Aalavandhan

Aalavandhan (Abhay, 2001) first came to my attention when I was flipping through the meager selection of Indian films for rent at a local underground video store. I was greeted by a cover featuring a screaming bald man, covered in tattoos and brandishing a huge knife, flying down the side of a skyscraper. At the top of the box, an employee of this particular video store had slapped on a label then scrawled a simple message in black Sharpie: “Completely Bonkers!!!” I was sold. In my world, there’s no greater critical endorsement than “completely bonkers” followed by three exclamation points. With considerable glee and a jaunty song in my heart, I trotted up to the counter, paid my rental fee, and rushed home giddy with anticipation.

Tamil actor and iconoclast Kamal Hassan stars as heroic moustachio’d Vijay, leader of a crack team of anti-terrorism commandos. Vijay is about to marry gorgeous newscaster Tejaswini (Raveena Tandon). On this joyous occasion, Vijay decided he should visit his psychotic brother, Abhay (Nandu in the Tamil version) in the mental asylum and tell him the good news. I’m not sure what sort of reaction Vijay was expecting from the gibbering, bald nutcase (also played by Kamal Hassan, thanks to head-shaving magic) who murdered their stepmother when he was twelve years old, but Abhay doesn’t take the news too well. In fact, he immediately proclaims Tejaswini to be a man-eating succubus who must have her throat slit in order to save Vijay. All things considered, Vijay decides against inviting Abhay to the wedding, obviously afraid of what sort of Best Man speech the guy would make. Abhay is obsessed though, and he soon orchestrates his escape from the asylum and begins a completely bizarre and violent quest to track down and murder Tejaswini.

Director Suresh Krishna and writer/star Kamal Hassan set lofty goals for themselves. Abhay was to concentrate heavily on the world as perceived through the eyes of its titular drug-addled psychopath, which means that there are ample opportunities to ratchet up the weirdness. To realize Abhay’s hallucinations and insanity, as well as facilitating Hassan playing dual roles without relying on age-old split-screen trickery that can give us so many Amitabh Bachchans in a single film, they tapped the visual effects wizardry of Das Chinmay, Sylvan Dieckmann, and George Merkert — who between them have logged major special effects work on big-budget Hollywood films like Serenity, Superman Returns, Poseidon, Starship Troopers, and Total Recall. Regardless of what you may think of those movies, there’s no denying that Hassan and Suresh Krishna were calling in some visual effects big guns, putting forth a vision that far exceeded anything ever attempted in Indian cinema up to that point. The result made Abhay one of — if not the — most expensive Indian movies ever. A huge amount of hype surrounded the film and the many special effects it would boast. Expectations were sky-high, and Abhay was poised to be the biggest release of 2001.

And it might have been, if many people had bothered to see it. Apparently, to be a big release, people have to actually show up for your release. Instead, and for a variety of reasons at which analysts can only guess, audiences shied away from the film, and it wasn’t long before the biggest film in Indian history became one of the biggest flops in Indian history. Like Megaforce, except that the effects are better, the movie is actually good, and Kamal Hassan never kisses his own thumb and thrusts it lovingly toward the camera. Still, box office failure and critical and audience puzzlement at just what the hell Hassan was trying to do doesn’t mean the film isn’t spectacular, especially from the viewpoint of a cult film fan. It packs in a ton of breakneck action, some quality acting, and some absolutely inspired freak-out scenes.

In particular, viewers go along with Abhay on a protracted heroin binge that is realized on-screen by everything from a seven-foot-tall Ronald McDonald wise man to Abhay turning into a cartoon character so he can engage in a bone-jarring kung fu fight with an animated version of Tejaswini. It’s absolute delirium, and for the most part the film manages to keep the frantic pace. Only once, during a lengthy flashback detailing the events that lead up to Abhay murdering their mother-in-law, does the film stumble. The flashback is interesting and essential, but far more drawn-out than it needs to be. The highlight of the overlong flashback scene is a prancing, dancing half-naked village idiot who keeps you thinking that the film is going to delve into weird pedophile territory, though it never does. The guy is just a harmless weirdo. Hassan could have chopped this sequence in half and had an even stronger film. As it is, it serves as a bit of interesting back story in a sequence that gets tedious, but at least it recovers for a blowout of a finale.

The special effects range from competent to outstanding, and though the film obviously revels in visual flash, it seems for the most part to be justified by the plot. And even when it’s just indulgence, it’s still pretty fun. The bulk of the effects are up to the standards of Hollywood productions of the time (2001), and they set a new benchmark for the quality of effects work in Indian films in much the same way Star Wars did in the United States and Zu Warriors did in Hong Kong. The animated sequences are also a real treat. The martial arts choreography isn’t spectacular, but it’s still pretty good, and there are a couple stand-out action sequences, such as a car chase that sees Abhay leaping from vehicle to vehicle and the final showdown between the two brothers, that really make Abhay a stand-out action film as well as a screwed-up acid trip of a movie.

Tamil star Kamal Hassan is wonderful in his dual role, creating two characters so individualistic and unique that you never once even realize you’re watching the same actor in dual roles. Vijay is stable, caring, but determined to protect his bride from his brother. Abhay is a scenery-chewing (literally, in one scene) madman with a tendency to turn into a cartoon. Raveena has little to do other than be occasionally stalked and menaced by Abhay while she looks pretty, but one of my favorite actresses, Manisha Koirala, has a hilariously grotesque part as a sleazy cokehead popstar who tries to bed Abhay before ending up on the bad end of one of his drug-induced hallucinations. She appears in a weird musical number, then shows up for the hotel scene, which she plays out almost entirely in English. Kitu Gidwani appears in flashbacks as the manipulative mother-in-law, while Anuradha Hasan plays the saintly real mother of Abhay and Vijay, who appears frequently to Abhay as a sort of ghostly Ben Kenobi hallucination.

Hassan’s script wastes no time, and even at three hours, he keeps the film skipping effortlessly from one crazy moment to the next. Hassan has a reputation as one of Indian cinema’s bolder and more unconventional risk-takers (placing him in the company of men like Ram Gopal Varma), and Abhay was certainly a risky movie. It’s equal parts psychological horror, Hong Kong action film, fantasy effects film, and musical comedy — even Indian audiences accustomed to seeing every genre imaginable crammed into a single film didn’t really know what to make of Abhay‘s gloriously madcap combination of ingredients. Although it’s a financial failure, as a piece of mind-blowing phantasmagorical entertainment, you’d be hard-pressed to find a film more enthusiastic and strange than Hassan’s big-budget ode to schizophrenic kungfu insanity. It’s a bit bloated, definitely way over-the-top, wildly imaginative, and as a result, an absolute joy to watch — if you get to watch it at all.