Two childhood friends meet in a desolate flat after two years. Abbas and Masood grew up together. Yet, one day, when Masood bumps into Abbas on the ECR and calls out to him, he moves on without recognising his best friend. Masood follows his friend to a vacant flat. Abbas has changed.
“Now, that’s all I can tell you,” says Mike Muthu, with a dramatic flourish and an apologetic look, as he discusses a rough sketch of his latest feature film, Theeviram , about extremism, war and revenge.
Muthu the theatreperson is different from Muthu the filmmaker. The former is passionate and wild. The latter is clued into how the industry works, and is measured while narrating his story. However, one thing has stayed the same — his ability to keep an audience hooked, even if it is just one person sitting in his living room for an interview.
In Theeviram , he handles the subject of extremism with honesty. “I ask a simple question. If you murder my children and parents and take away everything I love, what do you expect me to do? I will take revenge. And, that is the cause of extremism. The powerful nations bully the small ones and make victims out of them. Everybody is scared to talk about this.”
Mirroring angst
Not Muthu. He believes cinema and theatre are powerful political tools. One minute, he talks about the craft of theatre, the next, he slams corrupt politicians. Muthu says the idea for his film occurred after seeing the heart-wrenching image of a father in Palestine holding his two dead twin daughters. “He had dug them out of the rubble of his house. His eyes were full of tears. I asked myself, ‘If that had happened to you Mike, what would you have done?’”
He says his world became bigger after he shifted to cinema. “When I write for the stage, I am bound by it. In cinema, I can write scenes anywhere. However, each medium throws up exciting challenges.”
Writing for a play follows a different rhythm. “The angle is always wide. In films, I just want to show the audience what they want to see, which is the screenplay. On stage, you use dialogues and movement. You use totally different visualisation methods in both spaces.”
Mike, the director
With over 25 years of experience in the theatre scene, the man who founded Boardwalkers theatre company in the 90s, has given the city a string of iconic productions. The most recent was Romeo & Juliet, a faithful retelling of the Shakespearean love story. “I like dark themes. I like characters who have been tried and tested by Nature, other people and society. I like writing about tortured souls,” he says. But, it is difficult to associate this man with salt-and-pepper hair and a boyish twinkle in his eyes with anything dark.
Muthu says he has mood swings though. From throwing things at his actors in his college days, to being more patient with his cast, Muthu the director has aged like fine wine. Arrogance still gets on his nerves. “I hate it when actors throw attitude. Then, you have to squash their egos a bit. But, I understand the journey they go through.”
The last two decades have not been a smooth ride. “The pay cheque is a constant source of worry. Every year, you go through a vacuum, not knowing what to do next. It happens after a play is over. Your evenings and days are suddenly free. Boredom and fear set in. But that motivates you to do the next one.”
Cinema has always fascinated Muthu, but he says he was not ready to cater to the whims and fancies of bigwig producers and directors. In 2003, he made his first film called Girl , a self-funded work created on a shoestring budget. The film still lies with him, because he could not get a buyer at the price he wanted.
However, with Theeviram , Muthu is more canny about the ways of the industry. To cut the cost of filmmaking, he rehearsed with his actors for 30 days prior to shooting. “We would shoot at breakneck speed. However late we slept the previous day, we would roll sharp at 6 am. Our goal was to shoot four scenes a day.”
Will Muthu shift his loyalties completely to cinema? “I would love to hit that golden balance of one movie and one play a year. If I can make enough money on that and live on it, then, that is good.”
