Robot (Enthiran) - (2010)
Directed by S. Shankar
Written by S. Shankar & Sujatha et al.
Starring Rajinikanth, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Danny Denzongpa
Santhanam & Karunas
Watching
Enthiran felt like wandering into the wrong club on a night out - one where everyone speaks a foreign language, and the music is completely removed from any previous experience you've had. You like what you hear, and what you see - but you can't quite slip into the feel of things with ease. I'm not at all familiar with Bollywood, Kollywood, Tamil-language films or much at all related to Indian cinema, so there's nothing for me to relate the movie to. I'd assumed, it being a science fiction film, that there'd be no musical numbers - but no, there are musical numbers. At some stage in India's past, there was some kind of mandate drawn up, bill passed through their law-making chambers of government, and law enacted that makes it compulsory for every single Indian film made to have musical numbers. It's one of the most confounding cultural differences in the history of cinema - that of India, which sets it apart from all other countries on earth. Luckily enough though (especially since
Enthiran goes for nearly 3 hours) the movie is entertaining, funny, exciting, visually pleasing and great sounding.
The film itself involves the creation of "Chitti" - a humanoid robot, by K. Vaseegaran (both roles played by Rajinikanth.) Chitti is strong, fast and has incredible cognitive abilities - and Vaseegaran hopes that it can be used by India's military. His testing grounds are out in the real world, and problems arise - specifically, Chitti's inability to understand and interact with humans due to it's lack of emotional reasoning. Professor Bohra (Danny Denzongpa), Vaseegaran's superior, is the man with the power to approve Chitti - but he's working on his own series of robots, although with much less success. When Vaseegaran manages to make enough modifications to Chitti, the robot proves itself by getting angry with it's master - but although it passes it's accreditation, the machine also falls in love with Vaseegaran's fiancé, Sana (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan). When Chitti is rejected by her, it purposely fails it's military testing and is destroyed by Vaseegaran in a fit of rage. The robot is saved by Bohra and fitted with a red microchip to enhance it's willingness to kill - which only creates a destructive force that will stop at nothing to possess Sana. Will it even be possible to stop this machine, after it builds it's own series of powerful robots into a superior army?
The first thing you notice about
Enthiran is it's playful, deliberate comedic, sensibilities - providing us not only with a cute kind of robotic doofus (to begin with) but also two comic relief characters in Vaseegaran's assistants Siva (Santhanam) and Ravi (Karunas). The best lines though, are saved for Chitti, whose misunderstandings come from his complete and utter inexperience with the human world. The next thing you notice is the fact that Vaseegaran's girlfriend is being played by an actress 23 years Rajinikanth's junior. Some things never change, although to be fair this lead actor does look a lot younger than his age suggests. The effects are great, and look really nice - thanks to Legacy Effects and V. Srinivas Mohan - who people might be interested to learn also worked on popular Indian film
RRR. Mohan visited Industrial Light & Magic in the U.S. before filming commenced. He's been working in the business since 1996, and although I think these special effects don't quite rise to the standard a high-budget American film might reach, they do the job well enough, and are required here to a dizzying extent, for this three hour film is filled with action and impressive set-pieces. At the time it was made,
Enthiran was the most expensive Indian film in history.
The film had something of a tortured pre-production history, taking 10 years to get off the ground, but something high profile writer/director S. Shankar was always going to get around to - in some form. Interestingly, Ben Kingsley was nearly nabbed to play Professor Bohra - which would have been a coup - but the net was cast wide for a stunt coordinator with Hong Kong martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping brought in for fight sequences. Yuen Woo-ping worked on the
Matrix and
Kill Bill films. It's interesting to note that location work was usually undertaken for the musical segments, with cast and crew travelling to Peru and Brazil to get down and sing ditties in this lethal robot action extravaganza. Despite being the highest grossing film in India during 2010, it's only up at No 48 on the all-time list, despite it's sequel,
2.0, being right near the top at No 8 - kind of ironic, considering the fact that the sequel to
Enthiran is considered to be something that adds up to much less than the original. Although I enjoyed this film, I don't think I'll be checking it out.
This all adds up to a story that's somewhat reminiscent of
Frankenstein - involving something mankind has had it's eye on for a while now, for we are on the verge of creating something questionable when you consider A.I. and robotics. It puts the creator in a god-like position, and it's interesting that these creations so often turn against their masters. I have to admit though, I never expected the catalyst for that to be love. I often pondered how Chitti would end up expressing that love - aside from the kisses he's perfectly capable of. I'm reminded of
Ex Machina which recently explored whether a robotic A.I. could ever achieve consciousness or awareness, and the same thing goes for Chitti with him falling in love. Is this really a machine in love, or is it approximating love - mimicking it in a way it's programmed to? When Chitti begins arguing and becoming angry, it's assumed he's experiencing emotions, but the fact remains that he could be simply behaving the way he's programmed to. He only lashes out when a microchip is inserted that commands him to. Consciousness is something that's hard to prove.
The greater impression I got from the film in the end was an Indian approximation of big budget science fiction blockbusters from the U.S. - the likes of which came from James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Paul Verhoeven and Christopher Nolan. This includes the film's length, which I struggled with a little bit - I often find myself a little frustrated with action scenes that extend themselves beyond the point of providing us with tension and excitement. I find that action can only sustain itself for a certain amount of time before it exhausts our ability to follow a fast ever-changing landscape, or breaks our ability to remain in suspense. I felt that the final stretch of
Enthiran could have been a lot tighter and quicker to resolve. In it's last stretch, a lot of the humour and fun had been drained from proceedings, and I felt like I was watching a completely separate and different film. As a whole though, the action and narrative weren't bad.
If
Enthiran is anything to go by, Indian cinema is producing home-grown content that's providing entertainment world-wide, with appreciative audiences providing earnings for any companies joining in with distribution. A lot of the reactions to this film I've seen have been good, and it absolutely bursts at the seams with action, effects, comedy, romance and music - all of which is well executed and entertaining. I enjoyed watching it - and that especially goes for it's first half. It wasn't quite at a level of sophistication I like my big budget science fiction epics to be - but at the same time, I'm more wary of big budget science fiction these days anyway, so getting an example from India at least added some colour and novelty to proceedings. That's why I really didn't mind when musical numbers started breaking out - which provided something different from what I'm used to. It hasn't converted me into a fan yet, but I certainly don't dislike it - and don't begrudge it the success it has had. Big budget science fiction and action from English-speaking countries often has success that isn't justified.