Kamal Haasan - Acclaim and Criticism

Acclaim and Criticism

Kamal Haasan, widely respected and admired in the Indian film industry, is often praised as someone who would have won many Oscars, if he had been born outside India. His mentor K. Balachandar, while agreeing with such sentiment, says in that case Kamal would not have been able to have a diverse acting career and the adulation he has now. Mani Ratnam, who directed Kamal in Nayagan, has claimed he has missed working with Kamal. Veteran Tamil actor Nagesh rated Kamal Haasan as the best actor he had seen. Kamal Haasan's contributions to films have been lavishly praised by his peers in the Indian film industry like Sridevi, Amitabh Bachan, Shahrukh Khan and Aamir Khan. Younger actors Surya, Madhavan and ace filmmakers Bala, Ameer and Gautham Menon consider Kamal Haasan as their inspiration. His list of admirers go beyond cinema. M. F. Husain has claimed, he found Kamal Haasan as the most exciting Indian film-maker/actor.

Director Quentin Tarantino has admitted that the celebrated animation-action sequence in his 2003 film Kill Bill was inspired from the use of 2D animated sequences in his film Aalavandhan. The recent addition to list of admirers is Hollywood filmmaker, Barrie M Osburne, who termed Kamal Haasan's knowledge about literature, history and films: "encyclopedic".

Kamal Haasan has been accused of reusing story lines, plot elements from Western films without crediting them and also for using sexually explicit scenes and themes. He has also been accused of elitism, of offending religious sentiments and of being superficial about the social issues he depicts in his films. Other criticisms of Kamal Haasan include complaints about his obsession with needless perfection, which has caused some of his films to overshoot their budgets.