The versatile actor also said that I tried to combine two ancient art forms -Onvillu and Theyyam and bring it into a movie. Even Karnataka’s Yakshagana was born out of this ancient temple dance (Theyyam). The face painting style that you see in the posters is over a thousand years old… in the temples, Theyyam artistes still do it with natural colours and they don’t even use a brush,” says Kamal Haasan, explaining the inspiration behind his look in the film. “For me, this controversy is just an uniformed mind’s contrived imagination,” he adds.
Interestingly , the film is the story of a South Indian `superstar’, Manoranjan. “But I am not playing myself,” admits Kamal, saying that the character has some shades of grey . “It’s another way of looking at a villain.It is a family drama, but at the same time it also has got a bit of the magical folklore element of a Vittalacharya film,” he says, adding, “I even learnt Theyyam for this film.”