Dasavathaaram: guru’s view + a review
K Balachander was delighted by Dasavathaaram and we already heard about it. But here are his exact thoughts.
I liked the film immensely for the wonderful dialogues and the way it has been mounted. I saw the film again. Being a student of cinema I’ll watch it a third time because he’s achieved so many things in one film. I have a few things to learn.
I have a lot to learn from him as far as technique is concerned. He’s outgrown everyone in Indian cinema.
He’s a man who revels in freshness. The effort he puts in is phenomenal. Others are only making money. This man has taken two years to complete this film. He could have amassed four times the wealth if he’d worked in more films.
…Kamal teaches everyone and fine tunes every other artiste’s performance on the set. He’s selfish to the extent that he wants the product to be good.
I told him I didn’t know what to make after watching the film and he said, “You made me.” I was touched.
This interview is brought to you by S Shivakumar in The Hindu. Regular readers of this blog would have seen other stuff from him earlier — Vishnuvardhan on Kamal and interview with Kamal. As seen in the above article, Shivakumar himself has not made up his mind about the movie. Here goes his review, reproduced with his permission.
The opening scene is riveting. Set in the 12th century it shows a lone Vaishnavite taking on the Shaivite ruler attempting to replace Vishnu with Shiva in a temple. His resistance and eventual submergence in the sea tied to the idol of his lord is brilliantly shot. Cut to the present where an Indian scientist is being honoured for saving the country from a biological weapon he’s developed. Rewind to the recent past. Our scientist helps in developing a weapon of in a vial which has the potential for mass destruction. He gets wind of the fact that his boss is trying to sell it off. The vial is mistakenly shipped to India and now scientist and an ex-CIA agent turned mercenary are in hot pursuit of it for different reasons.
A simple enough story but Kamal decides to pack in his beliefs, thoughts and philosophy about life into the three hours. The film talks about the chaos theory, the butterfly effect, atheism, the ecological imbalance that the mindless sand mafia is wreaking and the fact that ultimately nature is the greatest leveler. What sets Kamal apart as a filmmaker and actor is that he doesn’t believe in mindless entertainment. He tries to make people think though he doesn’t thrust his radical views on the paying public. With the failure of masterpieces like ‘Mahanadhi’ and ‘Anbe Sivam’ he tries to pack in humour, action and the sizzling Mallika Sherawat. So does the film work? Only in parts.
The fact is that Kamal has nothing to prove as an actor. He’s undeniably the most gifted actor on-screen. His body of work is unparalleled and is the only actor who’s got success on his terms. So the essaying of ten roles is only of academic interest. The discordant note is that some of the characters he plays have nothing to do with the plot. Mainly the seven foot tall Muslim and the Sardarji pop superstar. The plot thankfully does away with lengthy fights, duets and romance. Kamal the script writer, you feel has bitten off more than he can chew. He’s a gifted screenplay writer with classics like ‘Thevar Magan’, ‘Mahanadhi’ and that cult classic, ‘Micheal Madana Kamarajan’. Here he fails to sew the scenes seamlessly. The narration is jerky in the pursuit of giving importance to all the characters. The ten characters jostle for screen space.
Surprisingly the film is technically tacky. The computer graphics leaves a lot to be desired and the ruthless fury of the tsunami leaves you cold. The photography is brilliant though, especially a chase shot in the night.
Kamal’s acting is flawless. The prosthetics is over done but the way he changes his body language, voice and accent to suit the various characters is breath taking. There’s a brief shot of the Japanese Kung Fu master walking in silhouette. His gait in that brief shot encapsulates his dedication as an actor. Asin’s incessant chatter even in the face of adversity is irritating.
Don’t miss ‘Dashavatharam’. Kamal’s failure as a script writer is more than made up for by Kamal the master of masquerade.
S.Shiva Kumar
Producer: Aaskar Ravichandran
Director: KS Ravi Kumar
Photography: Ravi Varman
Music: Himesh Reshamiya
Cast: Kamalhassan Asin
Rating****
June 27th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Randramble,
FYI..
http://sudhanganin.blogspot.com/2008/06/blog-post_26.html
June 28th, 2008 at 6:08 am
I honestly don’t understand why there is such a big hoopla about the story, screenplay, and other nuances of the film. The film, like I’ve already explained many times, was made with the intention of making money and it has done just that. The deed is done, people. We should consider this movie a commercial hit which has some magical elements thanks to Kamal. And Kamal never compared this movie to any of his earlier films such as Guna, Hey Ram, or Mahanadhi for that matter. So, it all boils down to this. Kamal had a good story, wanted to make it into a grand film, he did it, succeeded at it, and now he’s happily working on his next project. End of story. Now, any one has a problem???
June 28th, 2008 at 11:45 am
DASA crosses 100 Crores - Ascar Ravichandran
Dasavatharam: India’s most ambitious film to date
It is India’s most ambitious film to date, both budget and scriptwise. Going by the worldwide box office collections so far, it may well give enough reasons to its investor to smile all the way to the bank.
If you have spent time in Tamil Nadu, it’s a ritual you are certain to have seen at some point. The release of a film by any of the state’s big stars is an event to be seen. And if the film stars one of the icons like Rajinikanth or Kamal Haasan, the bursting of crackers and the coconut breaking could well make an outsider think it is the prelude to a grand wedding. Often, the only difference is that this wedding lasts through the first week of a film’s release and in some instances, a bit longer.
The release of Haasan’s magnum opus Dasavatharam was probably the most awaited event in a long time. For Haasan’s fans, they needed something to talk about after Rajinikanth’s Sivaji - The Boss created an unprecedented level of hysteria. That film was released on July 15 last year and Haasan’s Dasavatharam was in the theatres on June 13 this year.
It is often hard to gauge the success of a film when the hype is so overwhelming and Dasavatharam merely confirms that hypotheses. Most importantly, this was Haasan’s first release since Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu in August 2006 which went on to become a huge hit.
Kamal’s Kamaal
Ask Dasavatharam’s producer Venu Ravichandran if he was worried about how expensive this project could be and the answer is an emphatic NO. “Well, it came to Rs 60 crore eventually but I never ever had an estimate,” he says. Hard to believe? Not really, if he tells you that this is how he went about producing Anniyan which was released in 2006. That had a budget of around Rs 50 crore and grossed twice that number at the box office.
In Ravichandran’s words, he had decided on the project as far back as in 1996. It took a lot of time to get the film together. “It’s not a usual, run of the mill film. For instance,
we were into post-production a year after the film’s shooting was completed,” he says.
Given that Haasan plays such varied roles as a Telugu speaking RAW official or a witty grandmother apart from a George Bush who wants to know what NaCl (sodium chloride) stands for, this has clearly been his biggest effort. Ten roles in one film required the actor to get into various forms of make-up and ready himself to play a different personality all the time. “We took two years to finish the project.
Without Kamal Haasan, it would have taken ten years,” says Ravichandran quite candidly. He says it took the actor eight hours of make-up time to get ready for each of the ten avtaars. “All this was for just shooting spread out over half hour. The make-up would not last beyond that,” exclaims the producer. Interestingly, the film was scheduled for release last October which then got pushed to December. “We wanted to release it on April 14 (Tamil New Year’s day),” says Ravichandran.
It was imperative for the audience to get the best of Haasan and the ten roles were meant to drive home that point. Marketers think it is a good idea. “It gives the actor ten opportunities to click with the audience,” opines Harish Bijoor, CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults. Arguably, that is the film’s selling point and that is what the actor and the producer seem to be banking on.
“I was completely confident about the project. Where else could the audience have seen the actor in such diverse roles,” says Ravichandran, who himself is a huge fan of Haasan having seen a lot of films of his. He is effusive about the actor and is clear when he says that it was his indefatigable attitude that saw the project through. “Never once did the actor ask for a break or say he was too tired,” recalls Ravichandran. Music indeed to the ears of the audience.
Not at the altar of Commerce
In the recent past, most big-budget films have adopted a revenue model where the investments are typically recovered before the release of the film. That has been with the case of most of the films in Bollywood and for recent Tamil films like Sivaji - The Boss.
Dasavatharam has been rather different in the sense that the producer decided to distribute the film himself. Ravichandran has been one of the biggest names in distribution though it is fair to assume that on a budget as large as this, it would just make business sense to recover as much as possible quickly. He disagrees with this theory and says that he is able to give the project his best when he distributes the film himself. “I have distributed the film on my own in India and across the world as well,” he says. Hassan’s last release Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu was distributed by Ravichandran. In 2006, he distributed almost all the blockbusters in Tamil cinema.
In terms of money that came Ravichandran’s way before the release of the film, it was Rs 2 crore from Sony-BMG for selling the music rights and another Rs 4.5 crore for Kalaignar TV for the satellite rights. That adds up to just Rs 6.5 crore. If Ravichandran, over the years, has earned the reputation of being a risk taker, this pretty much confirms it.
“To me, taking risks is like eating a rusk,” he says with a tinge of the characteristic Tamil humour.
To get deeper into the numbers, the film overall will have 1,300 prints which will include the Hindi version as well. Tamil Nadu alone had 275 prints with Kerala and Karnataka accounting for 85 and 80 prints respectively.
The Telugu version of Dasavatharam had as many as 260 prints. “We will have 190 prints for the overseas markets and there will be another 400 for the Hindi audiences,” says Ravichandran. Simply put, around 1,100 prints will be released domestically while the rest will go abroad. By comparison, Sivaji - The Boss had 155 prints for the overseas territories just confirming how important the Tamil diaspora is in countries like UK, US, Europe and Singapore.
If the game is all about the number of prints, then producers have to ensure that the film can be viewed in as many screens as possible. Again, promoting a film like Dasavatharam is not always easy. “It becomes very difficult to market it since the benchmarks set are very high. It is also easy because it has a big star,” thinks Bijoor.
Interestingly, the multitude of prints has translated into an impressive collections as well. The producer says that a state like Kerala grossed Rs 2 crore in the first week. “To date, the film has generated revenues worth Rs 100 crore and it has the potential to bring in as much as $100 million (over Rs 400 crore),” he claims.
Multiplex owners have been quite thrilled with the response. According to K. Munikannaiah, Vice President (Movie Scheduling) at Chennai’s Satyam Cinema, his multiplex had 70 shows during the first week grossing over Rs 50 lakh. “During the second week, we had sixty shows bringing in another Rs 45 lakh. I must say Dasavatharam’s performance has exceeded our expectations,” he adds.
Ravichandran has lived and breathed Dasavatharam over the last few years. “I watched Kamal Haasan films as a youngster in movie theatres and did not expect to produce his film ever. It is a dream come true for me,” he says. It’s not as if he is all set to cool his heels. The next project is with Jackie Chan which, according to him, has a budget of Rs 600 crore.
“We will start shooting the film early next year and will release it in December 2008,” is all the producer is willing to reveal. For now, he can barely take his mind off Dasavatharam. “I have seen the film over a 100 times,” he says with a laugh. Deep down, Ravichandran must be hoping the audience follows suit.
Link
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Features/Special_Pages/Business_of_Bollywood/Dasavatharam_Indias_most_ambitious_film_to_date/articleshow/msid-3173741,curpg-1.cms