Bleak, desolate cityscapes from Mahesh Narayanan’s Take Off perfectly encapsulates the strife that has ravaged the region. There is a raw authenticity to the disturbed faces and blood-stained hospital wards that makes viewers as uncomfortable as characters on screen. All of that is the handiwork of cinematographer Sanu John Varghese - the man behind the stunning visuals of Kamal Hassan’s Vishwaroopam .
Speaking over phone, the Mumbai-based lensman says: “When Mahesh narrated the script to me, I got a clear picture of how the movie should look and feel like. Although the scale is grand, it had to be done within a limited budget and that was a challenge.”
Background research played a major role in recreating the conflict zones seen in Take Off . Sanu and Mahesh went through media and documentary footage of war in Iraq to get a feel of the place as well as the mood onground. Ras Al-khaimah was selected as the main location for Take Off as it had a desert landscape similar to that of Iraq. Sanu says, “We watched a lot of ISIS videos to get the ambience of the camps. That helped a lot in giving that real feel to the visuals. War-torn cities and a rebel base in Mosul was recreated at the ghost town in Ras Al-Khaimah”.
A still from ‘Take Off’
Also the dull colour tone of used for the desert contrasts with the warm, damp, overcast visuals shot in Kerala. It was done that way, Sanu adds, to create a sense of longing for home.
Working with Mahesh
Sanu has high praise for Mahesh. Having worked mostly with debutants, he thinks Mahesh is the sharpest director he has worked with. They have known each other for a while, having worked together in Vishwaroopam and some commercials too.
“Since Mahesh is an experienced editor, we could maintain the tightness of the script. Take Off was shot for just one edit, which helped a lot in staying within the budget,” adds Sanu.
Although he became an independent cinematographer in 2003 with the Bollywood film Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon , Take Off is only his eighth feature film and his second in Malayalam after Shyamaprasad’s 2010 psychological drama Elektra .
It has been a long journey for the boy from Puthupally in Kottayam district.
Sanu graduated from College of Fine Arts in Thiruvananthapuram in 1993 and then did his masters in communication at Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, Hyderabad. He began his career in TV programme production. “Other than commercials, I shot some documentaries, MTV shows and a vehicle show, Road show, which is sort of like the Top Gear series. In the late 90s, I freelanced a lot. I shot some news documentaries for international media houses like CNN,” says Sanu.
From 1999 to 2001 he assisted ace cinematographer Ravi K Chandran in his ventures and eventually he landed his first film. But it didn’t turn out to be the break he needed. So he returned to advertising and worked full-time on commercials for the next few years.
In 2009, he got to do his second feature film - Farhan Akhtar-starrer Karthik Calling Karthik . It was a box-office success and there was no looking back after that.
Sanu, in fact, had got acquainted with Kamal Hassan much before Karthik Calling Karthik . Sanu was roped in for the big bugdet Tamil historical Marmayogi , written and to be directed by Kamal himself.
“It is a VFX heavy film and I had to learn a lot before starting. We worked on it for six months. But unfortunately it got shelved due to some funding issue,” Sanu adds. Soon, Kamal came calling again. This time for Vishwaroopam .
Learning from the best
Kamal, he quips, is the only film school that he went to. “It was a 125-day shoot and every day was a learning experience. The technical team that he assembled was some of the best in business and I got to study a lot of new techniques,” says Sanu. Kamal’s idea, he says, is to keep working on something until you get a product that you are sure you won’t regret about.
“Every script demands a different feel. It is through several rounds of discussion with the director and the writer that a cinematographers end up deciding the style of shots and colour tones,” he adds. He will soon be resuming the shoot of Vishwaroopam 2 , which has been a long time in the making.
Bollywood calling
Sanu associated with Bejoy Nambiar in David (2013) and Wazir (2016). David was shot by three different cinematographers. Sanu handled the camera-work of Neil Nithin Mukesh’s storyline. He will be doing his third with Bejoy this year; Solo , a bilingual, will have Dulquer Salmaan in the lead.
