On Singeetham and Kamal’s Amavasya Chandrudu (Raaja Paarvai)
I’ve been a fan of Kamal Haasan for some years now. Every time I watch his movies, my respect towards him increases, and I can’t appreciate this artist enough. Besides the great actor he is, he is also a great writer. I became a fan of his work after exploring the movies he has written.
Unbeknownst to me that Kamal wrote Amavasya Chandrudu, I watched the movie recently — here is some context before I present my thoughts on the movie.
My father has been a fan of SPB, and I remember listening to “Sundaramo Sumadhuramo” at home. I didn’t care who wrote the lyrics, who composed the music, and in whose film this song was present when listening to it.
Recently I was creating a playlist on Spotify comprising Ilayaraja songs, and somehow added this song and realised it was from Amavasya Chandrudu. I noticed one more thing this time — legendary Singeetham Sreenivasa Rao, a frequent collaborator of Kamal, directs the movie.
While the above reasons are enough to make me watch the film, I didn’t watch it even then! I was discussing Kamal’s films with my uncle (Prabhakar Rao, my father’s elder brother), and he mentioned watching Amavasya Chadrudu while working at Singareni, Adilabad.
He went to a town from his workplace to watch this, instantly liking the film. He returned home and suggested his colleagues watch the film the following day.
Unfortunately, due to the poor reception at the box office at the time of its theatrical release, the movie was removed from that town, and my uncle’s colleagues couldn’t watch it. So, effectively it was screened for a day in a town in Northern Telangana.
He liked the movie, and this made me add this movie to my watchlist, but wait, this discussion happened earlier this year. I didn’t watch the film.
‘I needed one more cue for me to watch the film,’ I thought, and it came while watching an interview of Siddharth with Baradwaj Rangan.
During the interview, both fanboys of Kamal discussed his influence on Siddharth’s career, and the latter mentioned, “Who can have guts other than Kamal to produce a film where the protagonist is Blind? That too, his 100th film as an actor!”
Okay, this made me irresistible, and I watched the movie soon enough.
To summarise, Amavasya Chandrudu was Kamal Haasan’s 100th film as an actor and his first as a Producer. He wrote the story, and his frequent collaborator and legendary director, Singeetham Sreenivasa Rao, directed the film.
If I didn’t watch the movie after knowing all of this, the fan of Kamal deep inside my heart would curse me.
Hence, I watched the movie recently on one weekend morning.
Let’s discuss the movie now. Here’s the plot from Wikipedia:
Chandram/Ragu is a blind violinist who leads an independent life. When Nancy learns about him, she decides to cover his inspiring story. Soon, love blossoms between the two, egged on by her grandfather.
It is bilingual, shot simultaneously in Telugu and Tamil.
The screenplay follows a typical template of a love story: First meeting of the lead couple > One developing feelings for the other > Love blossoms, and they find solace in each other’s company > Conflict > Struggle > Resolution.
And here’s the trick — they made the protagonist, Chandram, blind and brought in a meta element. A story writer, Nancy develops an interest in his story after watching his musical performance.
As she explores his life, they both fall in love, and she doesn’t know how to end the story she’s writing and how to end the story for us, the moviegoers.
I knew Kamal plays a blind character in this movie, but I wasn’t expecting a love story, thanks to my obsession with crime thrillers that involve blind characters.
Nancy is us, the audience entering his world, understanding his life, and how he goes about life and lives alone although he’s blind.
A couple of scenes reflect it — Power goes off, and Nancy says, “It’s dark now,” to which his response is, “Welcome to our world. It’s dark forever for me.”
At the beginning of their interaction, when she enters his home, she tries to keep things organised, and he reveals the reason why they are at their place.
And when she’s bathing, he approaches her with the book, and she hesitates for a moment before she realises he can’t see.
Speaking of the bathing scene, there are beautifully written and directed ideas. Chandram cooks by taking instructions from Nancy, who reads a cooking book to help him!
The cooking scene reminded me of the scene from Mysskin’s Psycho where Gautham, who’s blind, drives a car by taking instructions from Kamala, who’s disabled.
Nancy sketches Chandram playing the violin, and soon after that, Chandram asks Nancy whether she can sketch herself by listening to his descriptions. Beautiful! These two scenes depict that eyes are not the only things that help humans to lead a life.
I was speechless in a scene where Sulochana meets Chandram, and both of them touch each other to feel as if they can’t see. A revelation for Chandram, and us, the audience, that Sulochana is blind. And the instant happiness on Sulochana’s face when she knows the person Chandram loves, Nancy, isn’t blind is something else. Although the Sulochana character is barely less than 10 minutes in the movie, its impact is high. As pristine as it gets.
It reminded me of Mani Ratnam’s Geetanjali, a scene where the two love birds are out in the woods and see a group of people performing the last rites to a dead person. The sight of it makes them realise their future.
This movie has good cinematography. The camera moves when the emotion intensifies, or the characters move. It has ensemble staging, and the camera remains static in such scenes to engage us at a level.
Ilayaraja’s music has rightly complemented the movie, with the cameos of his brother, Gangai Amaran. It is good to see SPB singing “Sundaramo Sumadhuramo”, although for a moment.
The movie has the right casting, and LV Prasad was a pleasant surprise. Kamal got his two brothers, who also turned producers with this film, to act here in two prominent roles.
Nancy, played by Madhavi, is honest in the role, pulled off effortlessly, and the emotions and chemistry between the lead pair work well. There’s a scene where she lies on the bed where the light bulb is spherical, resembling the Moon, when she thinks about Chandram.
Chanti, played by YG, reminds me of many good characters who go to any extent to protect their friends. The brotherhood worked well, and the comedy scenes brought smiles. Even the kid who played Chandram in childhood Chandram is too good. The kid trying to wake up the maid who is lying dead just hit me hard.
Coming to the criminally underrated combination — Kamal Haasan and Singeetham is just an example of how they trust each other and their collaboration as actor+writer and director.
Kamal producing the movie of his landmark 100th film and Singeetham making no mistake of being honest to the story rather than making it a typical entertainer increased my respect towards both of them. Their unending love and respect for art are evident in the movie.
I was wondering how to end this blog post because I just want to write about everything I observed and admired about this combination but thought to end with the lines that were well placed and brought me laughter, that genre of films both of them like the most — Comedy:
The use of words between Chandram and Chanti — Vicks, Whiskey, and Visiki (irritate in Telugu), to tell about character relation while sticking to their humour at the beginning.
When Chandram and the gang create a ruckus at Nancy’s house, in drunk phase, he utters these words when Nancy angrily asks him, “Ika nunchi naa moham chudaku,” his response is “Intha varaku nee moham chusanenti!”
Admiring Kamal until my next blog post…
