I finally got to see Dam 999 in Kochi on Wednesday, three weeks after its release amidst the furore over a dam that neither Tamil Nadu nor Kerala seem to agree on, starting with the spelling. When I reached Kochi, sundry school children were writing erudite and scholarly letters, to the President, the PM and the CM where the central point was encapsulated with a line in all capital letters: “THE DAM WILL NOT SEEK PERMISSION BEFORE COLLAPSING”. One of the phrases that they had thrown into the letter was “water bomb”. I thought it came from the documentary that the director of Dam 999, a naval architect, produced as a precursor to the release of the film titled Dams the lethal water bombs. The documentary was screened before the release of the film. It is apocalyptic in its import and trots out disaster after dam disaster — Vajont, Italy, 1963; Banquiao, Western Hunan province, China, 1975; Morvi, Gujarat, 1979 — as forerunners of what might happen, should dams collapse due to a variety of factors. I am not really sure if the documentary uses hyperbole as its central special effect. I leave it to you to decide with the help of the blurb on the back of the DVD, which claims it is “a saga of the unspoken miseries of innumerous number of people who helplessly await their destiny under the looming threat of a possible dam collapse”. There is apparently one “major” dam failure every year; 2,000 since the 12th century. On the cover is a gilt-edge frame of the Mullaiperiyar dam, described in the documentary as “ailing” and “haplessly awaiting its inevitable destiny”. The result was a very underwhelming mishmash. It however made a strong pitch for the film.
When I asked if we could see the film, Vinod Mathew was sure I would have to be carried out halfway through the screening, half-bored to death; no saying what would happen if I was in the hall for the entire duration. No one had anything good to say about the film. In fact not one person in our Kochi office had bothered to see it. I found it strange, since every person I interview in Kerala is an aspiring film critic with an easygoing familiarity with Eisenstein, Kurosawa or Fellini. I worried whether we would get tickets. About 15 minutes before the screening at an upscale mall in Kochi, we purchased the tickets. We got ticket numbers six and seven.
Although it was a 3D movie, I have to report that I failed to notice the other two dimensions. This is not to say the film was not without its moments. Ashish Vidyarthi, who Wikipedia lists as having acted in seven Malayali films, for some inexplicable reason, kept talking in English to people from God’s Own Country. Vinod and I had a minor disagreement over whether Va da, an order he gives to his villainous henchman, was Tamil or Malayalam. Rajit Kapur, a last minute replacement for Tilakan, intoned his prophesies in odd, Tamil-accented English. By the end I was ready to leave myself in the capable and healing hands of Vimala Raman to get my lower lumbar vertebrae fixed. I thought Ashish Vidyarthi’s pet cobra deserved an Oscar for best actor in a supporting role for biting on cue. This is not a film review, only a report from the action front, so I will leave it at that.
sudarshan@newindianexpress.com