Sigappu Rojakkal

We're in were Hello everyone and welcome to the Bollywood Cinema Club podcast where we take a look at Indian cinema every other week. I am the host of the Culture Cast Christashu, the show where this show spun off from. I am joined by my good friend. He is an Indian cinema fan and he covers all kinds of film from all over the world over at his is amazing podcast, the crown jewel of the weirding Way media network. Your friend of Mine podcast extraordinaire, Mike White.

Thank you so much Christopher having me. I really appreciate this. Comal Hassan fan club starter, Mike White. I don't know what it is we in in Indian Cinema month. This year we did one two, two, two or three Kamal Hassan movies because we did Moondram Parai and then Richard and I did Pushpakavimana, which is a silent movie that Kamal Hassan is in.

And now this uh Sigapu ro Jakhol otherwise known as Comeal Hassan playing a weirdo once again. Oh boy, big time weirdo. Yeah, like in a way that almost makee uh moondram Parai look pastoral in a way. Oh my god. But yeah, on this episode of the Bollywood Cinema Club, we're gonna be talking about the Tamil language film from nineteen seventy eight, sigapou Rajacol, which you can find on Prime Video for two dollars.

I might be able to find in other places too. Oh I watched it on Prime Video. Really, I watch it on YouTube? Oh well, good well, thank you, thank you. Were also mentioning that because yeah, realistically, most of these movies are on YouTube.

It just remains to be seen if they have good English subtitles. This had English subtitles. Yes, the one I watched had English subtitles as well. So we were talking yesterday about the whole thing with Indian people when they switched from English to whatever natural language they're speaking or dialect they're speaking. That's fine, no problem.

But for some reason I was having such a hard time watching this because the subtitles were not that great and just like slightly off, and so all of a sudden, our characters would switch from Telugu to English and then back and then back and then back, and I'm just like, oh my god, what's going on because the English wasn't subtitled Yes, it sure wasn't was yeah, and so it's like, oh wait, he just said that in English, and then I have to like backtrack. You didn't spend any money on this and you had the exact same subtitles I did, apparently, which is so don't spend two dollars on Prime Video. You'll find the link to this movie in the podcast description on YouTube, because there is no need to pay for a bad version of this subtitle when you could get the same bad version subtitled for free.

So the film is directed by Barathroja and it does Starkamal Hassan and the superstar shried Devi, who I have a greater appreciation for shried Devi now having watched some of the Netflix documentary The Romantics, because she is the first female superstar of Indian cinema to the point where she was working in Telugu and Tamil and and Hindi film so she was all over the place. This is the second time we've seen her now actually, because she was in Moundram Perai opposite Kamal Hassan in that movie. In this movie, Kamal Hassan plays Deleep a businessman who runs a business, but he's old Patrick Bateman this one, and he likes to kill him and chase after him and murder him and have sex with them in a way that once again evokes a lot of other things that we've seen before.

And Shri deb plays a woman who meets Aura, intrepid murderer, falls in love with him, and well, as things tend to go awry, and these kinds of stories, things go awry. I'd say, Mike, what did you think of Sidgapu Rojakal? I really liked it. I had a really fun time with this. Whether it was intentionally fun or not, that's yet to be seen.

And the fashions are amazing. The use of music is wonderful, especially all of a sudden Rose Royce starts playing with and car Wash comes up on the soundtrack and I'm just like, what is going on? And then an entire murder scene set to a Dina Summer song. I'm I'm all about it, man, this is fantastic. Gosh, what an unusual film.

And there were so many things where as I was watching and I was just like, wow, I did not expect that shot, or oh, that's a very interesting way that they presented that there's some really cool direction in this movie. And is it ham handed? Yeah? Is it super melodramatic? Yeah, I really like that about this film.

So I had a fun time watching this one. You mentioned the music already, Correct me if I'm wrong, But did they not use like the music cue from The Godfather? Oh all the time? Way? Yes, Nina Rotas loved theme from The Godfather, Right, Okay, I'm just making sure.

What Look, my favorite movie is Goodfellas, And if somebody asked me, it's this Goodfellas or Freaked, depending on the audience and whether or not I think somebody's gonna know one, because everybody knows Goodfellas. But Goodfellows is great. The Godfather is great too. And it's so weird to hear that thing in this just like constantly recurring. Every time he opens his watch, it plays the It's just like, okay, like I get it doesn't it doesn't not work, but it's so specifically from one thing.

Yeah, like every other time it's done, or it's or if it's used any other way, it's used as kind of in parody to that. So all of that aside the weirdness of using the Godfather's love theme in your film. Uh, this movie is really interesting. It's yeah, it's billing itself. I think is like a psychological thriller, and I think that's the best way to classify it.

But it's also in a lot of ways like a slice of life story because the character of deleep Is is rather well adjusted when he's not killing people, and the interactions he has with Shridbi who plays Serata are are are pretty cute. I mean, they're a very good couple in this movie, just like they were in moondram Parai. But again, the thing that works here, just like in moon dram Parai is you know that there is something else going on, right, and she doesn't this time. It's kind of like moondram Parai. The conceit is she doesn't know what's going on in that movie.

She doesn't know what's going on in this movie. Yeah, and is creep in both, right. I mean, look, here's the thing. Kamal Hassan is an actor who I have seen now three times, mentioned moondram Parai, mentioned Pushpaka Vimana and now Sigapu Rojakl and all three characters are I get very similar, Like you haven't seen Pushbakavimana, but you did see moondram Parai, and this character and the character in moondram Parai could be brothers, if not mirror images of one another or like a slight perversion of one another in a lot of ways, like one character is willing you when the other is out of the light a little bit, pretty much, right, Like yeah, I'm again like Kamalisan has a charisma about him that really works.

And it's surprising because again, with a lot of these actors in Indian cinema that are this charismatic, they're not often playing these kind of complex roles, right, They're more playing like, Oh, he's just a good guy and he's a great person and you want to cheer for him. Like I had seen things when I was reading that his character of Delete in this movie is a anti hero and it's interesting that's the take. I don't I don't know how I feel about that. Yeah, I mean a lot of you know, like you're Deadpool. He kills a lot of people, but they all deserve it.

I don't think any of the people like to kill in this movie deserve it at all, Right, he's not like writing a societal wrong or doinging. It's he's killing women because of what happened to him when he was a kid. Yeah again like that, you know Norman Bates tail is old this time type exactly. Yeah. I mean I even wrote in my notes that they're very much the Psycho reveal at the end of this, Like when Simon Oakland comes to the audience at the end of Psycho basically the brother and the Lover or the sister and the lover, you are his audience, and he just starts telling, well, Norman had this thing.

I mean that happens in this movie right at the end of this, right before they reveal. And you're gonna have to help me with the end of this once we get to it, because we start off with a with him with the leap in this Psycho Award slash Jail and he's there to visit his father every year, and he comes in and as you're watching it, you're just like, something's not right here. But then the movie kind of continues and you don't really realize that it's a framing device. At least I didn't until they come back to it at the end. I thought it was just the natural progress of he's in this jail.

He visits his father every single year. He leaves. You feel that something's not right. And then the movie starts, and then we get to see, Okay, he's this businessman and he's got this really re bet sex perv office manager Guywani he is somehow he's a bigger creep. Oh, then come on, Hasani.

I mean often, in oftentimes in these scenarios, when they play out in real life, the the enablers often tend to look worse than even the people committing the crimes because the enablers don't get punished. Yes, you know, cause you're thing Maxwell or whatever the hell her name is is a is A is an outlier. Most of those people don't get punished for doing essentially what this guy is doing because he knows what happens to these women. He's complicit. Oh he knows this.

I thought he was just so lecherous about stuff. I didn't realize that he knew that his boss was going to kill this woman. I mean, it kind of feels like he knows because when the guys, when the woman's brother comes in, when Chittra's brother comes in, right, he's like, oh, she doesn't work here anymore, and she didn't come in, and it's like it felt like he was covering for his boss. I didn't pick that up. I picked up him just like, Oh, that stupid lady, she doesn't even come here anymore.

But I kind of like where you're making him more like this Renfield character. Right well, I mean again, like every monster needs kind of his sidekick. If you have this kind of setup where you're just coaxing people in on false pretenses, like it's easier if you have someone else. And he even I mean he does have other people because he has his you know, like monstrous human beings at his house that are oh fucking god, these like cools of human beings who are watching his videos of him murdering women. And you know what.

It it's not the level of Henry portrait of a serial killer, but it's doing the same thing. It's trying to that same reaction, that feeling that you get of just like being chilled to your core by this character who can present so normal but then is a sociopath, a complete psychopath. And look, I mean this movie came out in seventy eight, so we're we're what a couple of years removed from Bundy, Like, I mean, this is in this is in Bund, this is Bundy era, So you know, like this is a this is a perfect kind of story to tell in this day and age and looks like India didn't have their own serial killers. I mean this is based a little bit on Raman rah Av who yeah, went killed, went on a killing spree and was labeled the Jack the Ripper of India.

So again, like the Netflix has all these documentaries now about serial killers in India. I don't know if you know about that. Uh yeah, Netflix has a series that is devoted almost directly to Indian true crime and serial killer. Oh that's so funny. I'm gonna have to tell my coworker that recommends a lot of these films to me.

She's totally in true crime stuff. So maybe this is like two great tastes that go great together. Well, I mean, that's the thing about this movie is it almost feels kind of docu drama esque. I mean the way it's filmed, it's very It's not that it's not a stylistically interesting movie, but most of the movie is filmed very I'm not gonna say sinema verite, but very stylistically devoid. He's just walking around, he's just doing things, like you know.

But there are those flourishes that I brought up at the beginning, like when he's in the Sorry Shop and scoping out because he's still scoping out the girl that is applying for the job, the one that he ends up murdering. Correct at Chitra, Yeah, she's there, and then our main woman is there as well. And where the hell was I going with this? Oh? In this the Sorry Shop, you see him and her talking and then she moves out of the picture, and the way he starts to move, the camera pulls back and you realize that the whole thing was being shot in a mirror.

And I really like that. I thought it was a really touch And there's a couple other times throughout the movie where I was just like, oh, okay, they're translatething different here. I kind of agree with you as far as like there's that big set pieces necessarily other than the end, it is very much a day in the life of this guy, or a week in the life or however long. This whole courtship stuff goes on for as well, but yeah, this is this is pretty much and he until the end of the film. He pretty much is the start of the show.

I don't think there's too many scenes without him in it. No, And that's again like it. You know, the last time when we talked about a Kamala a Saw movie, when we talked about moondram Parai, it was it was also his movie in a lot of ways, like he. I mean, he was the main character there, but I think here he's a much more interesting character on the screen. Like again, the character in moondram Parai in is a lot of ways that kind of a cipher that the main focus of that movie is sried Debi's character less him in this movie.

It's he is the focus. And so like you said, we follow him throughout most of the movie and we get to see these kind of shots from his point of view sometimes again like there, like you said, there are some interesting things that they do, but this is in a lot of ways just a perverse romance. They're taking the romantic kind of drama that you're expecting and they're perverting it in an interesting way. And I think it really works. I just don't think he's an anti hero because I don't.

I yeah, that's so strange to me. But like I saw it a couple times, so, like, he's not painted very it's not ambiguous that he's evil. He's evil, he's just very good at covering it up. Doesn't mean he's not evil though. No, And they clue you in pretty early on that he's not a good guy.

I mean, it is interesting that they do have that office manager that we see first and you're just like, oh my god, this guy's a piece of shit. And then you meet you know, our main character and it's like, oh, okay, well he seems nice and that's like, but no, he's actually worse because he's this terrible monster. Yeah, and this whole thing of like, I mean, there's a lot of eroticism to this movie. I mean that this guy is basically a sex killer. But it's so interesting the way that eroticism is portrayed or not portrayed in Indian films.

And I've always been fascinated by this because years and years ago I watched the Indian version of Brianda Palmer's Body Double, and you know, the whole thing with hollybody and her dance and all that stuff that they had to have the actress completely clothed, but the guy was just like so enamored byer, and it's like it goes from lust to love so quickly because it was just like, you know, rather than oh and then here's this big scene where they have sex. It's like, oh, here's this big scene and they hug and I'm like, all right, but yeah, I love the way that it's just like so chaste, but then at the same time that he is this vicious murderer. But there are times where you get that sense of violence.

It feels like they were really pretty with this film. Well, and you know, I'm really shocked that we have scenes of the camera footage of him murdering. I mean, again, it's not it's not graphic in the way you would expect it to be, but it is grotesque because it's not like it's not like there's blood splattering everywhere, all over the walls, all over the camera. It's just violent out of nowhere. And they do kind of an interesting thing where it kind of like it starts feeling like the footage starts ramping itself up the way it's being presented to you, and the music kind of ramps up with what's going on, and it just gives you a really interesting kind of inner look at the mind of this character who just kind of you know, you see it in the scene towards the end of the movie where he's sitting there talking to this policeman who approaches him in the bathroom and the audio drops out, the talking drops out, and he can't Again, I'm assuming that that's just trying to get into the mindset of this character and he's just unable to listen to anything, and he just goes ape.

Shit, Oh, that's a really good point. Yeah, and he kills that cop, right, But they keep doing this stylistic thing where the audio drops away, at least the dialogue drops away, and it's just the music play. And it's interesting because those scenes give you an idea of kind of what this character is dealing with in his head. But at the same time, he is such a terrible character as just a human being that by the end of it, you wish he had gotten more of a comeuppance, is what it feels like, right, Yeah, yeah, you really should have died, but it should have been more painful. I mean, I'm always fascinated too.

Sorry, to keep gammering on. But the whole idea of the person who impales themselves by accident in order to keep the main character's hands blood free. I always appreciate that in movies. And it's kind of a whoops, I fell and kind of cross through the chests. But he's okay, don't worry, folks, He's all right.

He's going to go to the mental institution. So tell me, Chris, kind of just we're right here. By the end of the movie, there's him looking like almost comatose and like staring at the camera, and then we cut and then it's the beginning scene again. So I'm like, all right, this is this is him, He's this is from the beginning of the movie. Like I'm thinking, is this at the end of the movie?

Is this the beginning of the movie? Is this actually like what we saw was his whole fantasy? And like he go, he pretends that he's visiting the mental institution even though he's actually locked up there, and it's the guard was just humoring him the whole time, just like oh, yeah, you know that, that's great. Yeah, no, we'll see you next year, you know, Like I don't know what was happening here. Interesting.

I hadn't thought of it that way. Hmmm. Interesting. I mean it adds in a different layer to this movie because it does kind of bring back to light the weirdness of the opening scene, right, because that first scene is strained, right, Yeah, I mean it is strange, like the way he's treated when he's in the prison. I mean, look, that does the film benefit from it being told in that weird kind of it's all a dream but not really thing Like, I don't know if the movie's better or worse for it, yeah, if that were to be the case.

But I think what's interesting is it does do something to kind of show that there may be something because that final scene of him just staring out into space, right is really really arresting. I mean he is just the look on Kamal Hassan's face, he looks nothing like the character you've seen this entire movie either. He's pretty much unrecognizable. He's short hair, he has short facial hair like. He looks very different from the character we've been following.

Wearing his bell bottomed pants and leather jack so, oh my god, the outfits in this movie are wild man. Oh wow, I don't know if you saw I posted on my Facebook that the scene of the Sorry Shop when it's all those break collars behind him and he's wearing that lad jacket, that's just like, oh my ah, It's like, do not trust this man. If this man, if this man is telling you about style tips runaway. Well, And what's really funny is I mean it feels so of the time, like in a lot of ways right like seventy eight, the way he's dressed, he just looks so much like he looks the like the he looks the part of the kind of like a creep in the late seven ways, like just the way he dresses, the way he acts. But again, like I can completely see why Sreid Debbie's character falls for him because he's quiet.

Yeah, I like, ultimately he is just kind of a quiet guy, you know, in in something like American Psycho, which I brought up at the beginning of this show, I kind of have a hard time understanding why anybody likes Patrick Bateman because he's just like so unlikable as a character. And it's like, no, the only way this works is if everybody else is as unlikable as he is, which is exactly what Brett Easton Ellis does in the book is everybody's just a complete conceited yuppie piece of shit, and and that has that's the only way that that really works here. He could never have been a Bateman esque character. He had to be more of a Norman Bates character because otherwise it just it doesn't work. It just doesn't work.

And sree de W's character would not, I think, believably have been able to fall in love with and be again taken taken in by because that's ultimately what it is. He's taken I mean, she's taken in by him because she doesn't is not able to tell what is his deal. And similarly to moondram Parai, she is kind of I don't know, like oblivious and innocent, yeah, naive, like overly naive. Yeah, yeah, it's I feel bad for I mean, she's such a good girl and yeah, like that she won't just jump into bed with them, and that she has to go through the whole courting process and all this. I'm like, okay, you know, and it almost feels like maybe he's gonna change ways before a little bat right, Yeah, like, oh, he'll be renewed by this very pure woman.

But no, no, that's that's not the case. Sorry, no, not not even remotely. I mean, so, what's really interesting about her in this movie versus something like Moondram parai Is In a lot of ways, she's playing a similar character, get a character who is not who does not have all of a piece, all the pieces of information to be able to make the correct decision. But I think I like this performance just as much as the Moondram parai Wan. At least this one doesn't have that laugh.

Yeah, oh yeah, No, I liked her better in this and I think it might have just been the laugh, But I don't think it was just that that. I mean, the laugh was pretty bad. Yeah, but I like that, you know, she's our investigator and eventually kind of starts to figure stuff out. But don't we get a shot of a hand in a like in a garden pretty early in that whole sequence that she doesn't react as strongly as I think that she should. A hand in the rose bush?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do like that that, like that little kind of conceit of where he's burying the bodies. I mean, oh yeah, I feel like it's again like it's very this this movie feels not Shakespearean, but it has that kind of grandiosity to it where it's like he's burying the bodies under the rose bush and it's and then he puts yeah, and then he puts a flower in his pocket and it's from the rose bushes of the dead women, Like, oh my god, it's so Goths. So I really appreciate that this movie blends the sensibilities of that with Indian cinema because this movie, we have a scene where Kamal Hassan, a murderer, is singing and dancing. Yes, it is a I guess it's a dream sequence. But in Maha Call, the movie that Heather and I watched, that's the Indian cinema version of Nightmare on Elm Street.

The monster doesn't sing in that movie, and I, Heather and I contended that the movie would have been better if they had used music to kind of give the monster some characterization. And here it's not really used that way, but it's used in a way that doesn't feel like, oh, I'm supposed to now get into this song that a feat. You know, a woman murderer is singing and dancing right right? If ye had the times that the songs come up the most seem to be those times where you're like, oh, he can change, she can be a different person, right, or when randomly the Godfather's music starts playing, or oarwash or I Feel Loved. Yeah, like I think I Feel Love might have been the most surprising thing.

Yeah. Well, and like I said before, I thought it was pretty effective. And you mentioned the whole thing where like everything cuts out when he's killing that waiter guy in the in the restroom as well. It's like I was surprised by how stylish that was. Yeah, and you know, I really like, I think, I really like the parts of this movie where it's Kamal Hassan's character kind of doing his thing, because again, it's just not something we've really seen and in cinema, you know, this movie would inspire so many other including a remake of this movie in nineteen eighty.

But yeah, there were a couples a remake by the same director. Yeah, but that isn't that isn't that Moondramparai. Yeah, I mean, but it's funny just like that he directed this one but in Hindi and I found that one out on archive dot org. But there's no subtitles, but I like, flip through it. It's still the Godfather on the Akka watch.

Oh man, that's amazing. Why change it? I mean, yeah, yeah really but this this movie also ushered in like Tamil films that had you know, psycho killers, you know, yeah, quote to quote David Byrne. But the weirdest thing, and this was something that you had mentioned to me and then I went and looked into, was that they were going to make a sequel to this movie and it was going to be the director's son, Manoj, making a sequel to this movie with Sri Devi n possibly comal us On as well, in like twenty fourteen, which is kind of nuts. Yeah.

I don't know how. I mean, you know, I've seen the Indian version of Silence of the Lambs. I know how you do this with serial killers and movies, but it feels wrong now. It feels like it'd be really to have this killer. I don't know, I'm I again, like I just I think this this kind of story was very of a time and of a place, and I think that this kind of like story maybe has been done to death at this point.

You know, the sexually frustrated sexual killer. Like again, not that it's not entertaining, because it is. Not that it hasn't worked, because it has, but it's just you're not going to say you've seen a one. You see them all, but in a lot of ways, kind of like Psycho. If you've seen Psycho, you've kind of seen this movie.

Yeah. Yeah, and that's but that's not a knock at this movie or at Psycho, but this kind of movie, this genre of film tends to follow very similar tropes and similar and it has a similar kind of direction that it's going, and this movie more or less does exactly that, including what, like you mentioned, replicating the ending of Psycho down to a we're going to explain what was going on with our with our hero quote unquote. But I think here what makes it interesting is everything that Indian cinema injects into it. The weird style of the like the shots that they're using, the music and then the fashion all feel and obviously the setting, but it all feels uniquely Indian cinema, and that really sets it apart in an interesting way.

Yeah. Yeah, I was fascinated by this, and I just kept thinking, what where they going to go? You know, like, how far can they take this? How far do they want to take this? And yeah, just seeing it from this perspective, like that, they have this thing where they're at a temple and she wants to buy a statue of a god and she picks one and he's just like, oh no, no, that's so cheap.

Let me buy this more expensive one. She's like, no, no, this one's fine. And then that god statue seems to inspire her later on when she's being chased around the house by the really creepy man servant and the horrible father figure and oh my god, that flashback sequence, especially when we get to his quote unquote mother and father the second set, the real creep father. Oh my god, that was that was something. Yeah, again, we don't get that in Psycho.

We don't And in a lot of these movies, we don't ever get those scenes. We hear about them in expository dialogue because again, Simon Oakland lays it all out for us right at the end of that move like it was actually really nice to see the scene and that feels oddly less conservative than I was expecting from this movie. So you don't see the father murder the mother, right Yeah. And it's again not presented in a gory or over the top, right. Yeah, it felt like they she just disappeared, and so did the lover.

Well, and I mean that's the other thing. I mean, Chittra, the woman that also worked at the Sorry shop with Serata, she just disappears. Yeah, just you know, one moment her brother's looking for and you're like, oh, she's gone, She's gone now I guess, like, yeah, it's like tgic, yeah, which I mean, I actually I appreciate that kind of storytelling device of just you know, get that is Henry portrait of the serial killer, Like somebody gets in the car with him and then the next scene he has their lighter in his pocket, like and it's like the less the less that's said about it, the better because whatever your thinking happened is probably way worse than what actually happened. Yeah, and and and that's an effective storytelling device that really works in this film's favor, because yeah, again I was surprised the scenes that we do get because there is a level of conservativism that I expect from Indian cinema, even if it is South India, which South Indian cinema seems to be a little bit more transgressive, which I appreciate, Like Moondram Parai felt very transgressive in a lot of it did.

Yeah, but again in a way that helps push cinema as a whole, especially Indian cinema, kind of in an interesting direction because Srii Devi, I mean again, she is a star of a magnitude that again most Westerners cannot comprehend. And again we have this conversation every time we do this show about how Indian actors are perceived in India and how they're venerated like gods. Sri Devi was a Indian actress who worked in all of the cinema of India, and when she would go on to work with people like Yashchopra, that was a big deal because she was going to work in Hindi film. But here is where she's showing the rest of cinema in India what she can do because it's her and Kamal Hassan in this Her and Kamal Hassan in Mundram Parai.

And then she starts starring in other length you know, India, in language films throughout India. But this is kind of the early on moments of her career and kind of setting herself up to be again later in her career seen as the first female superstar of Indian cinema, which is a big deal. Oh yeah, two one hundred and eighty three credits to her name. I think the only thing that made her stop working was that she passed away in twenty eighteen, which is a shame. Yeah, because in the Romantics documentary on Netflix, she is sorely missed because they talk a lot about her, a lot about her, and they talk a lot about her films in again more or less in the in the Yash Raj film kind of camp.

But they do mention about why she worked with him because again she was a massive star in South Indian cinema. So again that's why I go out of my way on the show to make sure it's clear to everybody Indian cinema is not just Bollywood. So her cutting her bones and cutting her teeth on South Indian cinema with someone like Kamal Hassan lows her to then go and work with other people in these other areas that again would continue to elevate her visibility. And you mentioned she passed away she accidentally drowned, which is like fucking terrible, because again, she is if you listen to the people in that documentary and you see her in this movie and at Moondra and Parai, she is she commands your attention when she's on screened, regardless of what she's doing.

She's fantastic. Yeah, she's pretty amazing. Yeah, I like her a lot. And again, you know, I tend to not focus on one kind of cinema when it comes to Indian cinema because I like to see South Indian and Bollywood, but I, for whatever reason, South Indian cinema is just it seems to resonate with me in a way that feels not more exciting, but it feels like the chances that they were taking resonate with me personally more because I mean, this film feels very again transgressive, like it's just so strange and it's such a interesting subject material that I don't think they were I don't think they were tackling this in Bollywood cinema in seventy eight. They were doing more like Omi Toob stuff, because that's when Ami Toob was kind of coming up in the industry and becoming the quote angry young man of Indian cinema to the point where he's the one man what I think they called him, like a one man cinema, cinema's production world like or something to that effect.

But I mean South Indian cinema just feels more kind of and not interesting, but willing to take some chances that that feel less in line with what you're expecting from Indian cinema of the time. Yeah, it feels it almost feels like that feeling you get when you watch the documentary about exploitation, where it's just like they were edgy and they were taking a lot of chances. It feels like these were the bad boys compared to like, oh, the guy is up. You know, in Bollywood they do their thing as Hollywood guys. We're going to do the real stuff right And and I appreciate that about these movies because again, you know, the last movie I talked about with Kamal Hassan was an Indian silent film, and it was like the only one, like there's not very many that exist outside of when they were originally made, right, but Kamal Hassan is in it, and Kamal Hassan is in this, and then Kamal Hassan is in Mundram Parai, a movie which its subject material is very unpalatable.

But again like by tackling these interesting subject materials and these topics that again I don't feel like we're being confronted in other parts of Indian cinema, it really elevates I think everybody because it just in my mind, it shows like we're willing to have more interesting conversations and talk about less mainstream ideas in a way that maybe brings attention to them. And again, like I don't know what attention they needed to bring to here other than you know, women are being taken advantage of by terrible men. But hey, it's an interesting story. At least it's an entertaining story. I don't know if there's any educational value to be gleaned from it, but it is entertaining and it is very much which not what I even when you because you mentioned this movie to me last time we recorded, and like it didn't sound like the kind of movie that would make sense in Indian cinema, right, yeah, that's why when I saw it, and I don't even remember what caught my eye, but I was just like Oh wow, this looks different.

Right, it's probably Kamal Hassan, because we had just watched that Kamal Hassan. It was probably, like you may also like on Amazon, he's probably trying to see what other ones of his are available for free on Prime, right. Well, I think the other thing that I did really appreciate about this movie is there's a scene where they use a lot of lighting and you mentioned the god statue at one point, and they do this interesting thing on the gods statue where the lighting is kind of oscillating and it's kind of showing one side of the face and the other side of the face. And there's a scene that it matches up with in the movie where you see Kamal Hassan with the red and the blue on his face kind of you know, half in half.

And it was like an interesting callback because again, like it's just the things that they do when they do them are interesting. I just think injecting those kind of stylistic choices into a slice of life story makes this a lot more interesting than then Moondram Parai then Moondram Para. I actually was much more entertained by this movie than I was by bood I think I was too. I definitely think I was. And yeah, like you're talking about stylistic stuff.

The moment in the disco with the woman that's dancing, and I kept thinking, is that the woman that was dead? Is this kind of like again like a flashback type of thing. But I really like the way that they don't show her face and it was so much just the body and the silhouettes as she was dancing, and that we just kept getting closer and closer to her as we've got him watching. And I was reminded too of like Jallo films, just because it might be because he had to put on black gloves before he killed somebody. But I was just like, yeah, there's some elements here of like a gallo.

Yeah, when he kills that the cop in the bathroom, he like. I loved that they take that shot and they show it of like him pulling his gloves out of his back pocket. I'm like, it's it's again, Like it's so good. And I haven't seen any other films from the director barn Theodraja, so I again I would I wanted to watch Red Rose. I came to the same realization that you did.

Which is I couldn't find an English subdiversion of it, which that feels like a really shitty way to not be able to find a movie and watch it. But again I get it. It's this is not the first time, the last time we've dealt with this. I mean, at least it's not like when we did China Gate, which was you know, you know, halfway impossible to find. So at least this movie exists somewhere.

But he's still working, still making movies as recently as a last year. So yeah, with the Thuruci Trumbalam, which is a romantic comedy. So and that's the thing, like I I honestly don't South Indian cinema is just it's its own thing. I'm not saying I don't know a lot about it, but it is so much its own thing that it's it's a whole nother world you have to immerse yourself into with their own stars and their own people that are venerated like Rajney Khan, like Chiruan GV, like Kamal Hassan, like Sree Devi. Those are all actors that are venerated because of their work in South Indian cinema.

Because I don't know how much Bollywood films Rajney Khan does. I would wager a guess it's less than the Tamil films that he did, because as far as I'm concerned, Rajne Kant is a South Indian superstar, not a Bollywood superstar. Right, Yes, yes, yes, I have So what else? Is there anything else you want to talk about? No, I'm just really glad that you agreed to do this one.

It was different, and yeah, I think I like that it went farther than Lundram Perai and I, like I said, I was willing to watch the Hindi remake. I really wanted to find subs but those were impossible to find. But yeah, I'm definitely interested in seeing more are of this filmmaker and Kamal Hassan and Shwri Devi's work. I mean, they did all three of them work together many times? Or was this just kind of a few things.

I mean again, Kamal Hassan was a was a really big South Indian star around the same time that srid Deb was, so it would probably stand the reason they worked together more. Again, I don't have the list in front of me, but I mean someone like Selman Khan and Katrina Keff have worked together like five times in a new recent memory. SRK and Kajol have worked together god knows how many times at this point. So I wouldn't be surprised if they worked together multiple times, because again, I mean, Moondram Parai is kind of what put Kamal Hassan on the map, and that was obviously opposite three Devi. So it would stand to reason that you know, I mean remember that they were in that sequel together or requill or remake of Sodma the wasda just Moondram Parai, the Hindi version of it.

Yeah, and they were both in that together, So it would probably stand a reason. They work together a lot. And they have great chemistry too. That's the thing. You know.

Kamal Hassan is an interesting actor. He has an interesting look, but he has an undeniable charisma about him. And you know, again, I hate to compare Indian actors to American actors because it feels unfair to the Indian actors. But if we were to compare the energy that Kamal Hassan has, what American actor would be a close analog in your opinion, because I kind of have my own thoughts. But I'm curious, now that you and I have seen two of these movies with Kamal Hassan, is there anyone that kind of has similar energy in American cinema.

I hate where my mind went, and I went to Stu Buscemi for some reason. I don't know if it's just the looks or what I was gonna say. Someone like a I mean, someone like not like a de Niro, but maybe like a Pacino. I can see that like a quiet like like that that whole quiet thing that Pacino does stare and kind of just used to do. Yeah, tell, I had to scream all the time.

Who Yeah, I know, I mean Pachino pre Dunkachino out. But that kind of like quiet intensity, because that's the thing I mean. Kamal Hasan, the characters that he's played in the two movies that you and I have seen him in and then the third movie that I saw with Richard, he is very understated. But his understatedness is what works because I not that I couldn't believe him being this big, bombastic person, but he doesn't need to be to be convincing and charismatic, and it totally works in moondramp Ride to the point where his relationship with Sree Debbie isn't as off putting as it would have been otherwise. In this movie, he is a lot more I think, relatable of a character because of how quiet the intensity is and he's not, you know, hey, Paul, He's not doing any of that nonsense like and in Pushpaka Vimana, again obviously dialogue free movie, but he has this quiet intensity there too, So I like him a lot.

He has a very different energy than some like Ami tab or SRK. I wonder if Kamal Hassan is kind of always the same in a lot of his movies, because the three movies I've seen all kind of feel very in the same vein of one another in terms of his performance. So I wonder if if we were to watch another Kamal Hassan movie that's not a three Debi film, that's maybe more of a contemporary film, it would be interesting to see kind of where his career progressed and where he would go as an actor, because again, having seen these three movies, they all feel like you could triple bill these movies, and I think by the end of it, you'd be like, I can see the through line here as to why you picked these three movies to watch together.

He's in one called tic Tick Tick that looks interesting, where he is a fashion photographer gets ubroiled in a series of brusely murderers. I mean, I'm game, I'm there. I'm there for any of this. You don't even have to pitch any of this that hard to you, just say it's a movie that looks interesting. I'm like, yeah, I'm here, Like, let's do it cool.

I'm always And that's the thing. I'm always game because I don't It's not that I don't know enough about Indian cinema, but I don't know as much as I want to know, and the only way to know more is to either do the research or watch the movies or both. And I'm not going to sit here and read all about these movies and not watch them because boys sitting and watching that Romantics documentary, it's like, oh, I've got like three hundred movies now I need to watch. Yeah, I heard it will add a lot to your watch list. Yeah yeah, and like some of the things I've seen already, So that's good.

But I'm really hoping again, I'm really hoping that somebody does. And again I would love to be involved in some way, and that's a fucking pie in the sky dream, but I would love if somebody would do an a Indian cinema documentary or docuseries the way all these genre films in American cinema get, you know, their massive five hours and then five hours and then five hours like that horror documentary series did, where it's like, just beat me over the head with it. But I want that for Indian cinema because again, the thing on Netflix is a tad myopic because it's about one production house and it's made by that production house. I'm not complaining, but again, like there's a lot more going on. I appreciate that.

That's very much the expectation with Indian cinema and yash Raj films kind of fulfills those expectations for the Indian viewers and for Westerners who are watching those movies, because that's where our expectation of what the movies are kind of came from. With the beautiful colors and the singing and the dancing and the kind of bombastic, over the top performances. That's like a Yash Raj film thing. So I would love to see one that has you know, Kamal Hassan and Rajni Kant and talks about South India or Collywood even again, Collywood's something I'm even less familiar and we I don't I'm not even sure I've seen a call so so I mean again, like there's so much and so many places to go. I mean they mentioned it in the Netflix documentary India makes seven to eight hundred films a year.

That's so like, oh, yeah, I don't know how many we make in the United States, but it's not that many. It can't be right, Like, No, I mean I don't know, even at the height of the studio system how many movies were making. Yeah, I don't feel like eight hundred is a number that was approachable. No, And I mean again, like you mentioned, I mean, go and look at a lot of these actors' credits they have. How much did you say, street DEBI had like three puts.

James Hong to shame, James Hong has one hundred film credits. Hoh, my beard pal right. Yeah again, like in American cinema, I totally get it, But in Indian cinema. It's like, cinema is life like it is the It is in a lot of ways, the lifeblood of the country. And when when one of your massive forms of entertainment is in the media is film to the point where it's an event, there are going to be a lot of movies.

And there are a lot of people in India, and a lot of people need to be entertained, and a lot of people have all kinds of beliefs and things that they want, and seven to eight hundred movies a year seems like enough to maybe satiate the need for entertainment. But yeah, I would love to see something more kind of holistically Indian cinema because again, as someone who is kind of throwing themselves into this head first, I even I have some blind spots within Indian cinema that I'm trying to kind of deal with, Like colliwould so so final, nice, so go ahead, go ahead. Not only would I like that, you know, five hours on this, five hours on that, but I would love it if like you were saying, we just like here's comedies, you know, and comedies could probably be subdivided into so many It's like right now, they're celebrating screwball comedies on TCM.

I mean, that's one brand of comedy, you know, Like, what kind of like weird subgenre comedies do they have in India? Like, so far, I haven't seen anything that is just straight comedy. Right, maybe maybe PK. But even that, I'm not sure, But PK maybe, But remember that scene in PK where that like people get blown up by tears. Remember that?

Yeah? Yeah, I actually think if I were to sit here and think, like, what's the closest I've seen to a comedy in Indian cinema, it's either p K or Three Idiots, But even Three Idiots felt more drama, d less like straight comedy. I haven't seen a straight comedy yet. Yeah, but that's a good transition into the next thing that you and I are talking about, because at some point in the near future, you're gonna hear Mike and I talk about Astaya Pieri Jesus Christ, I always fucked the second word up. Okay, we're gonna be talking about as Saya Saya Piravi, which features uh, one of my favorite Indian actors, and I know one that has definitely taken taken your heart by storm, the one and only superstar, But that ship's just stuck in my head permanently.

Welcome him and Triptich will never get old him singing to himself three times and look, I think for me like my harp will always belong to rajniy Khan because he was That was the first Indian cinema film I saw, was Entot and like look, I saw it on the flight to India. So I can't remove those two things from one another. And this movie that we're going to be watching the next time you and I do one of these episodes is also where the Little Superstar, I guess is what the meme is. But if you're if you were around in the late two thousands, you would have seen a clip of a little Indian dwarf actor, midget actor, diminutive actor dancing in front of ROSNEYKMF on the table. That's where this comes from.

So a lot of people have seen this clip, don't know what it's from. Myself included, So it was just weird to see the one hundred and eight minutes before it in the two hundred and forty minutes afterwards. Right, honest to god, boy, isn't that the truth? I mean, The funny thing is, like I saw this clip when I was in high school, and like it was for a band that I liked, and they put their music in the spot where the music from the clip was. I'm like, I can't unthink about that now because we're gonna be talking about that movie and it features again Rajney Kant, who he's just like looks like the nicest guy, just like the most lice.

Yeah, I'm I'm super excited to talk about that with you, Mike, And thank you so much for bringing Sigapuu Rojakal to the table because this was a fun, fun, strange, interesting movie. Yeah, let's keep it going, man, Let's get some more fun and strange stuff going. So, when you're not here talking Indian cinema with me and Mike, where could people find what you do? You can find well, obviously if you're listening to this show, you know where all the good stuff is at over a Weirdowaymedia dot com, where you can also find some shows that I work on, including the Projection Booth, or we can get a Projection Booth podcast dot com. But why go there when you're already at Weirdowaymedia dot com, He said, it.

I don't have to this show Bollywood Cinemaclub dot com, social media if you're interested. But that shit's a drag. We all know it. Let's just be honest. As for this show on iTunes like rate and review wherever you get it, but more than likely iTunes.

It helps us find our audience, and it helps our audience help other people find Indian cinema. And we're on the cusp. Folks, two years from now, maybe even a year from now, we're gonna have been ahead of this. I promise you that I can almost guarantee it because you can get in on the ground level. Yeah, and tell two friends and they'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends and we'll all be watching Indian cinema.

And we don't even have to have a pyramid scheme. No, it sounds like one. It's an upside down trying and as always, thank you Mike for joining me. It's a lot of fun. It's I mean, hey, you know, the two of us getting a podcast together.

I think either one of us are ever going to play so well. I always appreciate the invites, sir, and we'll catch you on the next episode.