Kamal Haasan's Pathetic Slide into Irrelevance

BY THE SECOND HALF of the 1960s, Jean Paul Sartre had exhausted the patience of both the public and the intelligentsia of France. When the 1970s dawned, he had become a lamentable figure, a caricature of his former self, a compulsive alcoholic who had lost his abundant durbar filled by doting young admirers. His career in a sense, had come a full circle. For more than two decades, Sartre had been the monarch of a dreary and incomprehensible ideology called Existentialism to becoming a nonentity in the very land that had celebrated him as a national hero. The very ideology that he had championed was also the cause of his irrelevance and pathetic downfall. The British writer Paul Johnson supplies the reason and sums up his last days: 

To a great degree, this verdict on Sartre fits Parthasarathy Srinivasan alias Kamal Hasan. It is also a lesson, a warning and a timeless truth applicable to public figures: do not become that person whom the public is forced to endure in your old age by waging a lifelong war against time and reality. Life is priceless; ideology is porous, fleeting, and dispensable.  

Thug Life is a bizarre name even for a Tamil movie but it approaches the grotesque in light of the awful finished product. Because this is not a review of the movie, I’ll just mention this: Thug Life shows how woefully out of touch both Maniratnam and Kamal Hasan are. On another plane, both veterans seem to have failed to grasp the reality that two generations have grown up since the peak of their stardom had passed. The line separating “veteran” and “irrelevant” is thin. 

Kamal Hasan’s fame rests mainly on four pillars: his acting prowess, his passion for cinema, his obsessive pursuit of all filmmaking departments and his longevity. All admirable qualities, doubtless. His journey from a promising child artiste to an accomplished actor who was also a big star to his decadal slide into irrelevance is a case study to say the least. His filmography is a rather pronounced evidence for this. It encompasses the whole spectrum from the outstanding to the outlandish. He delivered his best work under some of the masters of Indian cinema — K. Balachander, Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, K. Viswanath, to name a few — and there is every reason to believe that these directors had reined him in.  

That changed with the 1987 blockbuster Nayagan, his maiden collaboration with Maniratnam. This movie marks a decisive turn in his career. Among other things, it brought to fore his fixation with Hollywood imports  — makeup artists, stuntmen, costumers, VFX artists, et al. The fixation only swelled with time. As a result, he faced increasing complaints from producers about engorged budgets and Kamal’s interference in almost all departments. A K. Balachander would’ve never allowed this. We can cite two major instances. 

The first is Nayagan. As the film’s shooting progressed, its producer, Muktha Srinivasan’s anxiety soared. The whole episode is worth recounting at length. 

On the 25^th anniversary of Nayagan, Kamal Hasan hurled a dishonest accusation against Muktha in The Hindu in which he called the producer “tight-fisted,” among other things. In his rebuttal, Muktha set the record straight: 

“Kamal Haasan wanted the film to be shot at Dharavi, which was the largest and most congested slum in Asia. I did not want to shoot the entire movie in Bombay – but not because I was “tightfisted,” as Kamal claims….After 25 years Kamal Haasan has suddenly chosen to talk about it, distorting the facts for reasons best known to him, and undermining the contributions made by everyone…Mani Ratnam…was not interested in bringing in either a Hollywood stuntman or a makeup man. I felt that Velu Naicker did not need a “Hollywood” makeup man and costumer. In fact it was Kamal Haasan’s idea to bring such people in. Our company had a makeup man and costumers who were all paid by me. To state that there was no budget for makeup and costumes is absurd…the budget for the film was estimated at Rs. 60 lakh…However it became “over-budget”, with expenses crossing Rs. 1 crore. 

“Mani would have come up with a better scene had Kamal not insisted on copying from The Godfather…The scene where Kamal Haasan cries on seeing the dead body of his son is copied from The Godfather, and he imitates Marlon Brando. This scene was booed by the audience…

“Kamal Haasan did not act in my movie for free. He was paid a huge sum, amounting to almost 20 per cent of the original budget…The tragedy is that I did not make any profit…The producer takes the entire risk and his contribution cannot be undermined. G. Venkateswaran [Maniratnam’s elder brother] bought negative rights only after I sold all the areas. But he insisted that he would put his name as producer and receive the awards the movie got. I had to agree since I had suffered a loss even after selling all the areas… Had it not been for Ilayaraja and Lenin, the movie would have flopped. I have nothing against Kamal Haasan taking credit for the success of Nayakan. But not at my cost, please.” 

The second is the mega-expensive 2001 movie, Aalavandaan, which not only ruined the producer (it collected ₹ 2 crores against its ₹ 25 crore cost) but was universally panned. One reviewer was particularly brutal: “The film falls flat on its face because of its failure in the two most important departments of filmmaking – scriptwriting, and direction [...] It almost seems as if Kamal Haasan and Suresh Krishna were high on drugs while making this film.” 

A SENSE OF onscreen vainglory is rather evident in scores of movies Kamal acted in after Nayagan. It is most conspicuous in Hey Ram released in 2000. Hasan produced, scripted and directed the film and also wrote its screenplay. It is a thinly-veiled assault against the RSS; Hasan appears in every scene and doesn’t want us to forget that as Saket Ram Iyengar, he is a philosopher, intellectual and avenging angel rolled in one.     

This leads us to a phenomenon that unravels itself when Kamal Hasan the actor, dons the role of a real-life intellectual trying to sound profound about…everything: Hindu philosophy, atheism, communism, secularism, Periyarism, and even jurisprudence.

And when Kamal Hasan the intellectual, dons the role of a politician, we bolt towards safety. To give credit where it is due, Kamal Hasan’s brand of politics defies both description and sanity. 

He is a Brahmin who is also a worshipper of E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker who openly called for a genocide of Brahmins.  

He is also a Leftist atheist who once declared that “left leaders are my heroes” without naming them. That’s a long list of heroes including mass-murderers like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro. 

In 2017, he proclaimed that he spotted a kindred soul in Arvind Kejriwal —  the virtuoso actor of Indian politics — and sought to work with him

And in a much earlier interview, he told the interviewer that there was no underworld mafia in Tamil Nadu because all the dons were sitting in the Secretariat and thus, there was no space for him in politics. Fast forward again to 2017; he said in an interview with The Hindu that he will risk everything to “serve” the people by cleansing politics. The chosen vehicle of service: nothing less than the Chief Minister’s chair. In his own words, “Someone has to wear the neta’s cap. It will be a crown of thorns. Someone has to clean the quagmire and make this place habitable for people. I’m not hungry for power but will seize the opportunity if that’s the only way to deliver for the people.” 

Crown of thorns. Ah! A noble invocation of Rahul Gandhi’s 2013 mantra that power is poison but someone has to drink it to serve the junta. 

But Kamal Hasan the politican finally unraveled himself when he floated his own party, Makkal Needhi Maiam in 2018, which quickly bombed much like his movies over the last two decades. His thinly-attended rallies and speech bouts starkly remind us of Sartre’s last days. Like Sartre, Hasan lacked clarity and coherence and one still doesn’t know what Kamal and his party really stand for. 

That secret was finally revealed when Kamal Hasan campaigned for the DMK in the 2024 general elections in exchange for a Rajya Sabha seat. It appears the EVR worshipper finally, formally joined his ideological mothership. 

Oh! And I forgot to mention the Kamal Hasan who recently donned the role of a linguist on the spur during the promotions of Thug Life, and the consequences thereof. 

As evidence of his claim that Kannada was born out of Tamil, he merely said, “many scholars have established this fact.” The explosion of outrage in Karnataka at this patently false claim has severely battered the movie’s collections. Yet, Kamal Hasan, the courageous linguist, remains defiant and refuses to apologise. 

One is instantly reminded of the manner in which this same braveheart surrendered before the might of Muslim groups in the wake of his 2013 movie, Visvaroopam. Kamal Hasan had initially thundered against making any cuts, going so far as issuing this threat: “I will find out in a few days if this is a secular country. I need a secular place to settle. If there’s no secular place in India I would go overseas. My passport will change.” 

His bravado lasted just a few days. The right amount of pressure from the…err…right places made him see glorious light and the real meaning of Indian secularism. He agreed to the cuts. 

Fortunately for Kamal Hasan, he can afford to remain courageous before Kannada groups. The only worst outcome so far has been a ban on Thug Life in Karnataka.