It’s a week before the release of Anegan. K.V. Anand is busy in A.R. Rahman’s AM Studios mixing Auro sound to convert 5.1 format into 11.1. For a national award-winning cinematographer-turned-director of superhits such as Ayan and Ko and now of the much-awaited Dhanush-starrer, the man is charmingly unassuming, even as he meanders from one topic to another (a quality he shares with his films).
“Anegan is a romantic thriller that I did to quench my jealousy of others who are more romantic than I am,” he laughs. And why does he say that? “I’m basically a shy person and struggle to speak to women. I have fallen in love only once and that was with my wife. Even now, in my 40s, I think of how a girl approached me 20 years ago. I wonder if there was something there, perhaps she was interested in me?”
And does Dhanush fit his idea of a romantic hero? Anand says that Dhanush is a 360-degree actor; someone who is not conscious of the camera, yet gives the perfect shot no matter where he’s in the frame. “The only other actor who can manage this is Mohanlal. We have actors who can act in love scenes, but Dhanush is just wonderful when love fails. He’s a very realistic actor.” After turning director, Anand has gone back to his camera just once. And that was to shoot Shankar’s Sivaji. But that decision was hardly his, he says. “I had directed Kana Kandaen and was taking a break from cinematography to write Ayan . When Shankar asked me to work on Sivaji with Rajini sir, I said I was busy writing and asked to be excused. When my mother, wife and daughters found out, they protested vehemently. In fact, my wife stopped talking to me for days, and my mother wanted me to take up cinematography again since she thought being a director was making me different with all the stress. So it’s the women in my life who made me do Sivaji ,” he says.
But, for Anand, being a director motivates him to be disciplined. “I’m a lazy guy. My room is always a mess, scattered with cameras, books, pen drives and whatnot. My mom tells me ‘ cinemannu onnu illena, nee edhukkum layakille’ (if it wasn’t for cinema, you wouldn’t be fit for anything).” But I always manage to finish my films within the budget and deadline. The secret lies in pre-production and having a locked script. Even as a cameraman, I’ve only chosen directors who work with a bound script.”
This emphasis on story stems from his stint as a photojournalist for magazines such as India Today, The Illustrated Weekly of India and Kalki . “The pictures you take could be the cover or a tiny two-column buried inside. But as you understand the story, you learn to take pictures that attract readers to it. I still work by this principle in movies — the visuals are for the story, not the other way round.” Some of his journalistic experiences have made their way into his films. “For instance, in Ko , the scene where Jeeva replaces the memory card is inspired by an incident where an MLA’s henchmen chased me after I took pictures of his house encroaching a state highway. Ko, in fact, had several inspirations from my life — of course, I never had two women fight over me,” he laughs.
It is this edge with reality that he’s afraid he might lose. He admits he finds much lesser time to read but he manages to travel to remote villages around the country, interacting with people and understanding them. “When you make your first film as a director in your 30s, you’re grounded. Then when you become big, all you do is travel by car from home to studio and the only people you talk to are your wife and assistants — not even your kids. When you sit down to write a film, you realise all you’ve experienced in these 10 to 20 years are these trips in your fancy car.”
Anand swears by commercial cinema and wouldn’t ever want to make any other kind of film. The challenge, as he sees it, is not in making a radically experimental film that caters to a small audience, but to make a film that caters to all, but bringing something fresh. “I studied advertising in Loyola and one thing I was taught early is to know your customer. My customers are 13 to 35, and my films have to work across demographics, as my budgets exceed Rs. 20 crore. So you may find comedy scenes that are silly, but they will evoke laughter in someone your age in another place. We shot a realistic heart transplant scene in Maattrraan, which was praised by several doctors, but the general audience may have found it too technical. It’s a tightrope walk really, something director Shankar has mastered. I always work on his films as an assistant director more than just as cameraman. There is a lot to learn from him.”
But in his commercial cinema, he says, his idea of heroism is a bit more subtle. His heroes do not jump from the third storey — just from the first or second — and he admits he is weak in writing punch lines or shooting high-speed slow-mo shots of heroes delivering them. “I believe in spending money but it has to show. I would opt for hundreds of people as extras for a particular scene rather than have my technicians flown in first class. Our luxuries are secondary when it’s cinema that matters,” he says, adding with a smile, “My technicians call me romba selavu panra kanjan (an extravagant miser).”
