Judging by Iraivi ’s trailer, your fixation with dark humour and Tarantino’s style continues…
I would say Jigarthanda had a lot of Tarantino in it but it ends there. Iraivi is inspired more from directors like Balu Mahendra, Mahendran and K. Balachander.
Is that why people are calling Iraivi a ‘feminist film’?
Iraivi is about women, men and their priorities. It talks about women’s freedom, how men look at it and how women use it. It’s neither preachy nor is it about women’s empowerment. The film is based on the women we see around us and how certain things are no different, no matter what class or background they belong to.
That seems worlds apart from Jigarthanda … Has filmmaking become easier for you?
Filmmaking is never easy as long as you continue learning from the process. You’re infusing each scene with all that you’ve learnt from your earlier films. If I worried about lighting in Pizza , now I worry about smaller details... like costumes for instance.
Coming off two hits, were you under pressure to make a bigger film, at least in terms of budget?
I think you can expect a hike in your salary, but that’s it. I would have been just as comfortable making a smaller film after Jigarthanda .
You’ve retained many of your crew members from earlier films.
We continue to have as much fun while shooting as we did during our short film days. In fact, we have more fun now because Vijay (Sethupathi), Bobby and I aren’t under as much pressure to get established. But that doesn’t mean I’m against working with new guys. The cinematographers have been different in each film, and this has helped me get a new perspective…
I’ve heard you’re not a great narrator. Is that one of the reasons why you go back to your regulars?
That’s true to some extent. Even the smallest change in a listener’s expression affects me during narration.
I wish I had to just read out the screenplay. But people here enjoy sitting in a group and listening to narrations. Vijay Sethupathi and Bobby read Iraivi and agreed to do it. I had to narrate it to S. J. Suryah though (laughs).
Do you think you did well?
I don’t think I narrated all too well. It was only after 20 days of shooting that he came to me and said, ‘I think your story is good.’ I started laughing because I wondered why he’d said yes in the first place. I don’t think he’d gotten the point of the film until then.
Could it also be because the film’s not just driven by its story?
Yes. Beyond the script, it’s a film that’s driven by performances. Good actors can make a huge difference to a scene that might sound or read flat. So, I guess S. J. Suryah needed to see it on the monitor to see what I had meant.
He is hardly an actor one’d expect to see in a Karthik Subbaraj film.
I always liked him both as an actor and as a director, though I didn’t want him to repeat his performances from New or Anbe Aaruyire. I have this habit of writing characters with an actor in mind, even if I know I can’t cast them. For instance, Assault Sethu was written with Rajini as a reference, just like I’d imagined S. J. Suryah playing one of the three men in Iraivi. I’m just lucky to have got all three actors I’d written the film for.
Is it challenging to manage that kind of acting talent in each scene?
It could easily have been, but it didn’t because there was no ego. There are many scenes where not all of them have dialogues. In fact, Vijay Sethupathi once asked me to remove his line because he felt that scene was meant for the other two. These actors are so talented that they can perform even without dialogues.
Were there things you approached differently based on Jigarthanda ’s response?
A lot of people told me how Jigarthanda hadn’t reached them. I keep getting messages from people who’re still discovering it. I hope Iraivi doesn’t have those issues. People have told me how they enjoyed the comedy scenes in Jigarthanda , even if they disliked the violence in the first half. But there have been just as many people telling me the opposite. It’s mysterious how the film generated such opposing reactions. But there are also those who’ve assimilated the film entirely… right down to decoding the little metaphors and hidden layers.
That’s the magic of cinema, no?
But haven’t these reactions contributed to you being labelled an ‘A-centre’ director?
That’s a tag I’ve never understood. I accept that people, especially in interior Tamil Nadu, are not going to watch Jigarthanda on the first day. It’s not an Ajith or Vijay film, but shouldn’t we give those audiences more time?
We get an opening in Chennai, Madurai and Tiruchy because they like the kind of films we make. We also attract people who watch a variety of films. But I haven’t been able to attract people who watch a film only on the opening day. By the time they read reviews or people tell them a film’s good, the theatres have changed the film. That’s not my problem… that’s a problem with the system.
