Watching Eega reinstated in me the faith that films can still conjure up ‘wonderment’ from ‘seemingly’ the silliest of ideas provided the filmmaker decides to complement his technical skills with certain audaciousness. A bitter-sweet experience which left me exhilarating and exasperating at the same time, the film has to be the most outlandishly inventive and entertaining film to have come out of Indian cinema in recent times. While it is very much an unqualified and unprecedented triumph in terms of technique, graphics and animation (at some places it even manages to score over Robot/Endhiran in the above department though the ‘genome’ of the ‘mosquito sequence’ of Robot might have given rise to Eega), what was really heartening to see here was the reaffirmation of an old fact- even today whenever a film like this dares to include and deal with a ‘superior text’ of Masala Cinema, unlike most other ‘genre films’, it continues to enrich and reward-with pleasure-those folks (this includes both its filmmakers and its audience) who work towards uncovering its riches (and again a film from the South has to come and remind us of it).
But somewhere inadvertently it also ends up telling a sad but stark truth that Masala may have a reached a ‘dead end’ in some ways – if the quintessential ‘hero’ of the Masala battlefield has lost most of his relevance today and like in this case, could even give way to an ‘entomological species’, it is pretty much a clear indication that the co-ordinates of this cinematic universe have been disturbed forever. Having said that one can’t help but grudgingly marvel at the way S. S. Rajamouli, the director, in a rather cheeky fashion turns the central cinematic trope on its head and admixes the elements of fantasy, using some truly admirable top-notch cinematography, state-of-the-art graphics and special effects (the best among many such scenes is an astounding sequence where the fly emerges from the egg and has its first exposure with the nature and its strange beings- this set piece is shot with such effortlessness by Senthil Kumar that it makes you jump in pure joy and bewilderment), to make a Masala film which even the North Indian multiplex audience can take to without being apologetic for it or calling it a ‘guilty pleasure’ (which was the case with say films like Rowdy Rathore and Singham).
And this film is an evidence of the true powers of authentic Masala cinema which, even in its ‘vestigial’ form, allows all these ostensibly other-worldly elements to seamlessly blend with it, while simultaneously keeping its innately cathartic and hard-hitting elements alive and kicking, to give rise to a heady concoction which can be consumed by even the most elitist of viewers. And it was high time something as cheeky and impudent as this film came across and registered a tight slap to the utter nonsense Bollywood usually churns up week after week in the name of ‘meaningful cinema’. That this film has come from the South gives us all the more reason to cheer about.
Coming to the film I see Eega as a celebration of the ‘absurdity of art’. Rajamouli takes the age-old theme of reincarnation and performs a unique subversion with it which involves the hero Nani (a cameo played by a listless Nani) being reborn into a fly after he is bumped-off by the baddie Sudeep (played terrifically by Sudeep with a reptilian charm- it’s a treating watching him turn into a comic-book villain who goes from menacing to slapstick in a matter of few seconds), who lusts after hero’s lady-love Bindu (a charming Samantha), in order to take revenge on him. And to fall hook, line and sinker (like I did) for this central idea one has to perform a certain leap of faith or in better words, a ‘philosophical suicide’ of sorts. The plot instantly reminded me of Kafka ‘s seminal work “The Metamorphosis” which has a travelling salesman, Gregor Samsa, suddenly waking up to find himself transformed into a monstrous Vermin (a gigantic insect).
And while the film sadly decides to leave these rather interesting Kafkaesque possibilities, which the script may have had to offer, in favour of the vengeance storyline (this was precisely the reason for my aforementioned exasperation), the apparent similarities between both works don’t just end with the plot premises. The central ‘event’ (i.e. the reincarnation) in both of these works is both an ‘absurd’ and a wildly irrational one- the idea of the protagonist turning into an ‘insect’ is so far beyond the boundaries of a natural occurrence—it’s not just unlikely to happen, it’s physically impossible—that the metamorphosis takes on a ‘supernatural significance’. And this precisely is the USP of a true-blue Masala film where a Shakespearean super-naturalness is imparted to the key-players in the film’s cathartic moments. It is here that the protagonist of the film ceases to be ‘simply human’ and becomes a part of the Cosmos- here one does not need washboard abs to maul the villain as the vital energy provided by the Masala Cosmos allows even a fly to become superhuman. All this is simply because Masala universe does not care as much for ‘realism’ as for the ‘plausibility’ of its events.
Rajamouli also performs a masterstroke by keeping the fly as a ‘mute creature’. This ‘mutedness’ of the fly amidst the mayhem created by other beings, serves the film well. It also allows the fly to be imparted with a powerful Masala gesturality and mannerisms so that its interactions with the heroine and confrontations with the villain have an element of genuine surprise and ‘asymmetry’ to them and hence, become engaging to watch. And there are many scenes paying loving tribute to various Masala films and stars- one of them is very much reminiscent of Bachchan’s famous slapstick interaction with a fly (incidentally) from Namak Halal and another one pays direct homage to Rajnikanth’s Sivaji. And this universe in the film, just like that in the story, is a ‘random, chaotic one’- noticeably the reason for the protagonist to turn into nothing but an insect, hasn’t found any mention in the film (or the story). In most religious scriptures the cause behind a person’s reincarnation into a different life form is attributed to the person’s ‘karma’ in his/her previous birth(s).
But no such allusions to any previous ‘karma’ are present either in the film or in the story. All these elements suggest a universe that functions ‘without any governing system of order and justice’. The other commonality in theme which the film shares with the story is the response of the various characters which seem to add to this sense of absurdity, specifically because they seem almost as ridiculous as Nani’s (or Gregor’s) transformation itself.
The characters are unusually calm and unquestioning, and most don’t act particularly surprised by the event. In fact, the other characters in the story generally treat the metamorphosis as something unusual but not exceptionally horrifying or impossible, and they mostly focusing on adapting to it rather than fleeing from the ‘event’ or the protagonist. For instance, take that superbly filmed scene where the fly decides to reveal its identity to Bindu by using her tears to give shape to letters- Bindu’s surprise lasts for mere five seconds and she instantly decides to become an accomplice in the fly’s plans to kill Sudeep. These unusual reactions contribute to the irrationality of the story, but they also imply that the characters to some degree expect, or at least are not surprised by, absurdity in their world.
And chaotic the realm of the film might be but it’s certainly not nihilistic or one without purpose as the director manages to offer a very solid social commentary on the ‘anarchy’ and ‘lawlessness’ which is prevalent in today’s India. During the excellently executed climactic action set-piece the dying fly, to save Bindu, sacrifices its life by jumping through a lighted matchstick, inflaming itself and entering a loaded cannon, which fires up and kills Sudeep. This act of self-immolation by the lady’s saviour could be very well seen as a sort of ‘cinematic inversion’ since it’s the raped, victimized and molested women who commit such an act and not their men.
And it should be nothing short of poetic justice that when the ‘gentleman’ today has become so meek and impotent that he has turned into a silent spectator to all the heinous crimes being perpetrated on women and when the moral standards have plummeted to a new low, the onus of saving the day should also probably lie on one the ‘lowest’ evolutionary forms of life. In the context of things one simply cannot help but recall the dialogue of an inebriated Amitabh Bachchan in that famous scene with a cockroach from Hum– “Is duniya mein do tarah ka keeda hota hai. Ek woh jo kachre se uthta hai. Aur doosra woh jo paap ki gandegi se uthta hai. Magar paap ki gandegi ka keeda saare samaaj ko bimaar kar deta hai. Kachre ke keede ko maarne ke liye flit bazaar mein milta hai. Magar paap ke keede ko marne wala flit, saala, bana hi nahi hai aaj tak.” To vanquish that ‘paap ki gandgi ka keeda’ we might as well need to look for a creature which, while occupying a rather uncharitable position in the food-chain, has a certain timelessness and an enviable evolutionary history.
Saurabh Tiwari loves cinema, the world of letters and life