I am not a great fan of Kamal Haasan the actor. I tend to believe that he overacts and is not a ’’natural’’ actor. But one cannot possibly ignore the contribution that he has made to Tamil (and Indian) cinema through his willingness to experiment and do so at his own personal risk. One of the brilliant outcomes of his constant experimentation is Mahanadhi.
The movie was an attempt to highlight the problem of Urbanisation in India. Of course the medium could have been a documentary - with dry statistics about number of people dying of hunger, the growth of cities in terms of the number of square miles they gobble up and an impersonal description of ’’uprooted lives’’. Or it could have been a ’’Mahanadhi’’.
This is an attempt that is up close and personal - something that drags the viewer into itself and forces upon him (her?) the emotions that the actors go through. It is no longer ’’uprooted lives’’ - it is a lost son, it is a brutalised daughter, it is an imprisoned father. And by making it very personal this movie definitely does a better job than a documentary.
In addition to being very personal, what makes this movie special and unique (particularly so from a Indian perspective) is the manner in which it goes about telling the story - a style of story telling that makes the story itself redundant. For those who are averse to reading a review that exposes the plot - rest assured. I could narrate the story to you frame by frame and you will not even be close to being prepared for what HITS you when you VIEW the actual movie.
The story itself is a simple one - a happy family in a rural setup, a man with a certain weakness, a con-man that any of us could meet on the street, a con-job like any other we see on TV everyday, an authority which needs a scapegoat, the wrong man thrown behind bars, helpless and trusting children exploited by the system, man by now had learnt about the big bad city, his (successful) attempt at rebuilding his life.
So what?s the big deal about this movie then?? Well, the man is YOU. Within moments of the beginning of the movie you are sucked into it, you become the small ’’happy’’ family living in a small town on the banks of the cauvery. You are the widower with unmet ambitions and facing the reality of a life without a woman. You are the weak man who falls into a trap that people close to you try to save you from. You are the helpless man who begins to see that you had made a mistake but have to carry on simply because it would mean that you were wrong in the first place otherwise (for the MBA types its called ’’escalation of commitment’’ - or doing an M.Tech because you did not get a job after B.Tech and do not want to take up a call centre job either ;-) ) You are the man whose world falls around him (inevitably so) and is forced to face the reality of the situation that you avoided facing in the first place.
And then when you can no longer hide and decide to fight, there is NOTHING TO FIGHT. Khalil in his review talks of a villain and of a revenge. I beg to differ. There is no villain in this movie and you will never have the gratification of the hero getting his revenge. The ’’villain’’ is the system - not a cruel system that hates you or in anyway wants to hurt you - you can fight THAT. It is an impersonal system that is nameless, faceless and (very frighteningly) one that does not even KNOW YOU. And yet - it can brutally and ruthlessly destroy your whole world.
The pimp/conman is just doing his job which is to con suckers, the fools who accuse you of fraud after having invested in the chit fund (in spite of enough publicity about similar frauds) are just trying to rationalise their own mistake by painting you as the ONLY black mark in an otherwise CLEAN chit fund industry, the authorities who put you behind bars need a scapegoat and you are the one around and the men whom your daughter services are just looking for an alternative to servicing themselves. Individually they are just ordinary facets of the world you live in - as a combination they kill you.
There is nothing that you can fight - you can only rebuild your life and that is what the protagonist does. It is also the only positive aspect of an otherwise dark movie. The ’’revenge’’ itself is more of an afterthought, a playing to the gallery and possibly the only aberration in an otherwise flawless film (Even Kamal Haasan has to subscribe to certain rules).
I read some of the comments on the other reviews where people said that they did not understand Tamil. So do the women who ’’buy’’ Kicha’s daughter’s freedom so that he can take her with him. But they definitely can understand the gratitude in the folded hands of a father who cannot express it in words they understand.
This movie talks to you through its images. The image of a waif of a girl reciting her biography to the audience of a proud father, the image of a man being tempted and seduced to his doom, the image of girl cowering in shame when she discovers that the ’’customer’’ she was asking to wait is her father, the image of a father who hears his underage daughter talk in her sleep asking them to ’’come one by one’’, the image of a family that had picked up its broken pieces and is now looking to a better future. And these images that remain etched in your memory long after the movie is over, come to you thru the eyes of a discerning camera, the histrionics of an excellent cast (Kamal Haasan, Shobana, Haneefa) and the sounds of a wonderful composer (Illayaraja).
A critic is someone who can look at something from outside and comment on it in a rational intelligent manner. I cannot be a critic of this movie. I could not even view the whole movie the first time I saw it. I walked out of the theatre midway during the interval and it took me six years before I could gather my guts to watch it completely. I guess there is no better accolade that I can possibly come up with.