MASS DISTRACTION
The New Sunday Express
May 15, 2005

In conversation with filmmaker Shankar about the realities of all-encompassing commercial cinema – about violence, sensationalism, and, oh, a low-budget quickie he’s apparently shot with some actor named Vikram.


Picture courtesy: sify.com

It’s a typically clammy Sunday afternoon in Chennai, and I’m getting a bit sweatier listening to Shankar’s thought process behind the gruesome death of Vineet’s character in Gentleman. “In an early draft of the screenplay, he was supposed to come under a running train and get chopped to pieces. Then we felt that the railways had already been featured enough in the Chiku Buku Rayile song sequence, so we decided to have him fall under a bus.”

Of such cheery considerations is commercial Tamil cinema made, and Shankar continues, “But how do we show the pulpy mess he’s become, without actually showing any pulpy mess? That was the problem. Initially, I wanted the bus to come to a screeching halt. Then a small child goes near one of the tyres, and she screams. Then we see what she’s seeing – one of Vineet’s eyeballs stuck to the tyre. But this was too graphic, so we changed it to an overhead shot of someone running his hands down Vineet’s forehead; the face is covered with cotton, and at one point, the hands plunge in, because there’s nothing left there.” Nothing but – yes – a pulpy mess. Mission accomplished!

There’s a reason Shankar’s telling me this with all the relish of a schoolboy out in the sun who’s just fried his first ant using a magnifying glass. My question, a little earlier, was about why he’s never gotten around to doing Azhagiya Kuyile, the script he first wrote, rumoured to be a delicate little story along the lines of Azhagi, Autograph and Kaadhal. (He won’t reveal the outline just yet, so suffice it to say it’s probably something with no scope for unstoppably huge computer-generated snakes apparently of the species whoa constrictor.) Why, instead, has he become known more for sensation than sensitivity? Shankar simply shrugs, “No one wanted to produce such a heroine-based film. They all asked me to get hold of an action subject. So Gentleman happened, and that was a hit.”

A sensational hit – and so Shankar got slotted in a larger-than-life image that’s the directing world’s equivalent of Rajinikanth, with the masses expecting him to do everything but toss cigarettes into his mouth from an outstretched arm behind the camera. (Well, perhaps even that!) The director declares, in what could well be a dialogue from a Super Star blockbuster, “My films reach out to the masses and the classes, to children as well as elders, to rich men and to rickshaw-wallahs, to audiences not only in Tamil Nadu but also in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. (He adds that Mudhalvan was a bigger hit in its Telugu-dubbed version than in Tamil.) So I’m compelled to make movies that everyone likes. Maybe if the situation in Tamil cinema changes, maybe if different kinds of subjects begin to succeed, maybe then I’ll change tracks.”

“Also, we usually do best what comes well to us, what we’re interested in. Your product is essentially you – my wishes, my dreams become my films. I go to the movies to go to another world, one that’s larger than life, so my movies are that way too.” But does larger-than-life necessarily mean lewder-than-life? The women being stripped naked by the British in Indian, Nagma’s character being subjected to a virginity test in Kaadhalan, the thaali (mangalsutra) dripping with blood in Mudhalvan, the bordering-on-explicit jail-toilet sequences in Boys – where does he draw the line between sensationalism and what’s necessary to tell his story?

And Shankar finally gets back to the train – bus? – of thought he was on while describing Vineet’s unfortunate accident in Gentleman. “In Mudhalvan, the mother was blown to bits by a bomb. So the thaali indicated how little of her remained. Then in Kaadhalan, I wanted to show how Nagma’s father cared more about prestige than his daughter’s feelings, and this humiliation is what makes her go to her lover. See, society is a mixture of good and bad. There are refined people that go to the movies; there are crude people that go to the movies. So if (commercial) cinema truly reflects society, there’s bound to be a bit of everything. Besides, I don’t show half as much gore as mainstream Hollywood films. If you’re able to digest Hannibal – where Anthony Hopkins drugs a victim, slices open his skull, and feeds him pieces of brain – why do you flinch about a little blood on a thaali?”

You have to admit he’s got a point there. “Even in Anniyan (dubbed in Telugu as Aparichitudu), I have stopped myself in certain places, especially when it comes to the violence” Shankar reveals, diverting the course of the conversation to the movie that’s all but caused a low-pressure trough over the Bay of Bengal, considering the number of people holding their breath about its release. So what’s it about?

For someone who, just now, so eloquently held forth about dismembered eyeballs and brain dinners, the director suddenly turns a tad coy. “After seeing the film,” he says, “everyone will feel that I’ve put on screen what’s in their minds about the state of the country today. It has social themes, but it’s entertaining too. It’s a real-life fiction thriller.” Uh, okay, but is there anything he can add? Is, for instance, Anniyan a retreat to the Gentleman-Indian-Mudhalvan kind of big-message-in-a-big-movie – especially after the rap on the knuckles delivered to the naughty Boys, the widespread protests surrounding which made it seem that the entire population of Tamil Nadu was a result of virgin births, never having heard of a three-letter word beginning with S and ending with X?

“No,” sighs Shankar, “Anniyan was actually conceived before the release of Boys. Rahman was abroad, so the background score was still not complete and I had a lot of time on my hands. That’s when I got an idea and called Vikram, who was equally enthusiastic about the subject.” And now, close to release, that enthusiasm is apparently still there, as he declares, “The Tamil market is good now after Chandramukhi, and after Anniyan, I expect it will become even better. I am completely satisfied with the way it’s shaped up, and I’m excited about its release.” So are we, and hopefully all the hype will translate into a movie that will have our, um, eyeballs glued to the screen.