Uttama Villain

At one point in Uttama Villain, K. Balanchander quips that he would not make a movie about a man suffering from a terminal brain cancer. "It would be such a cliche!". It is a  meta-commentary on Uttama Villain - which is about the last hurrah of a matinee idol, which needs an interesting mind like Kamal Hassan's to make this cliche work.

Kamal Hassan plays Manoranjan, a super star who acts in commercial potboilers, the kind of films that drive his adulating wife and his skeptic son crazy for entirely different reasons. The film opens to other adulating fans, and a song with an intentionally bad choreography where Kamal Hassan hams it way too up, almost matching the lack of dignity with which his friend Rajinikanth asked Shriya to give him "one time sunshine". When Manoranjan realises that he does not have much time left, he leaves his stardom and the baggage that came with that, to join forces with Margadarsi (played by K. Balachander to whom this film is dedicated), to make the kind of film he wanted to act as a budding actor. It is at this point the meta commentary is made, and is followed by a heartwarming performance, and the effect is amplified by Balachander's recent passing, as he grieves for his disciple's impending demise.

It is interesting to see the economy with which the scenes are written. The movie premier and the launch party provide a platform for most of the peripheral characters (but by no means minor) to come together. K. S. Ravikumar might have made these scenes utterly chaotic, and to Ramesh Aravind's credit he keeps a tighter watch. One of the most fascinating things about the writing is not how the characters steer the story forward, but how they seem to shape Uttama Villain's narrative form, seemingly without the director's aid. But I don't know if the general lack of directorial vision at the expense of interesting story telling is a good thing, or a bad thing, and in that regard, it does not help Ramesh Aravind that his film has Kamal Hassan.

"Uttama Villain" the historical comedy film that Margadarsi and Manoranjan make (thus giving this move its "purely Tamizh" name) is significant, in how this film and Manoranjan's life borrow from each other. But even without regard to this significance, it works mostly well, delivering laughs by deftly recycling Tamil proverbs and idioms ("Pudhu katthi kuthuthu", "Mudivurai illa Kaaviyam naan"). The inner film is almost a "Imsai Arasan 23am Pulikesi", relying on a happy-go-lucky hero, a laughably lecherous villain and a heroine with a sexy midriff. Kamal, Nasser, Pooja Kumar (and Dr. Gnanasambhandan in a rocking role, if his fan is reading) ham it up to extremely verbose (at times funny and thought provoking) semi-classical Tamil lyrics. Anyone unfamiliar with Nasser's work will probably misunderstand his performance as an indication of lack of acting skills. The movie making in the inner "Uttama Villian" itself is extremely primitive (it's like a stage performance where each scene simply leads to the next), and if unlike me, you listened to songs before watching the movie, you are bound to be disappointed. But it fits within the picture of what the outer "Uttama Villain" wants to achieve, and manages to keep you distracted from the realities of Manoranjan's life.

Quite contrastingly, the outer "Uttama Villain" is full of neat performances. Early on, M.S. Bhaskar's character reacts on his belated finding of Manoranjan's illness with a sense of betrayal, considering it as an act of retaliation to his own earlier betrayal. This is a rare moment in the outer "Uttama Villain", when a character loudly vocalizes his feelings. It begins with a hint of self awareness, which seems to progressively collapse under the weight of his sorrow. The next scene where he visits Kamal, is well thought and well executed. Bhaskar betrays a slight sense of guilt, when he reads the lines in the letter that indict him. The staging helps the characters to perform to each other, without overwhelming the audience with their feelings. Many a time, the film tips toes around this territory, and mostly manages to maintain a mood that is sombre but not tear jerking. It also helps that we don't know Yamini (whose name is the best of the movie's word plays), and are not deeply invested in her. But interestingly, M. S. Bhaskar pales into insignificance after this scene. The explanation comes much later, when Manoranjan points to Manonmani (Parvathi Menon who holds herself against Kamal Hassan in another well executed scene, when she first meets Manoranjan), her picture in a sort of a family tree, of people that mean something to him. That's what the outer "Uttama Villain" is about, how Manoranjan makes peace with those that matter to him, and vice versa.

What makes "Uttama Villain" interesting is how it derives from the film within the film. If Uttaman tricks King Mutharasan, by claiming to possess immortality, Manoranjan derives some personal mileage from his impending death. He manages to soften ties with his mentor, gets to read Yamini's letter, endears himself to his daughter born out of a wedlock, and his son. It is the awareness of his mortality that allows these characters to overcome their hard feelings against Manoranjan.

For all its seeming lack of finesse, the most interesting piece of screen writing is "within" the inner "Uttama Villain". The "Iraniyan Kadhai" does not only provide the perfect platform that deals with immortality, it is also an early Indian example of that story telling technique the patrons of ancient Greek theater despised. If Kamal dropped hints in "Dasavatharam" about the impeding dues ex machina, he does it more discreetly here. After hours of pouring over Wikipedia, reading about playwrights shifting the burden of saving the day to the almighty, it is a delight to find an example closer to home, as Mutharasan tears down a stage property to emerge out as Narasimhan, but only to be outwitted! (The realisation did not occur to me while watching the film). An admirable quality about Kamal, how he makes his political statements while simultaneously being true to his craft, unlike his playwright rationalist-political ancestors who have fallen prey to jingoism. At other places, Uttaman rues the absence of a rationalist in his village, who would have explained how he survived the snake bite, dares to invoke that pun on Lord Vishnu's name and pokes at "Arya Bhattars", and largely manages to get away with it.

And another interesting thing about "Uttama Villain" is that film's recursive structure is deftly hidden, and only surfaces due to the necessities of the characters, as opposed to "Inception" where the structure served as a metaphor. The inner "Uttama Villain" comes about because Manoranjan needs to make one final movie. The "Iraniyan Kadhai" comes about because, within the inner "Uttama Villain", Mutharasan wants to attain immortality. Chants of Mrityunjaya (The Immortal?) are peppered throughout the soundtrack, (which itself is excellent and probably Gibran's best since his debut) and appears within each story. If the difference is passage of time separated the levels in "Inception", it is the sophistication of the medium that distinguishes the levels in "Uttama Villain". When "Iraniyan Kadhai" ends with a twist ending, it provides the inner "Uttama Villain" a happy ending as the tyrant falls, which in turn provides the outer "Uttama Villain" a meaningful ending as the peripheral characters come to terms with life.

The movie is not without its imperfections. If certain scenes in "Panchatantiram" made you wish that homophones did not exist, the Tiger episode makes one wish that the inner "Uttama Villain" was staged in a grammatically rigorous language, where people unambiguously referred to themselves in third person. There is also an inconspicuous quasi-incestual undercurrent, that threatens to burst out as an April Fool's prank, but does not work because of the lack of screen presence of the person being pranked. It would be interesting to see how many believe Parvathy Nair when she tells people that she acted in this movie, especially given that Parvathi Menon also acts in this movie (the curse of homophones). If the makers took the joke seriously, they would paid more attention to detail to Nair's character (which was the least Yennai Arinthaal did to her). After the promise of Yamini's letter, Manoranjan's comes as a weak reply that further manipulates Manonmani, who already seems to have a soft corner for her biological father. If other films used Andrea as a sort of one note actress, "Uttama Villain" helps Andrea put together the three or four reactions in her acting tool kit, which means that her sermon to Selvaraghavan from Mount Moral Highground in Coffee with DD, still remains her best performance till date.

Be it in "Hey Ram", "Virumandi", "Dasvatharam" or "Vishwaroopam", Kamal's persona in the all these movie comes across to a large extent as morally upright. The Hindu fundamentalist in "Hey Ram" manages to find a redemption, the violent bull in "Virumandi" is blessed with a heart of gold, and Wissam in "Vishwaroopam" (based on the first part) ponders about his morality only to invoke "Nayakan", which itself absolved its protagonist as he stood for the greater good. The most interesting thing about Kamal Hassan's Manoranjan is how his character is freed from such moral bindings. The fact that there is more to Uravshi's adulation towards Manoranjan, and how her stubbornness keeps him away from the love of his life is revealed late into the movie. This provides a sudden edge when they meet again. While Urvashi repents for her actions asking him if he still loves him, he almost quotes from his fan's answer to a question on the Proust Questionnaire, all in the presence of the other woman in his life, of whom his wife is blissfully unaware.  Ideally, you would come to expect him to come clean to his wife about this woman. That's answered when the other woman requests him to keep this from everyone to save her own dignity, and he replies in affirmative stating that he could lie in his afterlife. With the sort of artistic immunity, or I dare say artistic immortality that this work provides, that man need not be too worried about after life.