The second coming

Thiagarajan Kumararaja exploded on the movie scene with Aaranya Kaandam, which was festooned with raves by the few who saw it. And then he disappeared. Now, there are signs of a resurrection.

Thiagarajan Kumararaja

T hiagarajan Kumararaja knows a lot of people who hated Aaranya Kaandam . He read all those reviews and laughed, because they presented interesting angles. But he knows it’s not a bad film, and that is all that matters. No one has criticised the film more than him. The last show he saw, he ripped the film apart. Line after line, he kept talking to the screen, giving snarky comebacks. He’s good at that, so when he writes a scene, when he composes a shot, he sees to it–as much as he can–that there is no possibility for a snarky comeback from a smart aleck in the audience. “If I can’t think up a snarky comeback, I don’t think most people can.”

The film’s failure is one of the great tragedies of modern Tamil cinema. Kumararaja has a reason, and no, it isn’t God or destiny. “I don’t see a reason for God’s existence. There are reasons why he should exist, but I don’t see a reason why he would.” He simply believes it was not marketed enough. Friends gave him other reasons. That it was slow. That the music did not guide the audience, it kept the film from reaching out. That there were no stars.

At least the last point isn’t going to be an issue with his second film. This second film, he’s hoping people will like it. It’s got Vijay Sethupathi, Samantha, Fahadh Faasil. It’s got a star behind the camera in PC Sreeram. And unlike

Aaranya Kaandam , it doesn’t take till interval point to really get going. The drama begins in the very first shot. Perhaps in the very first line: “

Dei rascal,

marandhittiyaa da yenna ?”

It’s a question we might ask of Kumararaja. He makes a film. He disappears. We hear he’s making something with Ajith. We hear he’s making a Hindi film. But this is what happened. Over two-and-a-half years, he wrote a mega-budget film. A new-ish genre that allowed him to play with screenplay structure. He showed it to actors who all said, “

Namma oorla work out aagadhu .”

Then, one day, he was watching The Circle , the 2000 Iranian film by Jafar Panahi, where the narrative is handed over from one character to the next – a number of independent-yet-interconnected stories adding up to a powerful whole. Kumararaja was astonished. If Panahi could make this film with so little money, with so many censorship restrictions, then there was no reason he couldn’t make a movie. Even if no actor came on board. Even if there was no cameraman. He’d shoot it himself. He wrote a detailed treatment note – four independent-yet-interconnected stories adding up to a whole.

Then, Kumararaja had an idea. He split his treatment note into four parts, and handed three of them to three of his friends. He had the details of the scenes in place. He just wanted their take on it, their version. None of these friends knew what was in the other three parts, or how everything came together.

You may have heard of these friends. One of them is named Nalan Kumarasamy. One of them goes by Mysskin. One of them is the Alibaba director, Neelan. One of them was supposed to be Anurag Kashyap, but Bombay Velvet had just crashed and he wasn’t feeling up to it, so Kumararaja fleshed out that part himself. Then, he rewrote what the others gave him, so that the film has the same flavour throughout – but no, he’s not telling which friend wrote which part. He doesn’t want the audience to come with preconceived notions. He’s producing the film. But is he rich enough to produce a film? It doesn’t matter, he says. He’s motivated enough to produce a film.

Oh, another thing about this new film. It’s his homage to Samsaram Adhu Minsaram . It’s not that Kumararaja is a big fan of Visu. But he is a big fan of that film. “It’s always about the work, not the person.”

Kumararaja isn’t against popular cinema. He’d like to do a big family-friendly commercial film – that is, to the extent that he can be commercial, with songs, with a big hero, with action sequences, maybe a heist movie. But Aaranya Kaandam wasn’t meant for family audiences, and this new film, which is about 20 per cent done, isn’t either. The content is adult content. It’s meant for mature people, and by that he means a person who appreciates things that the person himself may not agree with, instead of saying, “That is wrong. It cannot exist.” Kumararaja believes such an audience exists.

And then he talks about the Lumière brothers. They didn’t make their films – the first-ever commercial films – for an audience. The audience came to watch these films. So the film always happens first. The audience comes later. “We need to do something exciting for the audience to come and watch. So, if we make an exciting project, if we make an interesting film, they will come to see it. Would you eat the same food every day? No. I’m probably one of those people who’ll give you something different to eat.”