Kamal Hassan — Crazy Mohan | The Secret To The Comedy | Video Essay Script | Moving Images
Hi, my name is Kishor and this is MOVING IMAGES. I am going to talk about my favorite comedic-duo, but before that, I would like to say upfront that comedy in Tamil Cinema have lost their way. A comedy film these days are just a bunch of comedic set-pieces strung together by some semblance of a story narrative. I’m not saying they lack humor, but they don’t come across as films but rather (insert: PKS comedy ENT saying “Joke”).
But comedy could be so much more if you take advantage of the whole audio and visual medium that is cinema. If you like something like that, then I’d highly recommend Kamal Hassan and Crazy Mohan. This actor-writer team is one of the few in the industry who have consistently treated us to highly memorable, rib-tickling, wholesome humor. And if you’re a fan like me, you would come to expect a typical Kamal-Crazy film to have troupes such as witty wordplay, a story that involves mistaken identity or confusion that leads to some hilarious hijinks, a climax that reaches comedic levels of absurdness with car chases, an ensemble cast, and finally the heroine being called (insert: supercut of “Janaki”). But despite all the troupes, their movies remain fresh, memorable, and I dare say a part of our lives. So, what is the method to this Craziness?
To begin breaking down Crazy Mohan’s comedic dialogues, we must go back to one of his inspirations. Though multiple Tamizh writer such as Saavi, Moulee, and Cho have been an inspiration for Crazy, his style is all too similar with English writer P.G. Wodehouse. In Vicente López Folgado’s research on P.G.Wodehouse’s sense of humor named “A musical comedy without music”, he breaks down the three recurrent sources of humor in Wodehouse’s works. They are overstatement, understatement, and style shift.
An overstatement happens when the thought of the speaker differs from the proportion of reality. An example of overstatement in Crazy’s work is from the movie Pammal K Sambandham. The clever word play makes the characters in the movie and us, the audience wrongly assume the reality due to an overstatement.
The understatement, as the name implies, is the opposite of overstatement.
The style shift or the sudden turn of comedic style is the most recurrent trait in Crazy Mohan’s dialogues. A style shift happens when a conversation starting with one style unexpectedly changes into another style. Some of the examples for style shift are
1. Maapilai thikaliye, ungala paarthathu la thikku theriyaama pochu
2. Poi thola, yennathu?, tholaiva po nu sonean
3. Ungaluku vena avar mudaliyaar, yennaku avar muthalil yaaro
4. Adikadi koopdu na adi ku adi koopduviya da?
But what would Crazy Mohan be without the other half of the duo, Kamal Hassan. Kamal’s excellent acting and, in some collaborations, his screenplay have elevated the comedic dialogues of Crazy and have made them memorable. The way the two weaves humor into the story narrative is in stark contrast to the set piece style comedy in recent Tamil films like I said in the beginning. In every film of theirs, the starting scene sets up the story and not a scene is wasted. This keeps the audience engaged as we go along the laughter filled ride. The humor narrative in Kamal-Crazy movies follows the General Theory of Verbal Humor proposed by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo. But it would be amiss if I didn’t talk about the way Kamal’s screenplay can marry the verbal humor in Crazy’s dialogues and the visual comedy through an ensemble cast. And an excellent example for this would be this one scene from Kaathala Kaathala.
The scene is rife with mistaken identities. Kamal is mistaken to be — -you know what? I think Kamal explains it better than I can (insert: Kamal explaining to Prabhu Deva “ivar yen maamanaa aana naala…”). Maybe that wasn’t a good idea, but anyway, the camera is still for the whole scene, but there is an excellent mix of visual and verbal comedy happening simultaneously. The background has a Chaplin-esqe slapstick comedy going on while the dialogues are being spoken by the actors on the foreground. When the actors in the background are called out, the two layers mix, with everyone contributing to the verbal humor except for Prabhu Deva who walks around. The way the visual comedy is made to compliment the verbal comedy is a testimony to the wonderful screenwriter that Kamal is. The scene excellently ends with Prabhu Deva getting his only dialogue which is also used to comedic effect. Another great example is the story narration scene in Panchathanthiram, as Kamal develops his false story with the various reactions and props from his surroundings.
But beyond all the theories and style breakdowns, Kamal-Crazy’s consistent success is something beyond explanation. It is something magical and gets only better with age. As Folgado said, “The funniness of jokes is essentially connected with weak communication” and this might be true for the on-screen humor, but the communication between Kamal and Crazy is strong and I wish for it to continue for many more years. Until next time, this is Kishor signing off saying….
