INDIA DIARY
By COOMI KAPOOR
That the trilingual Robot is now running to full houses in all big metros, including Hindi-centric Delhi, has raised questions whether northern audiences are, at last, ready to accept a Tamilian film star.
IT IS a strange phenomenon, really. Over the years, Bollywood has warmly embraced Southern heroines, making them numero uno stars in Hindi cinema, but when it comes to their male counterparts mainstream box-office has invariably spurned them.
Some of the legendary stars of Tamil and Telugu cinema, from M. G. Ramachandran to N. T. Ramarao, never really tried their luck in Hindi cinema, fearful that audiences in the Hindi belt might find them unacceptable.
In sharp contrast to the failure of the male stars from the South to break into the Hindi cinema, female actors have had little or no difficulty in making a mark in Bollywood, with the likes of Hema Malini, Rekha, Jaya Prada, and a whole host of others from down South who played the female lead against mainly North Indian heroes in a large number of Hindi films.
Indeed, these heroines were far more successful in Bollywood than in the Southern cinema, though most of them had landed in Bombay after getting a break either in Tamil or Telugu films.
Lest you assume that the audiences in the Hindi belt were biased against southern male stars, it ought to be clear that aside from language, the mannerisms and looks of heroes from Chennai and Hyderabad posed a problem to Bollywood, which was obsessed with typical Greek god looks.
For instance, a handsome hulk of a man from Punjab, Dharmendra, undoubtedly Hindi cinema’s lone He-Man, was difficult for the southern cinema to duplicate.
Now, this is not to suggest that there are no handsome heroes in the South. They are, but their looks are of a different kind that do not go down well with north Indian audiences.
For instance, Kamal Hassan is easily one of the greatest actors in Tamil cinema, his histrionic skills having been duly acknowledged by many national and international juries. Yet, barring a Hindi film or two, Kamal has found little success in Bollywood.
In the above backdrop, the phenomenal success of Rajnikanth in the Hindi belt, along with the rest of the country, has raised questions whether northern audiences are, at last, ready to accept a Tamilian film star.
The super-duper hero of Tamil cinema has hit the jackpot even in the North and the West with his latest offering. The trilingual Robot – in Tamil and Telugu versions, Enthiran – is now running to full houses in all big metros, including Hindi-centric Delhi.
Billed as the costliest film ever made in India in any language, the sci-fi film took three years and over US$35mil (RM108.95mil) to make. More than one-third of the cost was on account of special effects and the creation of a robot of a Rajni look-alike.
Finest Hollywood sci-fi technicians – who had earlier worked for Jurassic Park and assisted in the making of Spiderman and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – were hired by S. Shankar, the director, and story- and screenplay-writer of Robot.
The film’s story itself is rather simple. Rajni plays a scientist who has been engaged in creating a robot for use by the armed forces in frontline combat.
His invention is capable of human emotions, though it is also able to do superhuman feats such as toppling flying helicopters, crushing enemy soldiers with his bare hands, and talking disease-bearing mosquitoes out of spreading dengue.
But the twist in the story is provided by the villain, played by Bollywood’s Danny Denzangpa. Unknown to its inventor, Rajni, he fiddles with the brain of the robot, named Chitti, and makes it fall in love with the girl (Aishwarya Rai) Rajni is in love with.
From here on it is a mad scramble between Rajni the scientist and his creation, the robot. Audiences get their money’s worth in hilarious and astounding situations which only the superstar Rajni alone can pull off.
So what explains the success of Robot in the Hindi heartland? Of course, the fast-paced action is a main draw. Robot is full of typical Rajni one-liners that draw whistles of approval from the front stalls.
Admittedly, Rajni has done a number of Hindi films earlier, but has not found much success, even when he had his co-star in none other than Amitabh Bachchan. How come, then, Robot has swept the Hindi box office ?
One explanation is that the real hero is the Rajni clone robot who displays such feats, including human emotions, that everyone is left marveling at his versatility.
Maybe the presence of Hindi cinema’s most beautiful heroine, Aishwarya Rai, and one- time favourite villain, Danny, too served as an attraction for North Indian audiences.
Days before the release of Robot, earlier this month, there was a strong buzz about the greatest sci-fi film in the history of Indian cinema.
Probably, the 60-plus Rajni, the only film star to appear in public as his natural self – that is, completely bald, grey moustaches, ordinary features – banked on his vast army of fans in Tamil Nadu to give Robot the initial push.
Thanks to the buzz, nearly 2,000 prints of Robot were released in theatres across the country. In Rajni-crazy Tamil Nadu, some theatres began the first show of Robot at 4am, while the more sensible theatre owners in Chennai held the first show at 5am or 6am.
For Robot, Rajni was reportedly paid US$3mil (RM9.34mil) plus a share in the profits from the box office receipts.
Not bad, considering that the director of the film, S. Shankar and the robot, too, played stellar roles in the success of Enthiran.
When the upright apes started exploring the savanna and heading out of Africa, little did they realise that they were leading to extinction. Not only the descendants of these apes would quickly destroy their own kind and reflect, 'I am become death, the destroyer of the worlds', they would also create machines that one day possibly annihilate them. This is the premise of this and many other apocalyptical sci-fi movies. The one that makes this film different is the inclusion of artificial consciousness as compared to artificial intelligence what most scientists test. The Turing test, when humans are unable to differentiate an interaction with a machine from that of with a human may be the benchmark of AI excellence, but it only measures intelligence, not consciousness. It tests the adaptability of the machine to its environment.
