Story Telling and the Story

When Kamal Hassan made the most famous tamil movie Vetri Vizha in 1989, it was compared to bond movies. The movie was a huge success at box office. The 1988 released Bourne Identity movie had differences from the book. But Vetri Vizha was a clever adaptation of Robert Ludlum's novel and it has shades of both Bourne Identity and Supremacy which was made in 2000's.

Adaptation is not new to Tamil Cinema, not even blatant copying. Its not new to Kamal Hassan either. His movies like Nammavar, Magalir Mattum, Mahanadhi, Sathi Leelavathi, Avvai Shanmugi, Anbe Sivam, Panchathanthiram, Thenali & to Papanasam have all been adapted from some foreign movie, mostly English movies.

The current trend in movies is similar to the Look East policy of Govt. of India. Many movies today are stories that are popular in countries like Japan, Korea etc. When Drishyam was released last year, it was buzz all over - an instant hit. The last Malayalam movie I saw was "Iyer The Great". The first one being Oru CBI Dairy Kurippu, of course.

Something stuck me about the movie Drishyam. My curiosity just shot, and read a little about Drishyam. A kind of story telling that is fantastic and original.  A month after the release of the movie, I understood that the story is not so original after all. It was adapted from Japanese Novel called "The Devotion of Suspect X". The story is about a mathematician  and his adorable neighbor who accidentally kills her abusive boy friend. The mathematician uses his skills and the rest you can witness either in Drishyam or its remake Papanasam. 

As a movie buff, I have realized that adaptations are the norm and every movie maker adapts an original movie at some point, alters the story line to suit the local audience. I wish Kamal Hassan actually remade the original Japanese movie and played the role of a mathematician. Such a role would have at least saved "Perumal" (I mean Bhagavan Vishnu).  Its no secret that Kamal Hassan makes direct attacks at Hindu Gods. I also believe that the constable name Perumal was no coincidence. Kamal reveals it in his dialogue "எனக்கும் பெருமாளுக்கும் இருக்கும் பகை ஊருக்கு தெரியும்".

Well, coming back to the intention of the blog, even the super hero Vision who is created in Age of Ultron by Tony Stark with the help of Tesseract is closely similar to Aswathama. Most boys of 80's would have heard about a king whose life is kept safe in a parrot which is 7 hills and 7 oceans far, very similar to the Hocruxes of Voldemort. Only there is no way to confirm if these are adaptations.

If we isolate 'story telling' from Tamil cinemas today, there is little original story. The actual story itself which is a result of creation is dying a slow death.  This also makes me wonder, why none of the history based movies of MGR or Shivaji or Gemini Ganesan never tried again. For example a sic-fi movie like MGR's "Kalai Arasi" or a patriotic king "Kattabomman" or a fantasy movie like "Kanavane Kankanda Dheivam"...