Tucked away on the outskirts of Chennai is director Shankar Shanmugam’s home. The huge brown gate opens to let me in. Much like his films, the front hall is a picture of grandeur, with comfy sofas, colourful flower vases and bamboo fixtures. As I climb the stairs to his room, I spot Chitti―the humanoid robot in his Enthiran film series―standing tall in a black leather suit, as though he had walked out of his fictional world into the real one. I have still not taken my eyes off Chitti when Shankar arrives. Clad in a blue shirt and jeans, he looks calm as he awaits the release of his magnum opus, Indian 2. “Don’t you feel the pressure?” I ask him. “It is all a part of life,” he says with a shrug. “I am used to it.”
Since the first edition of Indian released in 1996, every time Shankar read about corruption and bribery in the newspaper, he felt that Indian thatha (Kamal Haasan’s character of Senapathy, an anti-corruption crusader in the film) should return. The thought was always in the back of his mind. “But the circumstances did not match,” he says. “I had the one liner. But I was still looking for the story.” Finally, it took shape during the lockdown, which Shankar calls a blessing because it gave him time to write the script. With Kamal onboard, there was no looking back. However, the one question he had to address was what Senapathy’s age should be in the film. In the first part, he was 71. If he were to make Senapathy return in the second, he would have aged, but how much? In the end, Shankar kept Senapathy’s age as 106, inspired by the 118-year-old Chinese kung fu master Lu Zijian.
This time, however, Senapathy had outgrown his appeal. In 1996, Kamal’s character had become a cult figure for his complexity. He sacrificed for the sake of the larger good, yet was no stoic who did not grieve. His checkered past coloured his present and his inner conflict gave him a persona that was strong yet vulnerable, unflinching yet not unfeeling. This nuance is missing in the Senapathy of Indian 2. His moral non-ambiguity and self-righteousness make him a caricature, instead of a charismatic leader.
“The original Indian was made 28 years back and many things have changed since then,” says Sreedhar Pillai, writer and film analyst. “Between Baahubali 1 and 2, the difference is only 18 months, but between Indian 1 and 2, it is nearly three decades. The audience has totally changed. Shankar’s format and style of filmmaking should also change. This does not, of course, mean that Shankar is no longer relevant. Every director has a set format. If you ask me, Shankar’s 2.0 that came out in 2018, was his last good film. [Indian was made during] the golden age of commercial cinema and Shankar is the longest-serving commercial director. We have to watch his next, Game Changer, before we judge him.”
Thirty-one years since he made his debut in the Tamil film industry with the film Gentleman (1993), Shankar remains a powerhouse. He first popularised the concept of pan-Indian films. His films are visual spectacles with tightly-knit plots and technically sound screenplay. Born into an affluent family in Tamil Nadu’s Kumbakonam, Shankar was a quality control supervisor before entering the film industry. He initially came to Chennai to become an actor. His films are flashy, incorporating the latest technologies. For Enthiran, he went all the way to the US to study animatronics. Stan Winston Studios there handled the animatronics for the film, as well as the special makeup for its star, Rajinikanth.
In Gentleman, he took up the subject of fraud in medical education. The film, with an evergreen theme that still resonates with medical students and their parents, opened to thunderous applause. Thus was born Shankar’s vigilante hero who fights the system and takes on corrupt leaders. The epitome of this would be Senapathy himself, who in the first edition of Indian kills his own son for the sake of the larger good. “He considers everyone to be part of his family. That’s why his crusade against corruption continues,” says Shankar.
Although the fight against corruption has remained a mainstay of his films, he has often dealt with it with restraint and without moralism. He says he has learned how to balance both the demands of his story as well as the desires of the audience. In the superhit Vikram-starrer Anniyan (2005), for example, Shankar ensured the viewers did not overdose on his brand of social justice. That’s why, he says, the film still stays relevant. “You cannot call it outdated,” he says. “After Anniyan, I have seen people stop when the traffic light turns yellow.” Ask him why his heroes always combat social ills and he replies, “I am a common man. Like everyone, I, too, want to express my angst against the system and question the wrongs happening around me.”
But going by the response to Indian 2, his filmmaking might need a serious update. It’s too early, however, to write him off. With a near 100 per cent success rate, Shankar is a behemoth of the industry who has only one-upped each of his previous efforts. Here’s hoping that his next film, Game Changer, will truly prove to be a game changer for him.