Dasavatharam - Almost a Magnum Opus by an Indian Genius

Recently, my wife and i went out to watch this attempted masterpiece at the INOX - one of chennai's attempts at Multiplexing the cinema goer's experience. We went to watch this during our favourite timing (9:00 AM on Saturday) but it was quite a full house. We ended up a few minutes late but still in time to catch most of this fast paced movie where India's greatest actor, Dr. Kamalahasan has attempted to dorn 10 different character roles. Other than 1 character which is based in the 12th century, the rest of the characters are set in contemporary times and keep constantly bumping into each other. Of course, some of the characters could have been played by anybody and have a thin thread to the overall story but the attempt is to get to Ten to give some credulence to the story's title.

A mish-mash of concepts bundled in this attempted sci-fi flick include

• Chaos theory and its application in contemporary philosophy where one presumes every event in the universe is connected to every other event and there is a method in the madness after all
• Theism or rather, Kamal's thoughts on the subject. As a matter of fact, i could resonate with Kamal's last word on the subject in the climax. By the way, there was nothing out there that would have hurt any religious sentiments unless one is a psychopath.
• The tsunami of 2004 - where this has been portrayed as nature's way of averting an even larger crisis.
• Biotechnology and its misuse
• Illegal sand quarying in Tamilnadu - which is indeed a worrying thing today where the urban elitist populace including me contribute to deprivation of natural resources in our bid to become more opulent at least in monetary terms and end up buying additional shelters than what we need.

By the time, we got to the finish, though one was amazed at Kamal's versatility and his dedication to his craft (whether it be the bumbling India RAW Agent - who can speak 5 languages in Telugu, the CIA Assassin, the Iyengar priest at the begining or the Dalit who is a genuine social worker, the portrayals were just breathtaking and for a few minutes, one tends to forget that they are all being performed by one person), one was definitely left wondering at how much more could have been accomplished. Also, the heroine's childish portrayal as well as the ability of the main hero character and the heroine to go through multiple accidents including an overturned lorry and escape absolutely unscathed were too juvenile in their portrayal.

Overall, it was definitely a magnum opus by India's greatest Film personality and is laudable for the effort that has gone in. Well almost....