Not Lokesh Kanagaraj but Kamal Haasan is the poster boy of violence in Tamil cinema

Hey Ram

Kamal Haasan’s brand of violence is different from what we get to see in recent Tamil cinema. There’s no fun here like what you get from Jailer or Vikram. The violence in Kamal’s film makes one uncomfortable and extremely shocked. Karthi’s Paruthiveeran (2007) left many with panic attacks during its climax as Muththazhagu got gang-raped by lorry drivers. The violence in the scene turned out to be gut-wrenching, leaving the audience scarred for a lifetime. The unforgettable experience, irrespective of the voyeuristic nature of the sequence, made the film a hit. It is hard to understand how such violence makes a film work. Seven years before Paruthiveeran, a similar scene featured in Kamal Haasan’s Hey Ram (2000) where Rani Mukerji’s Aparana gets raped and killed during the Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946. The incident changed Saket Ram (Kamal) for life. Like many of Kamal’s films, Hey Ram ended up as a dud, and the mainstream quickly forgot about the film’s brutality.

Kurudhi Punal

Kurudhi Punal (1995) – River of Blood, the title of the film is self-explanatory. When it came to the violence in the Tamil remake of Om Puri’s Drohkaal (1994), Kamal Haasan made it too realistic. Both Kamal and Arjun’s characters get abducted by terrorists. After the ‘interrogations’, their face become scarier than Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street. With acclaimed cinematographer PC Sreeram being the director of the film, the blood and gore were captured with such clarity that it would make a viewer wince.

Virumaandi

Just take a look at the latest trailer of Virumaandi. It pretty much reveals the tone of the film. Multiple murders take place in this brutal rural drama about a village named Chinna Kolarupatti in Theni. Virumaandi (Kamal) owns a piece of land where groundwater is in abundance. The whole village is after it, but Virumaandi isn’t aware of things happening around him. The film captures a massacre and the aftermath of it with so much detail that it is hard to root for the hero, who ends up becoming the reason for it. Kamal, the director of the film, brilliantly uses violence to invoke guilt in his protagonist. Towards the end, things get more brutal with the blatant depiction of violence against Annalakshmi (Abhirami). If that doesn’t make you squirm, watch out for how the villain Kothala Thevar (Pasupathy) gets killed by Virumaandi in the climax. Kamal pierces his fingers into the villain’s neck, and you get a small blood fountain when he takes it back. Added to that agony is the sound the villain makes with the punctured vocal chord. There’s no Anirudh Ravichander’s BGM here. While the viewer is happy that Kothala Thevar gets his due, the violence still seems too much, which exactly is the point of the film, which makes a case against capital punishment.

Aalavandhan

It is common knowledge that Quentin Tarantino was inspired by an animated sequence from this film. Nandu (Kamal Haasan) is a schizophrenic twin who makes it his life’s mission to save his twin brother from his fiance. Nandu is convinced that his brother’s love interest is the incarnation of their dead stepmother. During his mission, many end up as collateral damage, including a popular singer, who ends up waking up the demon in Nandu. The whole sequence is made as a cartoon animation. However, it still manages to be brutal. It is not just about killing her, but Nandu uses her blood to write her poem on the wall. Aalavandhan failed gloriously, resulting in a lifelong rift between Kamal Haasan and the film’s producer Kalaipuli S Thanu. If you look at the list of films in this article, they failed to do well at the box office. However, the movies are still spoken about. Perhaps there’s something to take away from this.