Anbe Sivam- Project on MoS

Introduction and plot
There are good films, there are great films and then there are some films which become a part of your soul forever and have an impact on the very way in which you live your life. The last category is extremely rare, and I have hardly found across a couple of movies which have moved me to this extent. Foremost among those would be the 2003 Tamil masterpiece Anbe Sivam (translated to Love is God).
Anbe Sivam was released about 8 years ago and is widely acknowledged as the most profound and deepest of Kamal Haasan’s films till date; Kamal also co-wrote the dialogues with Madan, apart from playing one of the protagonists. The other protagonist is played by Madhavan in probably what is his most memorable role ever. The film also stars Kiran Rathod, Nasser and Santhana Bharathi in important roles. It was directed by Sundar C (though widely rumoured to have been ghost-directed by Kamal himself) and the music was composed by Vidyasagar.
The film basically revolves around the lives of the two protagonists over the course of a few days as both of them get stranded in Orissa due to torrential rains and floods, cutting off all forms of transport; the entire plot is rolled out as they try to get back home to Chennai. Madhavan plays Anbarasu (A Ars as he prefers to call himself), a young and successful ad film-maker who has recently got engaged and has his marriage scheduled in about a week’s time. Kamal plays Nallasivam aka Nalla, a middle-aged man with a painful past, who is now disfigured and has a prosthetic leg as a result of a horrible accident which changed the course of his life. As the plot moves ahead, we get to see the differences in the personalities of both of them and how they approach life. While the first half an hour or so has a lighter vein, it soon slides effortlessly into a much deeper and intense mood. But before that, we are also shown Kamal’s flashback of his youth and how his life was thrown into jeopardy by a freak accident which transformed him forever.
Ars comes across as a very ambitious and confident young man as the film opens; I am sure many of us at the starting of our careers can relate to many of his traits. He is initially irritated by Nalla’s know-all attitude and tries to avoid his company, only to fall into deeper trouble every time and having to bank on Nalla to bail him out. Nalla on the other hand probably sees traces of his own youth in Ars and takes an almost fatherly interest in his affairs, which just seems to make it worse from Ars’ point of view. However, as the film proceeds, Ars realizes how naive and selfish he has been so far and how different the real world is as opposed to how he looked at it so far. If I had to describe the plot in a single line, I would say on the surface, it is the story of how Ars discovers his true self and the real meaning of life. This was something which I found really inspiring and it was a stimulating experience to see how a person not very different than ourselves finds his true calling in life.
Deeper layers of the film
However, there is a lot more to Anbe Sivam than the rudimentary plot which I have described above, visible to those who seek it out. Dig a bit deeper and you would discover that it is actually a dialogue between two staunch exponents of the prominent economic models in the world today. While Ars believes strongly in the capitalist system of operating and argues vociferously for the free trade and liberating aspects of the model, Nalla is a diehard communist and swears by the policies of equality for all and a state-run model. Nalla’s flashback also shows us how he had championed the communist ideology fiercely in his youth as he fought against the cruel working conditions and meagre pay given to the workers in the nearby factory. The beauty of this dialogue is that it is always subtle; forever at the brim of the film but never really breaking out explicitly. Here’s a sample: when Ars says the Soviet itself doesn’t exist anymore, Nalla reacts by asking him if love will die if the Taj Mahal is destroyed tomorrow. Personally, it was one of my first exposures to the concept of communism and I must say that though I was too young to fully appreciate the beauty of his arguments then, it is something I relish whenever I watch the film now.
Dig still deeper and the film becomes a clash of a resolute and religious young man brought up since birth to worship the god that his family believes in, and an obdurate atheist who has the simple yet powerful dogma that there is no god in the sense that most of us look for. He says God is within every one of us and the minute we show love to others, be it human beings or even animals, that is when god is truly seen. He argues that idol worship is not going to lead to any utility for anyone, whereas his concept of love can move mountains; after all, isn’t that what god is meant to do? Again, while sparks do fly when the protagonists get talking about this issue, it is never a brash and in-your-face dialogue; it seeps through almost unnoticed at every frame of the film, subtly and delicately. This was something which I personally found very appealing; in spite of being from a very orthodox and religious family and also personally being someone who believes firmly in God guiding me at every step of life, I also found Nalla’s notion of God alluring and it has really influenced me to adopt the ‘Anbe Sivam’ outlook towards life.
At the deepest layer, the film forces you to take a relook at how we tend to approach life; Ars’ transformation is perhaps the journey of self-realization that many of us would go through at some point of time in life. At the beginning of the film, Ars refuses to be called by his full form which he feels is too traditional and not in line with his character. Later on, when he cries over the dead body of a 10-year old boy who he had become very close to in spite of being a total stranger and never having even spoken properly to him, Kamal says that he has finally found the Anbu part in himself; a beautiful metaphor which speaks not just about the name Anbarasu but also stands for the love (Anbu being the Tamil word for love) that Ars had refused to seek out or acknowledge as a part of himself. As most of us go through life, we tend to lose touch with this side of ourselves in this harsh corporate world, and I feel this incident showed something which goes beyond just Ars and stood for a universal state of slowly losing the love that humans were born with as the world around us gets darker day by day.
Going beyond the obvious
All that I have described above are factors for me liking the film, perhaps even loving it. But it still doesn’t explain why I have been so deeply moved by it and look upon it in an almost demigod status. Well, that is something I will struggle to put into words because it is something intangible. In the previous section, I have tried to give a rational and cold analysis of the plot and the deeper layers of meaning embedded in the film. However, what that ignores is the emotional connect with the film and the characters, which leads to the special bond that it creates. I am not sure how exactly to explain this as it sounds too vague if put in words, but let me make an attempt in this section with the help of a few select scenes which I felt most strongly about in the film. I hope that at the end of it, I am able to convey atleast some of the reasons why I have been so strongly moved by the film.
The first scene would be the sequence of events where Ars first discovers how ill-equipped he is to deal with the unpredictable nature of the world around him. Being a confident young man who always felt he was competent in dealing with any situation, this is a rude shock to him, and the semi-humorous way in which it is portrayed was something I loved; the mood seems light but is poignant with meaning and offers an interesting insight into how we view this world and ourselves in respect to it. The perfect acting of both the characters makes it easy to emphasize exactly with the plight of Ars and gives that ‘Aah’ feeling of knowing exactly how it feels to be in his situation. While similar situations could have occurred often in both literature and on the screen, what makes this so sensational for me is the under-played sense of light-hearted foreboding without ever going overboard.
The second scene is the one where Nalla sits at a roadside tea-shop and has a conversation with the illiterate simple woman who runs the shop. Now, Nalla has had a major accident while travelling in a bus and this accident was caused by a stray dog which ran onto the path of the bus, leading to it swerving off-course on the hilly terrain. As he has a miraculous escape from the jaws of death and come back to the same place, the tea-shop owner tells him that this was the dog which nearly got him killed and as a consequence of the accident, cost him his love. Nalla suddenly feels a pang of loneliness for the dog and from that minute, he and the dog become inseparable; the tea-shop woman says she has seen god in him the minute he was able to forgive the dog and accept it as his own. It might sound trivial when put down in black and white like this, but for me, it was one of the beautiful scenes ever.
The highlight of the film and in my opinion, one of Kamal’s best scenes ever (which would be a very difficult pick indeed for the man I consider India’s best actor ever by miles) occurs when Kamal first realizes the effects of the accident on his body. The minute he sees his scarred face and realizes the damage to his leg have been portrayed so beautifully that it is impossible to not feel a pang of acute grief while watching it. More than the physical damage, what is more interesting is the inferiority complex he develops due to this, and this lasts forever. Meanwhile, there is a Christian missionary who cares for him during the time of his recovery, and if these scenes don’t convince you of the essence of the philosophy of Anbe Sivam, I am afraid nothing ever will; the title song is a soulful piece sung by Kamal himself which just pierces deep into the heart and reinforces the core of this belief.
Yet another scene which moved me close to tears and is widely regarded as one of the best ever in Tamil films is the one where Ars breaks down on being told that the stranger, a 10-year old who he had donated his blood to a few hours ago, had just died. There is no outbreak of loud emotional drama, neither is it the muted and cold grief glorified in Hollywood. Instead, what follows is a natural and restrained reaction where what is said is far beyond the words being spoken. It needs to be mentioned that the boy is a complete stranger to Ars and he initially refuses to donate blood as he is scared of doing so and believes the process is too painful. Well, at this stage, he is ready to do anything he can to bring back the boy from the dead, and when he says in frustration that it is in times like this that we doubt the existence of god itself, Nalla smiles and says I still trust god, pointing to him and saying Isn’t this heart which is crying for the unknown soul God? Again, I am struggling to express in mere words the intensity of what is left unsaid, and the sheer force of this incredible scene.
The final scene is the one where Ars realizes that the stories which Nalla had been telling him all throughout the film about his wife and son are all purely fictional and the truth is that he has nobody to call family. Nalla says he made up this imaginary world to help himself to deal with the complex he has developed of not having a happy family like everyone else. Ars is chocked and forces him to live with him henceforth as he believes god has again given him back his brother who died several years ago; however, fate has another twist in store for him. Nalla realizes that Ars’ fiancé is the one who he was in love with and his inferiority complex returns to haunt him; he decides to leave without informing Ars about his reasons and ensuring that she doesn’t find out the truth too that he is still alive. Again, nothing is explicitly stated here, and the subtle music gently dies out as Nalla limps away into the sunset with his faithful dog next to him and the credits begin to roll out.
Conclusion
I am seized by an utter sense of helplessness right now; I am almost at the end of my piece but have struggled to explain exactly why I hold this film so close to my heart. My attempts to put down my emotions in words have proved pretty futile and here I am back to the same place where I started off! Well, though most of my essay looks like a description of the emotional scenes, it was not these which really drilled the film into my blood; I have after all watched far more emotional ones. It is neither the amazing acting of the actors nor is it the layers of philosophy or politics which I have described above. More than any of these, I think if I had to explain in a line exactly why this film has had such an impact on me, I would have to say that somewhere along the line, it stands subtly for many of our inner debates and fears and brings these out beautifully, while also influencing many of the aspects of my outlook towards life; all this without ever going overboard or dramatic. For me, it is more than a film, it is life explained succinctly in just over 2 hours. I feel the film has parts of me in it, or maybe it is the other way around and I have parts of the film in me; either way, I end this piece with one of the lines from the eternal title song, “If the heart was indeed just flesh, it would be destroyed by the holy fire; if the heart is the eternal tool of love, then death is but another conquest for it.”
S Santosh (251/47)