Pushpaka Vimana

The best-known feature of Singeetam Srinivasa Rao's 1987 film is that it contains not one line of dialogue. Kamal Haasan plays an unemployed man who takes over the identity of a rich drunk in a hotel room and begins living his life. He also ties the man up and hides him, so the comedy is built on a crime from the start. Silence here is not a nostalgic gesture but the narrative method itself. The director has to construct the plot entirely out of behaviour, objects and glances, and that gave the film a circulation unbounded by language. Kamal Haasan's physical performance carries the whole load; Amala Akkineni plays opposite him. The film does not let its humour sit comfortably. Poverty is not the joke, it is the reason for the theft of identity. As it goes on the comedy darkens and arrives somewhere genuinely uneasy. Who it's for: viewers curious about the silent comedy tradition and about Kamal Haasan as a performer. Who it's not for: anyone looking only for light comedy; the final section changes the tone completely.