Extraordinary things can happen in ordinary lives, and treading on a theme that’s so much fantasy as real is seldom tried in Tamil cinema. And it is here that director Gautham Vasudev Menon, playing a mere chronicler of the extraordinary tale of his relationship with his father, scores. Bless the old wise hag who once remarked that real lives fascinate more than fiction.
From the narrative technique of the story unfolding after the father’s death, Vaaranam Aayiram is Gautham’s life. “I was in America when I lost my dad and my journey back home was ripe with memories of the times I had with him,” the director recounts. “But it really wasn’t my idea to have Suriya play both dad and son,” he quips, revealing no fondness for the concept of a double action. “I had approached both Nana Patekar and Mohanlal for the dad’s role. But the issue was about how they’d handle their flashback phase when they’re supposed to be in their twenties. And that’s when Suriya expressed his interest in doing both roles,” Gautham adds.
Apparently, on the knowledge that this was a story about Gautham and his dad’s relationship, Suriya himself pulled out pictures of Gautham’s father and worked his look based on that. “Again, having him so strikingly similar to my dad was too emotional a thing for me to handle. But he chose to look that way,” he adds.
But similarities don’t end with the look and narration. “The scenes about his first love, his inability to cope with failure, were all part of my life too. Just that the drug phase was something I didn’t experience,” he jokes, adding that it was also based on a person who was into drugs and got out of it with family support, without getting into a rehab centre. While mostly sticking to reality, Gautham comes clean that his movie is not beyond cinematism and the exaggeration we often associate with the medium. “Like the scene where he joining the army. I too wanted to join the army, my mum was against it and my dad said nothing about in support or against it. But I then went on to do cinema. But in the movie, Suriya is shown to join the army, because that, in my opinion, is the highest form of serving the country,” he explains, acknowledging that this could turn to be preachy to the audience. However, there was only one thing I was certain of: I must show no conflict between the father and son. I never had a conflict with my dad,” he signs off, on an emotional note.
sharadha@epmltd.com