Shankar’s museum machine & Rajnikant’s final frontier…

In many ways Enthiran is a magnificent summation of Rajnikant’s glorious career, a museum of this great star’s iconic ‘memories’. From his earlier negative supporting parts which often included a chilling doze of humor and in turn the graduation to lead roles where he started developing panache and signature to finally the culmination in the megastar avatar where he was partly an ‘angry’ mass hero in Amitabh Bachchan’s wake but equally creator of a unique confection which included the latter admixture but also a uniquely impish persona married to an astonishingly potent and grandly gestural style that even evoked a sense of the cinema Samurai — there is a treasure trove of cinematic magic here and Shankar’s film references every period of this singularly resonant screen history. In a similar vein Enthiran is also a remarkable summa of Shankar’s own unique movie-making skills and concerns. The film is quite simply his best work and it is hard to imagine how he could better himself in this genre so unique to him and which might, not without compliment, be termed ‘masala on steroids’! Even as the film fuses the potency of Rajnikant’s signature with that of Shankar’s own hallmark moments it is equally a marvelously wicked re-imagining of the Frankenstein myth and its links with the tradition of cinematic science-fiction. If this film is finally, and not surprisingly a morality tale, it is also a somewhat dark reflection on the nature of stardom and the mortality that threatens even the most iconic stars. Shankar has never seemed more ‘serious’ and there might not be a better ‘essay’ on his lead star’s legendary career.

Even by Shankar’s remarkably high octane action standards Enthiran leaves his previous work in the dust. The current film features extraordinarily propulsive action sequences that are superbly edited and backed up by Rahman’s pulsating score. Shankar’s special effects though unusually impressive for his Indian industry (North or South) cannot begin to match the best that Hollywood has to offer but his imagination and spontaneity candidly outdo what the latter exhibits on most days. These are brilliantly choreographed kinetic bursts that often take one’s breath away. Shankar’s action is also perfectly attuned to the velocity of his overall narrative which is fluidly brisk without being frenetic.

Action sequences are only one half of Shankar’s greatest strengths as a visual craftsman. The other equally important one involves of course his dynamic song videos. On this score too Shankar is in his element. Again in this area too it is hard to think of another Shankar film that is so consistently good. Just about every video here is a marvel of sound and sense from the dazzling Irumbile to the somewhat more restrained Machu Picchu number (Kilimanjaro) to the climactic throb of a video in Arima Arima. In a connected sense this is not really a Rahman soundtrack to rival some of his best work with Shankar in the past or even his effort for Rajnikant’s Padaiyappa but one appreciates it far more with the film. His background score might actually be one of his best and even if the songs cannot quite keep pace with the latter there are some genuine high-points greatly enhanced by Shankar’s treatment and again Arima Arima is an authentic peak for the album.

After many years, certainly since Padaiyappa, Rajnikant is once again very physically dominant on screen. With the avatars of the ‘robot’ Shankar adds to the permanent library of this titan’s crucial screen images. And the star in turn handles his part, especially the negative turn, with an aplomb and brio also not seen for a number of years. It is not easy to think of the last time one saw Rajnikant have as much fun with a part as he does in the second half of this film. In Enthiran we do not just see the afterglow of a star we have always adored (as was sadly the case in Sivaji) but the restoration of past potency. Shankar is perfectly cued into all of this. Sivaji featured rather mysteriously a ‘weak’ Rajnikant who had to dodge the goons as opposed to beating them up and even having to be rescued by his lover at another point. In the present film too we find the analog of such a character in the ‘scientist’ but of course we also have the ‘robot’ who is the film’s real star. Might there not be an interesting, even cheeky bit of commentary here on Shankar’s part? The ‘machine’ does today what the biological man once did regularly. It is as if Rajnikant needed to be reinvented as an android to display his complete signature. Much as one picks up on all the screen history Shankar references in this sense one is also constantly reminded of the split between the real and the ‘copy’. The film is therefore a paradox of sorts. The robot will not have been as impressive as the man we once saw and loved for so long. Once upon a time Rajnikant did not need the ‘machine’. Shankar’s great Rajnikant museum is also quite naturally a mausoleum. And the creator here has only fashioned what he has himself lost.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who has always seemed to me to be not just a more attractive star with age but also a more interesting one enjoys one of her commercial summits in this outing. It is not a part that begs for much performance but it is certainly one that needs a strong star signature in a film that trades so much in the ‘iconic’. Aishwarya is easily upto the job and it is hard to imagine another actress North or South being able to suggest similar stature in this contest of star signatures that Shankar has set up!

Enthiran is an addictive watch. On a personal note I cannot remember the last time a commercial Indian film gave me such a thrill in the theater. It is not to diminish Shankar’s singularity much less Rajnikant’s to suggest that this is the kind of cinema Bombay has forgotten how to make. And it puts all of Bollywood’s recent such attempts in the shade, whether in the glitzy action thriller mode or the retro-masala one, including most acutely Dabangg which seems like amateur hour after Enthiran’s grand opera! Shankar has certainly always loved fantasy whether by way of period elements or the superhero/vigilante mode or even his song videos but he has for all this been essentially a masala filmmaker who has greatly upgraded the genre. With Enthiran he sums up two careers. It will be fascinating to see what he or Rajnikant does going forward. There would seem to be no more horizons left to conquer..