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Date : 10/01/2011
Place : Cochin
Unlike the usual melodrama stories in Malayalam, Ranjith has his own ways of movie making. The stories that speaks about a lay-men’s Beyond a film director, he’s an excellent script-writer and an actor too. Excerpts from the interview with Ranjith by me and my dear friend Vandana Rajan
1. You’ve taken movies with strict atheist and theist backgrounds too, in real life, which one are you? An atheist or a theist?
For me, it varies from time to time and that’s what usually reflects in my movies too. During a period of time, I visit lots of temples and do rituals but, I believe that all the power is within oneself and we are responsible for the good or bad that comes out of me. I ultimately believe in the latter because that has empowered me always. It has given me strength and has helped me grow further.
2. Your movies always have the style of reconstructing the existing trends in the industry, is that deliberate or it happens when you direct a movie?
You can call it both because, I make sure that my movie is not born from another movie. No audience must say that it resembled another movie which they’d previously watched. So I make sure every time that my movie is realistic and not a copy or a trace of any old movies.
3. Your movies had been achieving many state and national awards. How do you value this achievement of yours in such a short span?
Of course am happy that my movies are being recognized and am getting awards but then, when I attend international film festivals every time, I realize that am a very poor director who needs to grow 1000 times more to achieve something.
4. Beyond awards and accolades, there would be something which you would like to cherish in your memories forever like appreciations or notes; do you’ve something of that kind to share with?
Each time the day when my movie gets released, I get lots of messages, from known and unknown people. Both criticizing and appreciating, that makes me happy. They tell me ‘we’re with you’ though that population of people who enjoys my movie are less, it makes me happy and recently, when I spoke to Balu Mahendra the Indian Guru of movies for the first time, he was well informed of all my movies and when he spoke to me about what he liked and disliked in my movies, I felt really happy that someone like him is talking about my movies.
5. What was the inspiration behind the making of the experimental movie ‘Kerala Cafe’ which is an array of ten short films put together?
The inspiration was from the movie ‘Paris, I love you’ but, the 10 short films in the movie were done by 10 different excellent directors in the industry and that too 6 of them were marvelous ones. As the one who produced the movie I’d so much of loss because no malayalee audience watched the movie in the theatre. But, the satisfaction I had was, I was able to bring out the best results from the directors through their movies.
