MOVING IMAGES
Signature cinema
ZIYA US SALAM
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Ace cinematographer and occasional director Santosh Sivan talks about his latest film “Tahaan” and what shooting in Kashmir taught him.
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Photo: R.V. Moorthy
In the Hindi heartland he is mobbed. Reporters wait their turn to pick his brains, lensmen are cautious when taking his picture — his reputation as a cinematographer precedes him.
Never mind that his last big directorial venture, “Asoka”, was half a decade ago. His latest film, “Tahaan” released this Friday, is a niche release that is likely to gain more from word-of-mouth publicity than actual professional marketing. It is all par for course for Santosh Sivan.
Global citizen
He calls himself a “global citizen”. “I was born in Kerala. I live in Chennai. I love it for its ambience. I work in Mumbai, I am comfortable there.” Then, of course, he divides this time with stints in the U.S. and U.K. Modest to the core, he talks of directing a Hollywood film like lesser mortals in Bollywood talk of the week’s releases.
So, his “Before the Rains”, an international venture, is ready and awaiting release but Santosh won’t talk. The rains might be tapering off but Santosh insists, “it is not the right time to talk of the film here. First it will be released in America and Europe. It is not specifically for the Indian audiences, it cannot be dubbed. The producers wanted to come to Asia at the end to guard against piracy. It is a big issue in South-East Asian countries. They had a similar problem with ‘Water’.”
So, “Before the Rains” will probably be seen here around winter, but there are no such problems for “Tahaan”, a story of a little boy in Kashmir who goes in search of his missing donkey. His journey brings him closer to the truth of everyday life in the violence-torn State. No wonder, Santosh, far from calling it a children’s film or even a film about a child, calls it a “family film”.
Then his mind goes back to the time when he was shooting in Pahalgam.
“When shooting there, I realised children were comfortable with guns. It is like a part of everyday life for them. When we went there, they looked at us with all our shooting equipment, not at the guns. They were too busy checking us out to bother about anything else.”
Isn’t the film being released at the right time with the State in need of a balm?
“It was not meant to be like that. The release is not on one’s mind while shooting for the film. When shooting there we only wanted to show the real life. I had heard some Quranic verses there at some dargah. I thought I could use them to send a message of hope. I wanted to use the azaan for a nice purpose, a beautiful thing, not for any wrong deed.”
Indeed. The film begins with an azaan and verses from the Holy Quran wherein the believers pray to the Almighty to show them the right path, not the path of those led astray. It also ends with the right path, a fulfilment of a little dream. “Yes, I took help from research scholars in Kashmir. At the end I wanted to show the positive power of a dream.”
Interest in faces
So, is his film, like his cinematography, a signature to identify the creator? For the first time, he allows himself the luxury of a full-throated laugh, then repeats, “Cinematography like a signature…Well, I learnt early to follow people. I am very interested in faces. I understand so many things from human faces with all their imperfections. When the camera is on, people become conscious, but once it is off, they become normal again. That is the time to observe them. As a cinematographer and a director, I am still trying to improve. Perfection is never on my mind. But frankly, cinematography is not very technical, filmmaking is. For instance, in ‘Tahaan’, we needed shots of Pahalgam trees denuded so that we could take a shot of a mosque in the distance. If the trees were full of leaves, then the mosque would have been invisible. Similarly, the time of the first snowfall… it has its own charms. To capture all that on camera is a joy.”
The product of this joy has just been released and Santosh is hopeful of a good response from cinemagoers.
“The world is changing, there is change all around. Multiplexes are encouraging all kinds of cinema. Cinema is a group experience, the film has to be watched inside a theatre. It is never the same thing to bring a DVD home. ‘Tahaan’ is presumably coming at the right time.”
He is very happy to embrace change. But how has he observed it from close quarters in the film world? “Everything changes with time. Landscapes change, so do people. Cinema is changing. There is marriage of film and digital platform. The digital technology is coming in a big way. For some time, the tail will wag the dog, then the dog will wag the tail.”
Either way, it is going to be a beautiful experience. Of course, you need Santosh Sivan’s eye for detail, his lens and directorial baton for that!
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