Singeetam Srinivasa Rao’s 1987 film, a tribute to comedy legends like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, explores urban existence, and the hypocrisy of society through the lens of laughter
Kamal Haasan’s 1987 film Pushpak is like a tribute to a long list of comedy masters such as Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Nagesh and, of course, the inimitable Jacques Tati, other than Charlie Chaplin. As a homage to all of them, Kamal holds mime conversations with his girlfriend Amala, standing far across the hotel enclave with a camera mounted with a telephoto lens. She looks at him through a simple telescope and expresses through sign language how she cannot leave her parents. And everyone in the audience understands the import of that conversation.
The unique quality of the comedy masters lies in the fact that they created humour not at the expense of others, but by the use of cinematic elements like props, timing and framing. Their brilliance is also demonstrated in how the characters in their films survive near-death circumstances around them which can be witnessed only by the viewers while the characters themselves remain oblivious to the dangers. In Pushpak the killer, played superbly by Tinnu Anand, is forever lurking around Kamal with a sharp icicle to execute the perfect murder with no trace left behind. And each time he comes close, Kamal inadvertently slips away on his pursuit to meet his beloved.
Mirrors as self-reflective motifs
Rao reminisces, “Those were the days when five-star hotels would let us shoot on their premises at very low costs with no ‘security’ issues. And having a superstar like Kamal on their property for over twenty days was a big publicity attraction for the Windsor Manor hotel in Bangalore. The architecture of the hotel was perfectly suited to tell this silent story, for it provided multiple points of view. The comedy had to be constantly developed on [the lines of] “who saw what and when” so that the “why and how” of the connotation could be communicated simply to the viewer. Though it was a win-win situation, we had to work hard to get the mise-en-scène right. Every piece of action by multiple actors on the location had to be precisely timed and only I could see them all and certify it as an ‘okay’ shot, for there was no playback tape system which Kamal and others could check out. It was a huge responsibility for me and there was no way we could do [any changes] once the shooting was completed.”
Few films have critiqued the standard romantic story that inhabits all our mainstream films the way Pushpak did. If filmed in a formal, dramatic manner, this would have been a dark and grim film on the futility of modern romance, which is nurtured inside a fake atmosphere of garish modernity where nobody really belongs to the architecture they live within. Instead, Rao’s satirical approach and Kamal’s blank look/unmotivated movements manage to subvert the emotional plane behind the tragedy of contemporary urban existence and instead get the audience to laugh and introspect at the same time. No wonder that we see the mirrors at different points in the hotel working as self-reflective motifs, forcing us to look into the various layers offered in the narration.
Kamal Haasannever made such a wordless, nameless, plotless film again but with Singeetam Srinivasa Rao at the helm, he would go on to make many more comedy films, which would establish him as the superstar of the Southern masses
A comedy within a comedy!
The fact that there are no spoken words in this film is a comment on the urban situation where there is little commitment between what is said and what is practised. A photo of Karl Marx, nailed to the wall of Kamal’s character’s cooped house, seems to watch over the unethical enterprise of looting the rich that the young protagonist indulges in. Is it in approval of the poor, asserting themselves to regain lost wealth, or in condemnation of the lack of a unionised force sanctioning this modern disruptive action?
The black comedy finds itself offering a cynical perspective that in the long run, both the rich and the poor need to defecate each day! The young hero ends up collecting the shit of the rich drunkard, trashing it in a well-packaged carton, only to be envied by another person on the street! Semantics are merely formalities for modern business enterprises which are rooted in legal jargon and bureaucratic statements, while the vernacular expression silently weeps in long-winding queues in front of ration shops and employment agencies.
Kamal never made such a wordless, nameless, plotless film again but with Singeetam Srinivasa Rao at the helm, he would go on to make many more comedy films, which would establish him as the superstar of the Southern masses. Though the film was meant for an all-India audience, the exhibition strategy had to be done in a localized state-wise manner. The rule says that a talkie has to be in a certain language. Therefore, in order to release this wordless film all over India, it was certified the same year by the censor board multiple times, in all Indian languages, with titles changed and new censor certificates issued in all languages! A comedy within a comedy!
(Excerpted from Kamal Haasan: A Cinematic Journey by K. Hariharan, with permission from HarperCollins India)
