Kamal Haasan, the actor who rejected distractions

Here’s wishing Kamal Haasan a very happy birthday!

The 100 years of Indian cinema won’t be the same without 50 years of Kamal Haasan’s contribution to it. He entered showbiz as a child artist in 1960 with Kalathur Kannamma, and played minor roles in several films, worked as a dance assistant before he established himself as a lead actor through legendary K Balachander movies. Even before Tamil audience could come to realise the potential of a struggling actor in the 1970s, he was first accepted as a hero by the Malayalam film audience.

He became a leading man with Kanyakumari (1974), which was written by MT Vasudevan Nair and helmed by KS Sethumadhavan. And he never looked back. He continued to work with Malayalam filmmakers even as he was making a mark in other language films across the country. He has as many as 40 films in Malayalam to his credit. His last full-time Malayalam film was T K Rajeev Kumar’s revenge drama Chanakyan (1989).

Unlike today, Kamal didn’t have to worry about promoting films door-to-door across the cities. And hence he pulled off something, which will be deemed utterly impossible and insane by today’s actors. People that have followed the career graph of Kamal, would say that there was no other actor in the country in the 1980s, who dominated the Indian film industry by simultaneously working in Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi films.

After making his debut in Bollywood with Ek Duuje Ke Liye, Kamal acted in a number of Hindi films. This until he felt the glitz and glamour and underworld connections of Bollywood were too overwhelming for him. He made a conscious decision to walk away from all that money and fame that Bollywood had to offer, to just focus on the craft that was so close to his heart. That’s rather one of the alluring qualities of Kamal. He won’t do things that he doesn’t feel right and never mind pushing against the limits to do things that he believes in. For example, after a point, he only accepted his salary through cheques to take a stand against black money. Or that he continue to invest his wealth in films he believes in irrespective of whether they do well or tanks at the box office.

Kamal Haasan and Rati Agnihotri in a still from Ek Duuje Ke Liye.

That very determination gave the country a Nayagan, that caused tremors in India when it released in 1987. It is one of the only three Indian films among Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa and Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy to be featured in Time magazine’s ‘All Time 100 Movies List.’ But, he was undeterred when his Hey Ram (2000) did not do well as expected. It was termed a flop, maybe because the film had too many kissing scenes, or discussed complex and distressing political chapter of India. The fact of the matter is that it didn’t receive the appreciation by the majorityof the audience it so deserved at the time. But, the film was picked as the official submission from India for Oscars. And it also bagged many awards, including multiple National Awards.

The box office failure of his classic Hey Ram did not make him take an easy route. He can make and act in masala movies better than anyone without breaking a sweat (Panchathantiram, Pammal K. Sambandam and of course Apoorva Sagodharargal to name a few). He does not have to risk everything he have to make films that he believes in, which satisfied an artist in him. But, he does exactly that. Aalavandhan and Anbe Sivam are among Kamal’s filmography that did not receive its due recognition at the box office when they released. But, they were later celebrated as iconic films.

I can’t recall a film before Aalavandhan that explored the genre of psychological thriller in Tamil cinema like the way it did. It took the audience right into the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic psychopath and presented his disturbed thoughts so aesthetically. Well, we can only assume the Tamil audience was not ready for a masterpiece like Aalavandhan back then, which was made using the best of technology available at the time.

Kamal Haasan in a till from the film Aalavandhan.

Kamal used comics to show the gruesome crimes committed by the schizophrenic protagonist. Talk about thinking out of the box. It even inspired Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino to use the same method to show violent scenes in his Kill Bill series.

Kamal’s first film as producer Raja Paarvai (1981) was a box office disaster. It is said that it took about eight years for the actor to recover from the losses he suffered from this film. But, it didn’t stop him from making classics like Thevar Magan (1992), Apoorva Sagodharargal (1989), Mahanadi (1994), Sathya (1988), Kuruthipunal (1995) and many such iconic films.

There are only very few people in Indian film industry that live and breathe cinema like Kamal do. Only a few people that can walk away from distractions of a money-rich film industry (read Bollywood). Only a few who can push boundaries like Kamal to pave way for the future generation to take the art of filmmaking to next level. Only a few will put their artistic needs above their materialistic ones. Only a few will take the state government to court to protect the films for they have given their heart and soul making it. Only a few strive to give best of cinema to the audience, even when the majority of them fail to appreciate their work at times.