Ahead of the brand new Vikram directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj, we make a journey down reminiscence lane to take a look at the unique 1986 movie and what it meant to individuals who grew up within the Nineteen Nineties
Ahead of the brand new Vikram directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj, we make a journey down reminiscence lane to take a look at the unique 1986 movie and what it meant to individuals who grew up within the Nineteen Nineties
Movies you uncover by yourself throughout childhood are likely to have an enduring influence. You get emotionally hooked up to these motion pictures which afterward act as gateways to nostalgia, reflecting the phases of life and the innocence that comes with it. As you get older, your style and sensibilities change however you continue to have a mushy spot for the films you noticed as a toddler. You nonetheless really feel for such movies. For individuals who grew up within the Nineteen Nineties, the Kamal Haasan-starrer Vikram was one such discovery.
Watching Kamal in silhouette as a quasi-Bond within the title observe of Vikram sealed the deal for many of us. Our fascination additionally comes from the truth that it was the time when video video games consoles — those that got here in cassettes — had been penetrating our lives. Vikram felt like a kind of cool video games you by no means wished to finish, particularly the movie’s Salamia portion. Even Ilaiyaraaja’s background music had that online game sound. What continues to be etched in reminiscence are the a number of explosions that occur within the movie (which felt actual) and the flowery props together with the missile named Agni Putra.
A Bond film with a Tamil flavour
Lots of people nonetheless haven’t seen Vikram. For their profit, the movie is about an clever agent Arun Kumar Vikram (performed by Kamal Haasan) who’s pressured to rejoin the company on account of his private loss. Vikram is assigned a activity to retrieve a lacking nuclear missile, which is within the fingers of Sugirtharaj (Sathyaraj) who seeks asylum in a fictional kingdom referred to as Salamia.
As the story goes, Kamal determined to adapt veteran Tamil author Sujatha’s Vikram, which was printed as a sequence in a well-liked Tamil journal. They labored on the screenplay, making an attempt to marry the coolness of a Bond film and the sensibilities of Tamil cinema.
Directed by Rajashekar, the movie was a industrial success. But, through the years, Kamal has been a caustic critic and has usually been dismissive of Vikram, saying that it was “diluted for the Kodambakkam audience”. He mentioned one thing to the impact of this: “Imagine Bond being assigned a task and before he gets on the mission, he has to stop by a temple and break coconut for Lord Ganesh. That’s what happened to Vikram (sic).” You get why.
Revisiting Vikram at this time, with out the burden of childhood and nostalgia, didn’t make sense. Clearly it has stood the check of time, not like a few of Kamal’s different works. The purpose may very well be the screenplay written by Sujatha and Kamal. You see the imaginative and prescient that that they had however you additionally solely see the concepts. The movie at this time offers you the texture of being overstuffed with ideas for 2 sorts of movies: an uber-cool Bond film within the first half and a madcap action-adventure like Indiana Jones or Mad Max sequence within the second half. Vikram ended up being neither right here nor there. Perhaps a extra competent filmmaker might have managed to bridge this screenplay hole. And Rajashekar was by no means Kamal’s first selection.
A quest for the fitting filmmaker
Even very just lately, when Kamal was requested about Rajashekar’s legacy on the Vikram press meet, he gave a measured reply by calling him a “great commercial filmmaker”. “It [Vikram] was Mani Ratnam’s cup of tea,” wrote Kamal in an article in The Hindu, celebrating 25 years of Nayakan. Perhaps Kamal was proper.
Action is a style that Mani Ratnam has not carried out in his decades-long profession. The closest he acquired was Thiruda Thiruda. Had Mani Ratnam directed Vikram, we’d have even acquired a greater movie. But the grasp filmmaker wasn’t favoured by commerce. Rajashekar had that fringe of a “commercially-successful” director, having simply delivered a blockbuster in Kaaki Sattai the 12 months previous Vikram. In truth, one suspects Kaaki Sattai was the explanation Kamal went to Rajashekar within the first place, provided that the profitable mixture of the director-actor duo together with actors Ambika and Sathyaraj had been retained for Vikram too. Thirty-six years after the discharge of Vikram, Kamal appeared to have discovered the filmmaker he was on the lookout for to execute his authentic concept in Lokesh Kanagaraj. No surprise Kamal has been selling the brand new movie left, proper and centre. In the 231 movies Kamal has acted up to now, Lokesh has particularly picked an oddball like Vikram for a doable spin-off. This solely goes to indicate the emotional attachment he has for the movie, like most of us who caught it on tv and had been mesmerised by what we noticed.
A self-confessed fanboy, Lokesh treads a skinny but harmful line directing his display screen idol Kamal Haasan within the new Vikram. If he fails to ship, the autumn shall be better. But if he succeeds, followers of the unique would maybe heave a sigh of reduction considering of Charuhasan’s iconic dialogue proper after Vikram completes his mission — “He has done it.”
TRIVIA
There are fairly a couple of similarities between Kamal Haasan and Tom Cruise. The latter is hailed because the “last living action-superstar of our generation” and Kamal has all the time maintained that he’s a fan of motion movies. Tom Cruise’s Top Gun launched in the identical 12 months as Kamal’s Vikram.
Though each these movies had been completely different by way of their style and expertise, they share a standard trivia: Top Gun and Vikram opened to combined crucial opinions however had been commercially profitable. Now each movies have a sequels/spin-offs in Top Gun: Maverick and Vikram.
Source: www.thehindu.com
