Santosh Sivan is first a forager, of tales and sensations, spanning totally different locations and instances. Everything he has made to date, he asserts, is drawn from what he encountered and skilled as a youngster. The altering colors of the monsoon sky of Thiruvananthapuram, his native city, are pressed into his reminiscence. He recollects the shafts of gentle that seeped into the attic and the central courtyard of his ancestral house, bringing into ghostly life the portrait of a grandfather. One is reminded of the ribbons of daylight leaking into Thilakan’s carpentry workshop in Perumthachan (1990), like rainwater by way of a thatched roof.
At 60, Sivan is a masterful raconteur, his tales chiselled and refined by way of years of reflection and narration. He has meticulously catalogued his artwork — each picture and movie now pinned to a reminiscence. He traces the roots of Asoka (2001), an epic interval drama starring Shah Rukh Khan, again to a post-lunch class in class when his instructor narrated the story of the Kalinga emperor to preserve the class from sliding into a siesta. “We were disappointed at Asoka’s decision to abstain from war,” he recollects. “But the teacher said: ‘One day, you would stop throwing stones at the stray dogs on the way home, and then you would understand why he did what he did.’ I just couldn’t forget what he said.”
A nonetheless from ‘Asoka’.
This 12 months at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, the cinematographer-filmmaker will probably be conferred with the Pierre Angénieux Tribute, awarded yearly to honour an distinctive cinematographer. For Sivan, the winner of 5 nationwide awards for greatest cinematography, and quite a few nationwide and worldwide recognitions for the movies he directed, the Cannes tribute comes as a crowning glory. “It is only conferred on decorated individuals. You feel special,” he says. He is especially thrilled as the award contains an Angénieux zoom lens engraved together with his title. Sivan can even ship a masterclass for Cannes delegates on May 23 as half of the honour.
A Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) graduate, and son of a famend photographer and movie producer, Sivan burst onto the Indian cinema scene in 1992 with Roja, directed by Mani Ratnam. Their famend collaboration started a 12 months earlier than, in Thalapathy (1991), after the filmmaker watched his work in Raakh (1988), Aditya Bhattacharya’s gangster movie starring a yet-to-be-discovered Aamir Khan. The three movies bear uniquely totally different visible types.
“His win feels like a personal triumph,” says Siva Ananth, the government producer of Ratnam’s Madras Talkies. Ananth first labored with Santosh in Dil Se.. (1998) the place he was an assistant director, adopted by Raavan (2010), and most just lately in Chekka Chivantha Vaanam (2018), which he additionally co-wrote. “The strength of Santosh’s image is strongly married to the strength of the actor in the frame,” he notes. “Even in the jazziest and most colourful sets, where he has to direct a large crew of lighting technicians and grips, he never misses that key moment in the scene and the magic in the performance.” He cites the intercuts of the track ‘Narumugaye’ from Iruvar (1997), the place Sivan’s digicam vividly captures the romance that flashes in the actors’ eyes.
If he carefully adopted the characters in Iruvar, a drama about friendship and politics, it was all about motion and frenzy in Dil Se.. (1998), a love story that trespasses into forbidden territories. Ananth recollects how seamlessly and simply Sivan executed the filming of the sensational Chaiyya Chaiyya sequence.
These movies, each big-budget mainstream tasks, fetched Sivan his third and fourth nationwide awards for cinematography. “Everyone thinks that commercial cinema is all about glamour, where there is no scope for adventure. But I think it’s in commercial films that you should showcase your talent,” he says. “It’s possible to look at the commercial format differently. Do not take anything for granted.”
Mohanlal and Santosh Sivan on the location of ‘Olavum Theeravum’, a remake of the 1970 movie of the identical title.
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Special Arrangement
What do awards imply at this stage of his profession? His reply is reasonably easy: “Power and immediate attention. When you are at workshops, students will want to listen to you”. The sweetest was the first one — the nationwide award in 1990 for Perumthachan, he recounts. “During that time, I was doing only action films. My mother asked me, slightly concerned, why I was not getting an award, and suddenly I wanted one. After the first couple of awards, it didn’t mean much.”
Three a long time later, Sivan stays in the prime tier of his discipline. His involvement in a undertaking typically receives the identical media consideration as a celebrity’s. Alongside costly studio-backed movies, he pursues his ardour tasks — he’s simply returned from Kashmir the place he’s directing a function movie on the 16th-century poet Habba Khatoon. His final directorial in Malayalam, Jack N Jill (2022), turned out to be a misfire, however he has moved on. “Filmmaking is like being in a boxing ring. You must get hit once or twice,” he displays. “The project didn’t begin well. The script wasn’t right there. It was mired in production issues…”
Sivan’s early experiences in documentaries gave him a robust basis in observing and documenting folks, their work, the land, and its nature, observes cinematographer-filmmaker Rajiv Menon, his shut pal and colleague. “This also meant he shot in natural light in different geographies in India. When he transitioned to feature films, his cinematic canvas expanded. He worked fast and adapted to working with a wide range of directors.” Menon holds Sivan’s work as a director in The Terrorist (1998) in excessive regard. “It had a unique visual language — minimal yet gut wrenching.”
The Terrorist, the small-budget Tamil-language movie that Sivan wrote, directed and shot, led to his induction into the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) in 2012, making him the society’s first member from the Asia-Pacific area. The movie, described by Roger Ebert as “visually breathtaking”, impressed famend cinematographer Michael Chapman a lot that he included it in his pupil workshops and advisable Sivan’s title to the ASC.
“I always wanted that honorific,” says Sivan, who regards the ASC recognition as a validation of the authenticity he has been practising in his work. “They invited me because my work is so unlike theirs. Indian visual art, like its music, is ornamental and colourful. I try to keep it that way, finding inspiration from my surroundings. It’s important to stay authentic”.
He mentions Harippad, his grandmother’s native village the place he found a love for mythology and Ravi Varma work. Incidentally, he performed the legendary artist in his solely outing as an actor, Makaramanju (2011), directed by Lenin Rajendran. He additionally travels extensively. “Every lesson you gain from your travels is uniquely yours. You can’t learn everything in classrooms.”
Indeed, the pure world is a outstanding aspect of Sivan’s storytelling. “He shares an intimate connection with nature,” says Ajayan Chalissery, the artwork director of the latest blockbuster Manjummel Boys, who was an assistant to the late Sunil Babu in Sivan’s Anandabhadram (2005) and Before The Rains (2007). “Sometimes, on the set, he would ask the team to prepare for mist or rain when the sky is clear and sunny. To our surprise, shortly afterwards, the area would be covered in mist or it would start pouring!”
It should be this connection that retains Sivan tethered to Indian cinema. “An ASC recognition naturally prompts cinematographers to shift base to Hollywood. I feel I am past the age when one wants to move continents for a career,” he says. “My home and people are more important to me.” He is, admittedly, a man of nostalgia. “Aren’t most filmmakers and artists so? We like to think and remember.”
Does he really feel apprehensive that expertise is taking up the discipline of visible artwork, I ask. It is the instrument however the apply that makes good artwork, he replies. “Everybody is making images nowadays. If in the analogue times, children liked to sketch, now they prefer to take pictures on the phone. But most people who take photos don’t develop it, in the same way as most people who read and write only use language for passing information, not writing poems.”
The interviewer is a movie critic and impartial researcher.