Arvind Swami is often thought of as a reluctant actor. And you can see why. Actors — today, stars — who debuted around the same time as he did, have gone on to do almost thrice as many films as he’s done. When I point out that he’s acted in just 20 films, he seems a bit surprised. “Wow, 20 films, really?”
He also wants to correct a few notions. “I’m an accidental actor, not a reluctant one.” His rather small body of work is on account of how easily he used to “burn out” and his interest in business — something that, if Mani Ratnam had his way, wouldn’t have blossomed. “I was planning to do an MBA after finishing Bombay, but he advised me against it.” But Arvind went ahead and did it anyway.
Considering that 25 per cent of his films have been with Mani Ratnam, a director not exactly known for making ‘commercial’ films, his decision to play villain in Thani Oruvan is rather surprising. Director M. Raja, after all, is at the other end of the spectrum.
But Arvind Swami denies that he’s ever been influenced by such considerations. “When I did Roja, Mani Ratnam was famous for films such as Nayagan and Agni Natchathiram — not offbeat films at all.” And then, as an example, he brings up a film called Pudhayal he did in 1997. I ask him if that’s the film in which his wardrobe seemed influenced by actor Ramarajan’s rainbow-themed clothes. He smiles in response. “Doing it was my way of being free. It was a character, after all. Not me.”
The most important reason for his agreeing to play the role of Siddharth Abhimanyu in Thani Oruvan is the freedom he gets out of playing a villain; a liberty heroes don’t quite have, on account of having to remain consistently noble and consequently predictable. It also helped that the film, unlike many others, isn’t apologetic for its villain. “I see so many films with backstories for the bad guy to show why he became evil. Thani Oruvan doesn’t do that.” Raja, in fact, confessed to him that Siddharth was his favourite character in the film. Arvind has tried to portray him as a likeable bad guy. Like ‘Assault’ Sethu in Jigarthanda, I offer. “I didn’t think Sethu was really a villain in the film. You didn’t quite come out convinced he was evil. But in Thani Oruvan, you’ll have no such doubts about Siddharth.”
He mentions that he was given a lot of freedom in voicing his disagreements, and that his doing so always led to constructive discussions with the director. These, however, were far removed from the kind of questions he asked Mani Ratnam during Roja and Bombay. “I’d ask him all sorts of questions — like ‘Why must I walk from the left side of the camera?’ Those questions were born out of ignorance, of course. These were an attempt to ensure that the story respected the intelligence of both the hero and the villain. Raja and I wanted Siddharth to be cold, and consistently so.”
The topic inevitably veers towards his last film, Kadal. I politely point out that the film didn’t exactly do well. He tears into that veil of diplomacy and says, “It didn’t do well at all. But that was always going to be a risk when making a film that deviates from the usual. I call such films deviants. Regardless of their reception, they usually get respected.” But surely, he wouldn’t call Thani Oruvan a ‘deviant’? “Well, in a way, it actually is. It’s not a formula film, and breaks the hero-villain paradigm. It’s not a wild deviant, but within commercial boundaries, it is.”