Vishwaroopam - The SPY DRAMA is Here

After oodles of controversies, carrying oodles of expectations and promising oodles of thrills comes the most awaited Tamil film of the year, Kamal Hassan’s Vishwaroopam. It is an understatement to say that there are high expectations. Kamal Hassan has been known to deliver movies that lie on the plane which is trodden by both the common viewer and the intelligent viewer. Yet, when it comes to movies directed by him, he has been a very self indulgent artist who has never let anyone or anything compromise his vision of what he wants his movie to be. He has been known to shape the contours and sculpt the shape of his flicks with a view to make them reflect his own thoughts spotlessly to the viewer. Perhaps this is why his directorials have not found place among popularly viewed films and yet have endured because of their aesthetic values. This time, he offers to us, what can be touted as an out and out commercial entertainer mainly because it is about a topic that has found place as being amongst the sure shot formulae of a profitable venture viz. spy thriller. And, having the expectation meter at a dizzy height, one walks into the theatre. As the movie progresses, one then finds out that this is not the normal commercial potboiler nor is it the average spy thriller. We find that Kamal, being the pioneer that he is, has created a new genre – THE SPY DRAMA. Starring Padmashri Kamal Hassan, Pooja Kumar, Andrea Jeremiah, Shekhar Kapoor, Jaideep Ahalawat and Nasser, Vishwaroopam is the most unconventional of all commercial films in a long time.

The Plot:

The life of Dr Nirupama, an aspiring Nuclear oncologist living in a marriage of convenience with Vishwanathan, a Kathak teacher, in New York goes into a tizzy after she gets to know that her seemingly feminine and feeble husband is not exactly what he is. He has a shady past involving a stint with the jihad in Afghanistan. His stint brings him in contact with Omar, a hardcore Jihadi, who wants to detonate a ‘dirty bomb’ in New York. Flash forward to the present and Vishwanathan and a mysterious set of people are on hot pursuit of Omar who has seemingly crystallised his plans. As the plot unfolds, the protagonists go through frequent brushes with death. What is the result of these events is what is unraveled in the movie.

                                                 The Performances:

Name Kamal Hassan and you can expect only the best. He has given a performance suitable to the character created by himself. He gets to play a Kathak teacher and he does so with near Feminine grace and he gets to play a Jihadi and does so with masculine roughness. It is a role that he could have puled off in his sleep. Rahul Bose provides the perfect foil to Kamal’s character. He is menacing and brutal as a hardcore Jihadi, though the Tamil that he speaks might not be placed by many immediately. Pooja Kumar’s role could have been written in a better manner. Though her performance is good, the scope of her role limits her to being the source of most of the wisecracks that provide slight comic relief in the film. Jaideep Ahalawat is neat. The rest of the cast is a bevy of cameo appearances with the most significant of them being Shekhar Kapoor and Nasser. Andrea Jeremiah gets a blink and miss role. The casting of the film is a mixed bag.  On the whole, a Two man Show by Hassan and Bose is what is significant and brilliant in the acting  department.

The Technicalities:

Vishwaroopam is a film with gargantuan technical standards. The cinematography is collection of panoramas and vistas. The visuals of the movie are its most strong technical achievement. The sequence involving Afghanistan is brilliantly shot. The art direction is impressive to say the least. The Jihad camps shown look very real. The soundtrack and score by Shankar Ehsaan Loy cater to the various situations very aptly and are amply supported by wonderful picturisation. The stunt choreography is brilliant and is on par with the slickest of Hollywood action films one has come across. The only failed technical aspect of the film is the editing which leaves scope for some slackening of pace instead of being watertight.

The Screenplay and Direction:

It is an out and out triumph for the Writer Kamal Hassan which could have been helmed in a better manner by the Director Kamal Hassan. The screenplay is backed by a very plausible plot. A few characters could have been more well defined and others eliminated altogether. The screenplay is a triumph mainly because it treads the plane of commercial entertainers without insulting the intelligence of an intelligent viewer. Kamal Hassan bravely intertwines the harrowing lives of terrorists in the root level. He makes an intense character study of the protagonist out of a movie meant to be a spy thriller. The screenplay slackens, but only in spurts. Otherwise, the writing is of paramount quality. The director Kamal Hassan on the other hand is indulgent. Excessive(sometimes unnecessary) usage of slow motion photography and the deliberate glacial pacing blunts the vision of the writer. However, the director is bold enough to stick to a zilch nonsense approach, which partially makes up for his stubborn indulgence. Also, certain scenes seem too amateurish (Eg : the two interrogation scenes in the film). Yet, there has been no depiction of terrorism as bold as this one in India. The director takes the Spy film genre into a new plane, that of the dramatic. And thus takes birth, a new genre, the spy drama. He sequence set in Afghanistan in Jihad camps is brilliantly executed. The writer-director also leaves certain questions unanswered along with the promise of a sequel. On the whole, a brilliant script gone slightly awry because of the deliberate direction. Kudos go to Kamal Hassan though, for letting the actors dub for themselves. For this acts as an add on to the movie even though the Tamil seems too strained in some sequences.

The Verdict:

Please collect your tickets and watch Vishwaroopam for its bold attempt at fusing commercial ingredients with harrowing ground realities and mounting it on a grand visual plane. Terrorism and Jihad has not yet been depicted in such a real manner that can be stomached by the intelligent palate. The director’s stubborn indulgence and heavy handed approach might prove a little taxing for the common viewer. For the intelligent viewer, there are zilch pitfalls. Despite all the small negatives that are prevalent through the film , Vishwaroopam is not to be ignored as it has ample aesthetic value. A bold attempt at commercial cinema which has to be emulated by many more film makers in India. This film will not disappoint you if you are patient with the directorial pitfalls. A mostly sharp, sometimes blunt thriller mixed with compelling drama and technical brilliance galore make this a wholesome watch. Please watch it for quenching the thirst for intelligent cinema as there is a dearth of such films in our industry. The SPY DRAMA is here.

Rating  - 3 on 5.