Kamal Haasan gets attention, his film doesn't

After the 2000 film 'Hey Ram' which got a fair share of media attention all through its making a year earlier and days prior to its actual release, Kamal Haasan stayed in the national limelight nearly two decades ago once again with 'Aalavandhan' ('Abhay' in Telugu and Hindi).

If Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee gave him unbridled traction in the upcountry media with the first film, the presence of the then two Bollywood beauties – Raveena Tandon and Manisha Koirala – gave his second film of the century equally good attention in the public mind. Another similarity between the two productions was that they were simultaneously shot in Hindi along with Tamil and dubbed in other languages.

Somehow, like ' Hey Ram' which was an ambitious take of a Tamil hero on an iconic figure like Mahatma Gandhi, the film which followed ' Abhay', which hit the theatres in November 2001 lost itself in a maze of attempting to do too much and bamboozle the public. Critics were obviously less flattering.

"What happens when an exceptionally talented actor develops an inexplicable urge to delve into the dark side of the human psyche, and worse, decides to paint the town red about it? Well, for one, you get a film called Abhay." wrote a reviewer in rediff.com. The film had managed to generate considerable commercial interest and it sold well across film territories, only to fizzle out in the very first week of release.

A crime thriller with dark, psychographic undertones, it tried to position itself as a Hollywood-model product. While none disputed Kamal's talent to reprise the best of global methods of filmmaking, the audience was clearly looking for something else. This was the time when the new century was inviting fresh faces with open arms, sending warning signals to the earlier lot that they would have to do with less in the days ahead.

Like it has happened over decades, when films have a retro appeal and are hailed as 'ahead of their times', 'Abhay' too gained a reputation of that nature over the next decade. It was digitally remastered and released on OTT channels in the last few years.

Kamal Haasan's pan-Indian popularity did not salvage it when it hit the theatres in 2001, yet for students of Indian cinema it is one of the case studies today.