The lives of others
Filmmaker Santhakumar on his unique writing process and how it helped shape up his latest lm, Rasavathi
t has been 13 years since director Santhakumar’s debut lm Mouna Guru released. After helming Magamuni in 2019, he is now back with Rasavathi, starring Arjun Das, Tanya Ravichandran, Sujith Sankar and Reshma Venkatesh. “There was a break between my rst and second lms but for the third one, the lockdown is to be blamed. My next will not take this long,” assures the lmmaker as we speak about Rasavathi, that released today.
Santhakumar, in an earlier interview, had said his research for a lm includes a lot of reading material and binging on similar content. “It depends on the plot; Magamuni, for example, required me to understand a lot about spirituality and how a hitman works. So I
Isaw a lot of documentaries and read news articles. Considering it was also a dual-role, I saw a lot of content with the same trope and it got me thinking how di¢erently I want to approach this,” says the director.
“In Rasavathi, it’s about a doctor,” he elaborates. “We might have seen doctors at clinics, but research was still needed to learn everything about their job. Everything right from his economic status to why he’s put up at Kodaikanal has to be established. Even if these aspects don’t get covered in the lm, as a writer, I’m supposed to know this. This R&D gives structure to the lm and helps make it more gripping.” Unlike many writers who develop stories from a core idea, Santhakumar’s modus operandi is di¢erent. “When a character is put in an unusual condition, he builds his own story. That’s how it has
Arjun Das and Tanya Ravichandran in a still; (below) Santhakumar.
worked but if I do a comedy lm in the future — a genre I wish to work on — I would like it to have a plot line. If that itself ends up being funny, writing a screenplay over it would be easier,” says the lmmaker, who loves working on his own. “When I go into solitude, my creative mind keeps working. I write a lot of ideas which I then have to connect to come up with a cohesive screenplay. Since I also pen the dialogues, I don’t dene the lines the characters speak. I instead let the characters talk to each other in my mind, which I observe and note down,” adds Santhakumar, who cites the writing process as an example. “There’s a di¢erence between hiking and trekking; in hiking, there’s already a path to follow. In trekking, we have to make our own way and that’s what I do.”
Santhakumar’s protagonists are soft-spoken, righteous characters that are “built from scratch”. “After xing the protagonist and antagonist, the supporting artistes should also be given the same attention as they shouldn’t be on screen for the sake of it. I’m curious about every character’s backstory.”
Interestingly, Santhakumar’s rst two lms have a bittersweet ending, something its maker does not completely agree with. “I see Mouna Guru as a positive ending though I understand where you’re coming from. I don’t intentionally try to do something di¢erent. Spin bowlers know how to rotate their wrists to get the desired ball. I, on the other hand, am like that bowler from Lagaan with the deformed hand; I’m throwing a regular ball and it spins. It probably looks di¢erent for the audience, but I’m just a storyteller narrating a tale.”