Throwback: How Kamal Haasan’s Aalavandhan Inspired Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill

Throwback: How Kamal Haasan’s Aalavandhan Inspired Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (PC. Kamal Haasan Instagram, Quentin Tarantino Pinkvilla)

Kamal Haasan is undoubtedly one of the biggest pioneers of Indian cinema and has influenced countless filmmakers like Lokesh Kanagaraj, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Karthik Narain, and many more.

But Kamal Haasan’s influence does not stop at the country’s borders. A little-known fact is that Kamal Haasan indirectly inspired Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino in his 2003 film Kill Bill as well.

Quentin Tarantino confirms to Anurag Kashyap that Kill Bill is inspired by Aalavandhan

Anurag Kashyap, apart from being one of the biggest directors in the country, is also a well-known film buff. He knew that the animated manga sequence in Kill Bill that the Pulp Fiction director used to showcase violence was inspired by an Indian film.

The director had the chance to meet Tarantino at the Venice Film Festival once, and took the opportunity to ask him about the sequence. Anurag Kashyap then revealed that the director was excited by his question, and he responded by saying

“Yes, I saw this Hindi movie about a serial killer that shows violence in cartoon form.”

Although Tarantino did not explicitly name the film, Kashyap managed to connect the dots and said that there was only one Indian film that used an animated sequence to show violence that was released before Kill Bill, and that was Kamal Haasan’s 2001 film Alavandhan.

Speaking about this in a later interview, Kamal Haasan stated that he hoped that critics, who had criticized the film harshly, would be kinder to his future experiments after it was endorsed by a world-famous film director like Quentin Tarantino.

More about Alavandhan

Aalavandhan is a 2001 psychological action film directed by Suresh Krisna and written by Kamal Haasan himself. The film features actor Vikram in a dual role and also has Manisha Koirala, Raveena Tandon, Anu Haasan, Milind Junaji, Sarath Babu and many others in prominent roles.

The film tells the story of a pair of twins, played by Kamal Hassan, and how one of them suffers from schizophrenia and turns into a psychopath due to childhood trauma. The film was shot simultaneously in Hindi also titled Abhay. The film’s music is composed by the famous trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. Although the film received mixed reviews at the time of its release, it has gained huge popularity over the years and is considered one of the best films of Kamal Haasan’s career.