‘Nayanthara is a superstar but I've always looked at her as an incredible actor with a varied body of work’: Director Ashwin Saravanan

Nayanthara in a still from 'Connect' (2022); (right) film director Ashwin Saravanan. (Photo: Twitter)

One of the highest-grossing Tamil films of 2015, Maya was Ashwin Saravanan’s debut as a filmmaker. Since then, the director has made the psychological thriller Game Over (2019) with Taapsee Pannu and now has the horror film Connect running in cinemas. It is his second outing with Nayanthara after Maya and the filmmaker is full of praise for the south superstar. Edited excerpts from an interview:

Your first film Maya with Nayanthara is considered one of the best Tamil horror films of all times. You have collaborated with her again with Connect. Is there more pressure to deliver now?

To be honest, I don’t think about it so much when I am writing the script and making the film. I don’t dwell on it so much because I find it very restrictive to my creative process. With that in mind, I did not really think about how to make Maya better or how to make a film that’s bigger or better than what I have done before. I wanted to make a simple film about what it means to live under confinement and how we managed to process the sense of loss of loneliness during the lockdown and I wanted to make it in the horror genre. Twenty years from now, when people watch Connect they will not think this guy made Maya before that. Somebody will probably discover it on a streaming platform, find the premise interesting and discover the film on their own without any baggage, which, I think, is a wonderful way to experience a film. The numbers pressure comes from the trade and from the industry when you’re trying to release the film. I understand that aspect, too, because it’s inevitable. Ultimately, it is a business and people will always look at your previous product for some kind of yardstick to the opening but I don’t let that affect me in any way.

Nayanthara is known as the Lady Superstar. She is also the producer of Connect. How has it been to work with her as an actor and as a producer?

As a producer, she is quite artistically inclined. She gave me the space and time needed to craft the film the way I wanted to. She understood that crafting the experience of the film is far more important than anything else because the experience, more than the story, is the film.

As an actor, I’ve always had massive respect for her work. She is a superstar but I have always looked at her as an incredible actor who has such a varied body of work and is a thorough professional. She just comes, does her best and makes it look very easy.

All your films are in the horror space. Do you think horror has a lot of unexplored dimensions?

Absolutely. There are a lot of reasons I do horror; some, I understand, some, I don’t. I think the primary reason I wanted to do this film in the horror genre space is because the kind of emotions we were going through during the lockdown — hopelessness, anxiety and fear — are vital to a horror film experience. The experience of being stuck inside a house itself is horrific. I felt the premise of the film extends to the horror genre quite convincingly. Also, as rightly mentioned, it has so many unexplored dimensions. Horror can be about a family moving into a house with ghostly sightings and sounds but it can be much more than that. I am really inspired when I watch independent horror films and festival horror films.

The other thing between all your films are women protagonists. Usually it is thought that women tell women stories better. What are your thoughts on this?

I think gender has nothing to do with how you perceive, write and direct talent or tell stories. The quality needed is empathy. The ability to put yourself into another person’s shoes is far more important than gender. Understanding the subject matter and the characters is really important to telling a convincing story. You cannot take a bird’s-eye view to telling a character’s story — be it a man, woman or a transgender. You have to have empathy and a deep understanding of that person’s life and that can only be achieved through research and development. For me, it comes from a place of empathy. You have to keep your eyes and ears open and be more sensitive and empathetic to write from anyone’s point of view.

Tamil cinema has delivered some gems in the form of movies such as Gargi, Kadaisi Vivasayi to Vikram and Ponniyin Selvan 1. As a Tamil-film director, how do you feel about the pan-India appreciation these films have garnered?

I am really glad that films such as Gargi and Kadaisi Vivasayi are being mentioned in the same sentence as PS1 and Vikram. They take bigger risks and there is a lot of artistry at display in these films. The voices, the social context, and the themes those films talk about are extremely important. It’s a good thing that people talk about those films that are relatively smaller in scale as much as they talk about the big films. It is a testament to the fact that people are waking up to all kinds of cinema across the country. If the content is good and the story resonates with people, they will watch it regardless of what language it is in.