A Hindi idea that became a Tamil film
News of Nana Patekar’s passing has set Hindi film audiences revisiting a career defined by intensity. One chapter sits outside the familiar Bollywood archive: Bommalattam, the 2008 Tamil film directed by Bharathiraja, in which Patekar played a film director inside a film-within-a-film.
Bharathiraja told The Hindu at the time that the project was first imagined in Hindi. He approached Patekar for the lead, with Himesh Reshammiya attached to handle the music, before the makers decided to do a Tamil version as well. The result placed a Hindi actor at the centre of a Tamil auteur’s twist-driven story.
The shoot and the performance
Bommalattam, released on December 12, 2008, also featured Rukmini Vijayakumar, Arjun Sarja and Kajal Agarwal. Bharathiraja was candid that he and Patekar had their arguments, but praised his dedication; the director said Patekar spoke his dialogues in Tamil, which made the unit happy. Arjun often smoothed things over when tempers rose.
The set also produced a warm cross-language exchange. Patekar did not follow a Tamil joke from comedian Vivekh until it was translated into English, then laughed and said he had thought Tamil cinema had the best technicians but now found it had the best comedians too. The Hindu’s review of the film called Patekar a “film connoisseur’s delight”, noting his natural, underplayed expressions and excellent body language.
Bommalattam at a glance
- Director: Bharathiraja, known for 16 Vayathinile and Sigappu Rojakkal
- Form: a film-within-a-film with a twist ending
- Release: December 12, 2008
- Key cast: Patekar, Rukmini Vijayakumar, Arjun Sarja, Kajal Agarwal, Vivekh
Why it still matters
Bommalattam now reads as an early marker of the porous borders Hindi cinema would later embrace. Long before pan-India casting became a release strategy, Patekar walking into a Bharathiraja set and delivering lines in Tamil was an exception, not a trend. It reframes his career beyond the familiar roles: the work also prefigures his 2018 Tamil appearance in Rajinikanth’s Kaala, directed by Pa Ranjith, which Tamil audiences may remember more readily.
Source: The Hindu
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