▬○▬◙▬○▬ VADA CHENNAI ○▬◙▬○▬ Dhanush - Samantha Ruth Prabhu - Vetrimaran!!

https://www.thehindu.com/entertainm...hennai/article25204562.ece?platform=hootsuite

 

Vetri Maaran: Grit, guts and Vada Chennai
His movies go where most fear to tread, and he is opening up the festival market for Tamil cinema. Why Vetri Maaran is the filmmaker to watch, despite being just four films old

On Wednesday, walking back to his car after the press meet for his upcoming feature, Vada Chennai, director Vetri Maaran is often stopped by fans asking him for “one selfie Sir, please”. He acquiesces, stopping mid-step to look up at yet another phone camera, before getting into his BMW sedan. I quickly scramble in, intent on finishing my interview, as he drives himself to another promotional event in Chennai.

“Tricky,” he says, weaving his way through the streets of Saligramam, when I ask him how he feels about the film which is releasing next week. “It could go either way. It might not be accepted — it’s not about a person or a story,” he shares, about the multi-generational gangster drama that features Dhanush, Aishwarya Rajesh and Andrea Jeremiah. “There’s actually no story in it. Instead, you will find people, situations, and more situations.”

The 43-year-old likens his present frame of mind to how he felt before the release of his 2007 début, Polladhavan, which, like his upcoming film, is also set in North Chennai. The difference, however, is that today he is an ‘award’ director. His most recent feature, Visaranai (2016) premièred at the Venice Film Festival, represented India at the Academy Awards, and won three National Awards the same year. His is also an oft-mentioned name when aspiring filmmakers are asked to list their influences.

Forging his way
“Vetri Maaran has done something very important — he is a brilliant filmmaker who has opened up the festival market for Tamil films,” explains film critic Baradwaj Rangan. “Mani Ratnam’s films were invited for international premières, whereas Vetri Maaran took his own films abroad. When Visaranaiwent to the Oscars, he actually travelled to Los Angeles, did the rounds there, and came back with a lot of learning.”

Taapsee Pannu, who made her début as an actor eight years ago in his second feature, Aadukalam, says the filmmaker is a “spontaneous director who treats the real location as a character”. With more than 25 films to her credit and a critics’ favourite for her strong roles, she says lessons on his sets from back then still hold good. “He did not let me settle for a prompter, even when the lines were written on the spot and I hadn’t even heard Tamil before that film. Till date, I don’t take the easy way out.” Calling him “an intelligent and compassionate director and the smartest man” in Tamil cinema, the Pink and Manmarziyaan star laughingly adds that she is holding him to his promise — “to get me a National Award soon, since Aadukalam won six of them and I was left out”.

Ever the meticulous mind
It was with Aadukalam that the director entered the film festival circuit, winning the admiration of other directors such as Anurag Kashyap, the man who showed him the inner workings of the festival world (see box). This week, Vada Chennai had its world première at the Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival in China. The director is, however, very clear that he does not make films for festivals, but for “the people whose land I make the films in. Vada Chennai is a proper mainstream film, told in a sensible way,” he says.

In a Venn diagram with two circles, each representing mainstream and parallel cinema, the director firmly occupies the overlapping space. “He is bold, and he changed the meaning of dark cinema in the Tamil industry,” explains industry analyst Sreedhar Pillai.

He is also an anomaly. The director’s work is remarkably unprolific: he has only directed four films. Vada Chennai — based on a story that was recounted to him 15 years ago — has been in the making for over a decade. He spends months, if not years, in the locales that his films are set in, “to understand the basics” of the place. For his second feature, Aadukalam (2011), he spent months in Madurai for research.

He is meticulous in his work, edits on set, and is not perturbed by the past. “The film I do at the moment is the most important to me,” he explains. “It becomes my reason for existence until I finish it. After, I find something else to keep me going.”

Between projects, he dedicates his attention to his self-admittedly small world: his home, family and animals (he has dogs, a recently-acquired cat, cockatoos, and enjoys pigeon-racing). He is also setting up a farm in Kancheepuram district because he is interested in holistic living and permaculture concepts. “That’s how I am looking at life right now,” he says. “Permaculture is a way of life — either you live it or leave it.”

Shades of grey
At first glance, Vetri Maaran’s cinematic style does not reflect this inner peace he is pursuing. His films are gritty, he does not shirk from portraying violence, and he shows how seemingly innocuous lives can be upended thanks to reasons beyond their control. In Polladhavan, the young protagonist’s childish obsession with motorbikes leads to a tragic confrontation with local gang lords. This sensibility shines most strongly in Visaranai. Based on an autobiographical novel titled Lock Up, it chronicles the plight of four men who are wrongfully implicated in a crime. By the end of the film, the viewer is left reeling at the injustice on display, and that is what the director wants.

“I represent the common man,” he explains. “My films are a personal reflection on the impact that the state — the system and the world — has on me. I don’t find anything black and white; I find grey in every person, and that is what excites me.”

Paying it forward
Even though he was drawn to filmmaking by Mani Ratnam’s work, it was Balu Mahendra, considered an auteur of Tamil cinema, who continues to influence him. “Every day, when I am on set or editing, I feel his presence behind me, saying ‘this is not good, this is not right’,” he shares.

When he went to work as an assistant to Mahendra in the late 90s, Vetri Maaran was, in his own words, “one of those Loyalites (referring to his alma mater Loyola College, where he studied English literature) who had the feeling that ‘nobody knows better than me’.” His new boss quickly stripped him of any such notions, becoming a mentor “and a guru, in the most literal sense of the word”.

The filmmaker shies from labelling his own relationships as mentorship, but he is credited with recognising and honing talent, both as a director and producer. Aishwarya Rajesh — whose portrayal of an overworked, weary mother of two kids in Manikandan’s 2014 film Kaaka Muttai won her much acclaim — credits Vetri Maaran and Dhanush (the film’s producers) with “giving me a big break”. The film, about two slum-dwelling brothers in pursuit of their aspirational meal, pizza, premièred to positive reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival, eventually bagging two National Awards of its own.

Thinking ahead
He has a long-established working relationship with Dhanush, who has not only acted in three of his four films, but also worked with him as producer and co-producer under the actor’s production house, Wunderbar Films. This has earned comparisons to other prominent director-actor duos in Tamil cinema, such as Aravind Swamy and Mani Ratnam, Sivaji Ganesan and Beem Singh, and MGR and Neelakandan.

At the Vada Chennai press meet, when he is asked why he collaborates frequently with Vetri Maaran, the actor responds: “The more apt question to ask would be, why wouldn’t we work together? It’s a very natural collaboration”. For his part, the director appreciates the trust Dhanush places in him. “It has been 29 months since I started the shoot of Vada Chennai, and just when the film was about to be over, I introduced a character (played by director Ameer Sultan), who went on to occupy a quarter of the screen time. As producer, Dhanush never had any issues. He paid me my salary for the film years ago, and never asked me when it would be ready.”

After Visaranai, which was shot on a budget of less than ₹3 crore, Vada Chennai’s price tag (which he places at between ₹45-₹50 crore) seems hefty. “The budget doesn’t determine the film; it’s the other way around,” he says. Soon after the film commenced shooting, he realised the story could not be contained within a single feature-length film. “Not even two films,” laughs Dhanush. Which is why Vada Chennai will be the first in a trilogy.

Between parts one and two, Vetri Maaran will commence work on another feature, based on a novel, which will also feature Dhanush in the lead. The prequel to Vada Chennai will also be released as a web series by July next year. “This is the golden era of screenwriters,” he says, about the advent of streaming platforms. “You can actually write 2,000 pages of a script, you can write like a Tolstoy or a Dostoevsky or a Dickens. The world is filled with content, and yet the world wants more.”

 

When Anurag intervened

• With the première of Vada Chennai in China, Vetri Maaran continues to explore new markets for Tamil cinema. He believes that today, unlike a few years ago, returning home after a festival changes perceptions of a film for the better, contributing towards commercial success locally. “Going international is my game,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to do it, and after Aadukalam, I got to meet Anurag Kashyap, the face of alternate Indian cinema to the world.” Through him, Vetri Maaran learned the intricacies of the festival circuit, identifying how to pick the best ones, and which people to approach. “Anurag pitched me to the world stage, saying ‘look, here’s a great director whose films you need to watch’. So now, even when my films are still under production, people reach out and ask me what I’m doing.”

Performance anxiety

• Some industry analysts believe that Vada Chennai’s A (Adult) rating from the Central Board of Film Certification could impede its box office performance. “An A certificate cannot easily become a ‘mass’ film,” says an analyst, who wishes to remain anonymous. “To be shown on prime time television, it also has to be recertified.” But with Visaranai already on Netflix, the director might have his eyes on a different commercial prize — online streaming.