the chapter on Kamal’s political magnum opus Hey Ram (2000), which apparently was initially visualised on the lines of a crime thriller like The Day of the Jackal (1973). It seems Kamal realised that sympathising with Gandhi’s killer Nathuram Godse may not have gone down well with the public (it was still the year 2000).

So, it became a fictionalised tale of an agonised Hindu during Partition who sets out to kill Mahatma Gandhi to avenge terrible wrongs that happened to him. In this chapter, film critic Hariharan unpacks the multiple layers in the film, but also narrates an incident involving actor Naseeruddin Shah, who plays Mahatma Gandhi.

The set of the Gandhi assassination scene was to be shot in the gardens of a colonial bungalow in Ooty. As the musicians were rehearsing the hymn Vaishnava jana toh, Naseer emerged from his cabin dressed like the Mahatma. The noisy location fell silent as he walked up like an old man with his palms joined in prayer. All the junior artistes and musicians jumped up, joining their palms in deep respect. Kamal had goosebumps all over his body, Hariharan writes.

But when a young sound engineer walked up to him to pin the wireless microphone inside his shawl, the pin pricked his chest and Shah yelled, “Oh hell, what the f…are you doing?” And, Hariharan writes that the Gandhi illusion was rudely broken and the film crew went about their business.

In the book, we get to know Hariharan’s views on Kamal’s complex body of work, including the actor’s mega-disasters like Dasavathaaram (2008) and Aalavandhan (2001), which had frankly left his audiences bewildered. But if the readers are looking for insights into Kamal as a person, they will be disappointed. Pushpak director Singeetam Srinivasa Rao’s Afterword, too, is more of an adulatory tribute to the actor.

In the end, the book delves more into Kamal’s focus on the art and technology of filmmaking, and his tireless pursuit to go down in the annals of cinema as one of the greatest actors and filmmakers who ever lived.