When Pa. Ranjith’s first film, Attakathi released in theatres, it was talked about mainly for breaking away from the basic convention of Tamil romantic-comedies: the boy and the girl hailed, not from the affluent areas of Chennai, but from the slums.
His second film Madras , which stars Karthi in the lead, he says, will focus on the politics inside the slums: how, despite the political class wooing them constantly, nothing has changed for the underprivileged in the last few decades. “The story traces the life of a young man living in the slums (from 1996 to 2014). It talks about how the poor are still looking for solutions to the same issues that have been plaguing them for a long time: poverty, powerlessness and so on. They are engaged by the parties to work for them during elections only to be forgotten afterwards. This is the crux of this film,” he says.
Ask him why he signed up Karthi, a popular actor, for the role of the youth living in the slum, Ranjith says the script was originally meant for newcomers. “But, when Karthi offered to do it, the whole profile of the film changed. And he has lived in Chennai for a long time and is familiar with the accent. With very few changes to the script, I could imagine him playing the role.”
And like his first film, Madras , he says, will seek to debunk myths about North Madras that have been constantly reinforced in films. “Our films have to take the blame for misinforming the public about the life of the poor. Almost always the villains will hail from Kasimedu and they would all speak Madras Tamil. Often they would be named ‘Kabali’ and so on. But, people living there do hard labour to get by. This is seldom reflected in our films. Through this film, I hope to document the life of slum dwellers: the way they bond with each other, their aspirations, their take on life itself and so on. Despite poverty, they lead a cheerful life and have managed to develop their own tradition and culture. I hope my film opens up space for thinking about the way we perceive the world around us,” he says.
Like Attakathi , Madras too has been shot mainly in the slums, some of them densely populated. But, he says, there was absolutely no problem. How was it possible? “They (people living in the neighbourhood) quickly understood that the film will document their life and culture. So, after a couple of days, they cooperated with us and left us alone to do our own thing.”