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Filming a painter
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Noted director Shaji N. Karun plans a film on Raja Ravi Varma. NANDINI NAIR reports
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Photo: Shaju John
Between life and art Filmmaker Shaji N. Karun
“A filmmaker is like a butcher. He just slices and takes. He cannot love his work.” While Shaji N. Karun might not “love” his own creations, they have won recognition globally. He was the only Indian jury member at the 38th International Film Festival of India.
This cinematographer who gave flesh to the films of G. Aravindan, has also had three of his movies selected at the Cannes. Piravi (The Birth) (1988) received the Special Mention of Camera d’ Or at Cannes. His second film Swaham (1994) was nominated in the Official Competition there.
But these works are “dead” to him today. He is currently busy with his second Hindi movie to be based on 19th Century painter Raja Ravi Varma’s life. While the movie was originally scheduled for this year, shooting will begin only next August. Vidya Balan and Preity Zinta had said yes to the original dates, but Shaji is unsure if they will be available now. Light and not stars determine his movies. He wants to shoot in post-monsoon light. That will help evoke paintings on canvas.
He is attracted to Ravi Varma as he believes that his paintings helped to unify India. The movie is based on the last four years of Ravi Varma’s life. “With the purchase of a printing press, he made lithograph prints. That was the end of the artist. And the beginning of the businessman,” says Shaji, watching the ships glide silently on the Arabian Sea.
But the movie is essentially about the relationship between an artist and the muse. Set in Bombay in 1895, the movie had to be in Hindi, he explains. While most of his work has been in Malayalam, he says simply, “Language is ambience after all.”
But in the immediate future, Shaji is going to make a movie with Mammootty called Kuttisarank (Navigator). Currently working on the script, shooting for this begins in January. With a warm smile, he says, “This is about a man who is washed ashore. His body is then claimed by three different women. It exposes the outer shell of man.”
This epitome of Kerala’s New Wave Cinema, feels that filmmaking, like all creative processes, is a lonely and even fearful process. He judges a movie by how it can change a person, even if it is only for two hours. Hoping to continue to influence, his next directorial work might be on the Upanishads, he reveals.
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