Remember when every film took the mandatory choice of showing you the LIC Building or the Central station, so you could identify that the setting was Chennai? Films today have evolved, and the city has too. These days, the establishing shot is usually of the Kathipara flyover, or perhaps stretches of OMR’s skyscrapers. Over the last decade or two, we have had many films focus on various parts of the city that come together to make it the unique city it is.
Polladhavan showed Pudupet, a locality popular for shops that deal with automobile parts, Irumbu Thirai focussed on Ritchie Street, the goto neighbourhood for all electronics needs, while Marina told stories of those who find the beach to be their home.
There was also Arai En 305-il Kadavul that spoke about Triplicane mansions, Goli Soda that touched upon Koyambedu and Vada Chennai, of course, that dramatised North Madras. Director Vasanthabalan made an invaluable contribution to these popular films in the form of his Angadi Theru, a film born out of painstaking research undertaken about the lives and l ivelihoods in T Nagar’s Ranganathan Street. I begin by asking what Chennai means to him. Vasanthabalan, after a thoughtful pause, says, “It’s been 28 years since I came to Chennai in search of a livelihood, but I have never felt like it’s ‘my’ city.
I still consider Virudhunagar to be my city despite being in Chennai for a longer time. My legs have walked the city roads with a sense of anxiety. Chennai continues to surprise me; I still walk into new places in the city.” Vasanthabalan admits that he can barely understand the city, let alone claim it as his own. “It’s a place where power rears its ugly head and those without a voice still exist. The powerful though will have coffee even if it costs them Rs 1 lakh.” Vasanthabalan laments his inability to keep up with the city’s evolution.
“I suddenly notice that a new ice-cream shop or a pizzeria has come up in my area. Chennai represents many foreign countries; it’s a city that has no identity of its own. Many years later, we may even wonder if this is Chennai or New York,” adds the director. “It is a place where dreams are formed and shattered. Aasaigal, nirasaigal, perasaigal vazhangum oru boomi (The city is a haven for desire, disappointment and greed).” Vasanthabalan, an erstwhile assistant of director Shankar, shares that he has seen the nooks and corners of Chennai for years now.
“I believe that it’s the ostracised and those left on the fringes who make up Chennai. Other people will see it only as a city with coffee shops and glamorous people,” says the filmmaker. “When I see a street vendor selling kambu koozh (millets porridge), I see a person who had to let go of his agricultural land in order to make ends meet. When I see an old woman sweeping the streets, I see a mother who has been shunned by her children.
This is a city full of such banished people.” He admits he has trouble recognising the city’s swanky aspects, but he attributes this to the alarming difference in status between those partying in a star hotel and others begging outside it for spare change. Speaking as a filmmaker, he notes that the city is often shown as the land of rowdies. “A person who speaks the Madras dialect is usually shown to be notorious. I don’t understand why this is.
There’s also a beautiful side to the city. I find beauty even in someone who’s forced to steal. If a country has forced a citizen to commit a crime, isn’t it the crime of the country?” It’s this need to show a different perspective that Vasanthabalan wrote Angadi Theru, which aimed to show a Ranganathan Street few people knew. It is to be noted that the film was the among the contenders for India’s submission in the Academy Award Foreign Language Film category. “I wanted to show the life of those who worked on that road.
There’s a different world inside Parrys’ wholesale shops, Koyambedu’s market, Broadway and so on. Harbours are often shown as places of illegal activity, but there’s a lot going on there,” says Vasanthabalan who adds that the citizens of the city should care to know more about its people. “My upcoming film Jail will be, in a sense, like Angadi Theru.
It too is a take on a lesser-known side of Chennai.” This time, he trains his focus on OMR. “We know about the IT companies, but there’s a new world there that Jail will talk about,” says the director who has supposedly spent at least a year on research for this film. “The same awe and shock that Angadi Theru made audiences feel, Jail will too. The film is about tomorrow’s Chennai.”