Vishwaroop

Starring <strong>Kamal Haasan, Pooja Kumar, Rahul Bose</strong> Directed by <strong>Kamal Haasan</strong> Rating: <strong>****</strong> First things first. Kamal Haasan’s enormously controversial film doesn’t hurt Muslim sentiments. In fact it doesn’t hurt the sentiments of any section of the people except those party-poopers who think having a ball at the movies went out of style with <em>Sholay</em> and <em>Chachi 420</em>.

While the two highly-controversial epic motion pictures Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children and Kamal Haasan’s <em>Vishwaroop</em> vie for a high-profile viewership this Friday there is another much smaller far more intimate and domesticated battle at the movies, both brought on by first-time directors who enter the portals of middleclass homes to explore the inner and outer spaces that working-class characters occupy on any given day.

Kamal Haasan had to postpone the release of his ambitious new Hindi-Tamil-Telugu tri-lingual Vishwaroop to sort out the deadlock with film exhibitors regarding the Direct To Home (DTH) premiere of the film. Now that it has been resolved Kamal Haasan spoke exclusively to MovieChakkar on the new revised release plans.

The Hindi rendition of Kamal Haasan’s Hindi-Tamil-Telugu tri-lingual Vishwaroop would just have to wait for the imbroglio with the cinema exhibitors in North India to end. Kamal Haasan has sorted out the matter in the South and the film is all set for a 25 January 25 (2013) in the South. The Hindi version, we hear, won’t be released until the film’s Mumbai distributors Balajee Films find a correct release date. 25 January is unsuitable for the Hindi release, as Abbas-Mustan’s multi-starrer Race 2, also an adventure thriller like Vishwaroop, releases the same day.

Due to pressure from film exhibitors, Kamal Haasan has been compelled to postpone the release of his Hindi-Tamil-Telugu tri-lingual Vishwaroop. He has now slapped a notice on all the exhibitors and complained to the <em>Competition Commission Of India</em> and slapped a fine of Rs 25 lakhs on film exhibitors. The film is now likely to release on 18 January (2013).

After regaling Mumbai, Ang Lee shifted location to Chennai on Wednesday where Kamal Haasan conducted a 30-minute television with the director. But before that, Ang who was not familiar with Kamal Haasan’s work wanted to see his films. So they drove down to Kamal Haasan’s office where he has a fully equipped home theatre.

Kamal Haasan’s lofty plans have fallen prey to Sandy’s desi cousin hurricane Neelam which has stuck the Southern coastal regions. Plans of a simultaneous 3-city music release for his new film <em>Vishwaroop</em> on 7 November (Kamal Haasan’s birthday) have been seriously altered. While earlier the event was supposed to unfold in huge open-air theatres simultaneously in Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai, those plans have now been drastically revised.

It’s time to take the Indian film-viewing experience to the next level. And who better qualified for the job than Kamal Haasan? The release of his new purported opus <em>Vishwaroop</em> has been postponed to facilitate the revolutionary Auro 3D sound format into the film. An arduous task, since it also involves the conversion of each individual theatre’s sound system by a complicated technology that adds a new dimension to sound in cinema as we know and hear it. So far only one other film Gerorge Lucas’s latest <em>Red Tails</em> has made use of the Auro 3D technique.

Her last co-star was Ed Harris, no less, in the psychological thriller Man On A Ledge. Pooja Kumar who straddles two continents and cinema in Tamil, Telugu, Hollywood and also American television is not too pleased with the fact that her new film <em>Vishwaroop</em> has the hero performing the classical Indian dancing, and that too under the guidance of the redoubtable Pandit Birju Maharaj. Pooja who is a trained classical dancer apparently expressed a wish to do a spot of dancing. The request, we hear, was politely but firmly turned down.