Uttama Villain (Virtuous Villain) - Melodrama meets Boredom!

Should a meta film or a film showcased within a film always needs to be made to look like a dummy? From what I've observed from the annals of Tamil cinema from the 70s (asking me to explore beyond that period would certainly be unfair), the meta films have always appealed to the tastes of the characters and the audiences portrayed in the main feature and have been rarely so for the real audience who get to watch both. Take for instance the highly melodramatic 70s movie, ‘Sadhanai’ starring Sivaji, Prabhu and K.R.Vijaya, the deadly combo who were destined to spew melodrama at the drop of a hat or the more recent ones like ‘Vellithirai’ and ‘Jigarthanda’, where the meta films were the axle on which the narrative was spun - the meta films helped to move forward the story and would be totally out of context when viewed separately. In a sense, the appeal of the meta film matters most to the audience or characters within the main film and rightly so. But when a meta film occupies a major part of the main film, is it sinful to expect an equally engaging narrative in line with the main film?

In Uttama Villain (UV) Kamal Haasan plays the role of Manoranjan, a movie star who gets to know that he has hardly any time to live as he is diagnosed with brain tumor (honestly I didn’t get the exact name of the condition that had a deep medical jargon). In a race against time, he wants to bid goodbye to filmdom by getting himself directed by his mentor Margadarsi (late director Balachander). The story swings between the reel and real life of Manoranjan who gets to live a long life in his reel avatar while he has to fight some emotional battles in his real one apart from battling with the disease that is consuming him day by day. The movie ends on an emotional note with the artist in Kamal triumphing over the star in him.

The thought process that would have gone into constructing this piece of complex narrative and the conception of the same have to be appreciated. The meta film where Kamal gets to play ‘Mrityunjaya’, the one who defies death at every encounter is an anomaly and a contrasting one to ‘Manoranjan’ who is counting his days. The meta film was supposed to be humorous, but there was hardly a scene that brought forth a smile. Adding to that there were a lot of stage plays which didn't appeal to the senses and patience is something that is too expensive these days. With the attention span of the audience shrinking by the day, an experienced artiste like Kamal should have curbed his fetish for stagecraft. Even a well researched subject on one of the historical court clowns like ‘Thenaliraman’ could have managed to do some justice. It was heart-wrenching to see so many performers wasted in the cause.

The movie exhibited a few bouts of brilliance - the scene where Manoranjan reveals his condition to his estranged family members and his son’s reaction to that, his relationship outside his marriage (which was more of a reflection of his real life) and his crave for privacy with curious fans trying to peep into some of his most emotional moments were brought out well. Everything came with a cause that all the characters were made to sing hymns about him at some point or the other - even the late legend Balachander was not spared. That was sickening after a certain point. On this count how different is Kamal from his counterpart, the superstar, who at least has mastered the art of gathering accolades with grace over the years and more importantly our psyche has been trained to accept the same.

Kamal was omnipresent on and off the screen. So his performance was the axil for the others to perform. Pooja Kumar’s overtly built up performance looked largely as a make-believe one with naiveties written all over. Nassar and company were entrusted to bear the cross and were left with some thankless roles. Oorvasi as the helpless wife has redefined her class with a natural performance. There were a host of others like Jayaram, Parvathy Menon, Andreah, Vishwanath and MS Bhaskar who were left to fend for themselves with insignificant roles.

Technically too the movie has fallen well short - the CG work was tackily executed and the tiger that was created using animatronics was sort of a saving grace. Music by Gibran was nowhere near his previously noteworthy films like ‘Vaagai Sooda Vaa’ and ‘Thirumanam Enum Nikkah’. To make things worse Kamal has trained his hoarse voice on almost all songs. Now coming to the most important part - direction. According to the credits, the film is directed by Ramesh Aravind, a very close aide of Kamal. One can certainly take it with a pinch of salt, because of Kamal’s previous records - if ‘Anbe Sivam’ was directed by Sundar C (director of movies like ‘Aambala’ and ‘Aranmanai’) and ‘Aalavandhan’ was directed by Suresh Krishna (director of ‘Bhasha’ and ‘Sathya’), then this film is believed to be directed by the one that the title card reads. Nevertheless credit goes to the ghost director!

No doubt that Kamal’s intentions of taking Tamil cinema to the international stage sounds noble, but at what cost? Should these blitheful experiments be carried out with the hard earned money of upcoming young production house like Thirupathi Brothers? I pity Mr.Lingusamy and company. Getting rave reviews from critics is more in line with the popular Danish fairy tale called “Emperor’s New Clothes”. Days are not far off when a child in the crowd proclaims that the emperor is nude, especially with children like me around who are better off remaining “ignorant” on Kamal's school of film making.  

Verdict: Disappointing

Rating: 1.5 / 5