A poet-nationalist, a revolutionary and a mathematicion. Bharathi, Periyar and Srinivasa Ramanujan, the three subjects on whom former IAS officer Gnana Rajasekaran has made biopics can’t be more diverse. But, the director says they have a shared history. They all were contemporaries for a brief while.
As one of the few filmmakers in the country who has opted to make biopics, Rajasekaran occupies a special place. But he says none of these movies was intentional. “In fact, both Bharathi and Periyar were the result of audience demand. When I was working in Kerala, a youth asked me why no movie has been made on Bharathiyar. That very week, I went to Coimbatore, picked up about 20 books on the poet, and re-read his life. Soon after the movie released, so many people told me Periyar was my next movie, they never asked me if it will be my next movie. So, I just had to do it,” he smiles. A movie on Ramanujan, the mathematician who died at 32, is timely, he says, because education has become big business now and we still don’t know how to treat geniuses. “We celebrate mediocrity.”
For each film, Rajasekaran picked a certain peg so that it resonates with the audience. For Bharathi , it was the fact that only 14 people turned up for the funeral of a man who roused patriotic fervour with his fiery verses. Likewise, the transformation of Ramasamy, who hailed from a zamindar family, to Periyar, who heralded social reform, was arresting. For Ramanujan , the focus is more on the plight of a genius rather than his theorems.
Though the movies are the result of extensive reading and fondness for the subject, Rajasekaran says that once he starts scripting, he writes from the perspective of an outsider. “Only then will the film appeal to all.”
The plight of a geniusRamanujan , he says, focusses on the defects of a society that reduces geniuses to ordinary people. “We get them married to ‘cure’ them, don’t allow them to be themselves, don’t tolerate their idiosyncrasies…the West allows them that. That’s why they shone there,” says Rajasekaran.
The three movies also called for extensive research. But, Ramanujan was the most difficult, he says. “We had enough written material on both Periyar and Bharathi. It was a challenge to recreate Ramanujan’s life.”
But, these three movies on “real heroes” have enriched the director. “It’s a sort of distilled wisdom. Reading about them is like a lesson for life.”
Casting is one area where Rajasekaran has scored, with Sayaji Shinde as Bharathi and Sathyaraj as Periyar. “They need to be credible. I need range, not just a good-looking actor. Bharathi was a poet, a philosopher, a politician, a freedom fighter and an intense man. I needed an actor who could portray that streak of madness. As for Periyar, Sathyaraj portrayed him so convincingly. In Abhinay Vaddi, I saw Ramanujan as I envisaged him,” he says.
There’s been a seven-year gap between every biopic. Bharathi released in 2000, Periyar in 2007 and Ramanujan in 2014. May be Ramanujan would have seen something special in that, like he did in that seemingly ordinary number 1729.
But Rajasekaran’s reason for the seven-year-gap is more pragmatic. It was because he was working two jobs, that of a civil servant and a filmmaker. “Now that I’ve retired, I’ve all the time in the world,” he says.
Is he moving on to yet another biopic? “I’m not sure what it will be. I will wait for an idea, a personality to inspire me. If the personality wins, there’ll be another biopic.”
