Singeetham Srinivasa Rao’s ‘Michael Madana Kama Rajan’, a timeless classic from a master filmmaker

A middle-aged man rises from coils of celluloid, while Ilaiyaraaja sings ‘Kadha Kelu’ and urges the audience to listen to “a delightful, entertaining story.” The man, the forever-young Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, allows a group of children to look through his bioscope and watch the genre-defining story take shape. This is how the audience is taken into the world of Michael Madana Kama Rajan, the 1990 classic directed by a master filmmaker whom we lost today.Of all the thoughts that surrounded me this morning, when I learned of Singeetham’s demise, I wondered how history would define the legacy of an auteur with such a prolific body of work. To the Tamil audience alone, Singeetham gifted Raaja Parvai, Apoorva Sagodharargal, Magalir Mattum, Kaathala Kaathala, and even Little John, among several other titles (of course, all Indian languages can claim ownership of the dialogue-free Pushpaka Vimana). However, if one film outweighs the rest in entertainment value, rewatchability, cultural resonance and the sheer number of filmmakers it has inspired over the years, it has to be his masala comedy, Michael Madana Kama Rajan (MMKR).In fact, one could go so far as to call it one of the most often cited Tamil films of all time among cinephiles and filmmakers; even a few days ago, actor Fahadh Faasil said in an interview with Galatta Plus that a classic film like MMKR can never be remade. The actor said he rewatched the film recently and praised the vision of using a song like ‘Kadha Kelu’ as an exposition.The story behind MMKR began when the late acclaimed writer-producer Panchu Arunachalam came across a Pakistani film written by Kader Kashmiri — information about which remains scarce — about quadruplet siblings separating at birth and reuniting later in life. After obtaining the rights to adapt that film in Tamil — and with Singeetham on board to direct — the job of adapting Kader’s story into a fresh screenplay was assigned to Kamal Haasan, who also starred as the quadruplets in the film. In quintessential Kamal fashion, he brought new life to the story, with some assistance from Singeetham and Kamal’s frequent collaborator and writer Crazy Mohan (who also wrote the film’s dialogues).The ingeniously constructed and satisfyingly chaotic story they arrived at is one of the biggest reasons for Michael Madana Kama Rajan becoming the timeless masterpiece it is now.A masala story for the agesNow picture this premise: When a wealthy industrialist fathers quadruplets with a young woman, the man’s evil brother sends goons to kill off the infants to obtain all the family’s inheritance. However, the leader of the goons has a change of heart, due to which he splits them up. He adopts one of the infants (named Michael), leaves another at an orphanage (Raju), leaves another at a temple (Kameshwaran), and leaves one of the brothers (Madanagopal) inside the businessman’s car. Now, more than 20 years later, in a series of events that feel like perfectly timed firecrackers, the four brothers cross each other’s paths, and all hell breaks loose.Even today, this masala cinema premise is sure to excite a cinema fan, but the real allure of MMKR is how Kamal Haasan ensured the four brothers not only look and speak distinctively, but also bring their own cultural conditioning and social baggage into the story. For instance, Michael is a street-smart conman raised with the instinct not to trust others. Though he may not seem to have the comedic makeup of, say, Kameshwaran, or the Western solemnity of Madan, Michael constantly trying to exploit his circumstances makes for increasingly absurd situations that propel the plot forward. Raju might be a jokester speaking in Madras slang, but his character is defined by strong moralities and a working-class background; even when he agrees to Madan’s plans to impersonate him for money, he remains fundamentally guided by his conscience.A lot could also be said about how innovatively Kamal’s screenplay taps into the pleasure of seeing the four brothers and the many characters who populate their worlds intersect at pivotal points. As the lyrics state, “Suvaiyodu sugamaaga uruvaana kadhai,’ indeed. FILE: Indian Filmmaker Singeetam Srinivasa Rao at an interview with Metro Plus in Chennai on April 05, 2019. | Photo Credit: VEDHAN M A textbook on voice actingIt is old news that MMKR’s legacy rests on Kamal’s shoulders as it does on Singeetham's. An acting masterclass, enough has been said over the last 30 years about how Kamal inhabits each of the four characters so completely that you might at times forget they are played by the same actor. Each of the four brothers has their own emotional and physical vocabulary, but I would like to point out something actor Manikandan had said in a recent interview: how understated Kamal’s voice acting in the film is.There are countless examples throughout the film, but I urge you to look at the scene where Raju, upon agreeing to Madan’s deal, shaves off his facial hair and puts on Madan’s clothes. It happens in the same sequence set in Raju’s room where they meet, and in a matter of minutes, we see them become each other — and your brain wouldn’t need a pause to figure out who is who, for Madan’s British-accented Tamil contrasts Raju’s Madras slang so fittingly.These radically different vocal attributes become all the more important in the second half of the film, when everyone somehow ends up looking like Madan — and you can only know Raju’s identity for his North Madras roots, Madan’s for his sophisticated Tamil, Kameshwaran’s for his eccentric Pallakkad Tamil, and Michael’s for his base voice.A filmmaking marvelBut what could be said of the sheer filmmaking ingenuity of MMKR? For the time it was made, this film achieved a filmmaking finesse and technical sophistication that only a few of its counterparts have. The technical challenge of placing two or three — and eventually all four — Kamal Haasans in the same frame was a monumental feat that is still often fondly looked back on. Not only do the four quadruplets populate the frame at any given time, but they also cross over each other without breaking the audience’s immersion.In fact, before roping in cinematographer BC Gowrishankar (who earlier worked with Singeetham and Kamal on Pushpaka Vimana, and with Singeetham in films like Anand, Jwaalamukhi, Eradu Nakshatragalu and Chalisuva Modagalu), one of the first questions Kamal asked the cinematographer was if all four characters could be shown in the frame without any patches or glitches — and when Gowri responded favourably, Kamal signed him on.The film’s climax, set on a hillside collapsing house, was inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, and remains an ambitious engineering marvel. The whole house was apparently a hydraulic set mounted on a metal platform that could make it physically rock. Interestingly, art director Peketi Ranga (a technician who worked on many of Singeetham’s films with Kannada superstar Rajkumar) gave his absolute best to MMKR and made many of the iconic sets, like Raju’s room and the collapsing house.Last but not least, as all directors who worked with maestro Ilaiyaraaja have said, his mind is a bottomless well of music; the filmmaker’s job is to know how to draw from it exactly what the film demands. And Singeetham’s collaboration with Ilaiyaraaja in MMKR gave an album that will always be fondly remembered and celebrated.Over the years, what went into the making of Michael Madana Kama Rajan itself has become an enduring legend. And the fact that this is the case for most of his films is the most fitting way to remember Singeetham Srinivasa Rao. His craft could turn the chaos of life, compassion and human folly into a piece of art that feels effortless, pleasing and thought-provoking.Michael Madana Kama Rajan might be remembered for Kamal’s performances, Mohan’s wit, Ilaiyaraaja’s magic and technical wizardry, but none of these pleasures could have come together with such harmony if not for the filmmaker at the helm. Now, as we grieve his passing, the bioscope still lives on, waiting for generations of film buffs to discover and rejoice in his artistry. Singeetham Srinivasa Rao was trained in the subtle art of making cinema feel like magic, and Michael Madana Kama Rajan is his gift for perpetuity.