The sunlight crashes inside the penthouse of a sprawling high-rise in Chennai like waves against a shoreline. Fitting, since it houses a sorcerer of light―cinematographer Ravi Varman. This year’s national award winner has dominated cinematography in the Indian film industry for the past two and a half decades. He has a unique ability to lend life and colour to the landscapes visualised by filmmakers. From period dramas to romances to action thrillers, Varman has experimented with glare and flare, silhouettes, and out-of-focus frames. The dramatic use of colour in each frame―whether in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela (2013) or in Shankar’s Indian 2 this year―has become his signature.
“I have learnt everything I know from day-to-day life,” he tells THE WEEK, seated on a sofa in a small work room that is crowded with books by the likes of Ci.Su. Chellappa, Thi. Janakiraman, Ashokamitran, Jayakanthan, and Sundara Ramasamy. “It was Chellappa’s novels that shaped my thoughts and gave me an understanding of modern literature.” In a corner of the room is his old Zenith 6 camera, which he bought with his first salary to learn photography.
For someone who arrived in Chennai as a boy of 14 with nary a rupee in his pocket, Varman has come a long way. He was born in a village in Thanjavur, the land of the Cholas. But after the death of his parents, Varman was forced to leave and seek his fortune in Chennai. He spent his first month there roaming the streets, scrounging free meals from temples, drinking from roadside hand pumps and doing any job that was offered. Once, he was arrested for theft and sent to a juvenile home for over three weeks, where he was beaten badly. But he did not mind because of the free meals he got there, satiating his constant hunger pangs. One day, he fainted on the road and afterwards, a stranger got him a job in a hotel. Although the job gave him exposure, he was soon transferred to Bengaluru and then dismissed because of his leftist leanings. Later, he got work as an office boy in a cinema production company where he learnt to operate still cameras and got to work with cinematographer and filmmaker Ravi K. Chandran.
Varman began his cinematography career with T.K. Rajeevkumar’s Jalamarmaram (1999), but attained fame only two years later with Jayaraj’s Malayalam film Shantham (2001), for which he won his first award for best cinematography―the 23rd EMI Third Continent Award. Since then, he has worked with most of the leading directors in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi. For many years he wanted to work with Mani Ratnam. He wrote to Ratnam’s Madras Talkies for an appointment, which he got after three months. He had rehearsed a script, but when he finally sat before Ratnam, he could only speak one sentence: “If I work with you my life will be fulfilled.” He did not expect a reply and felt ashamed for wasting such a wonderful opportunity. “I felt like he is such a leading director and I am nobody to stand before him,” he says. But it was because of Ratnam’s reference that Varman bagged actor and filmmaker Revathy’s Phir Milenge (2014), starring Salman Khan and Shilpa Shetty.
Candid camera: Varman with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan during the shoot of Ponniyin Selvan.
And now, 25 years since his entry into Indian films, Varman’s life has come full circle after getting the national award for a film by none other than Ratnam―Ponniyin Selvan:1 (2022). In the period drama, Varman used different colour tones for each character, whether it was Nandini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), Kundavai (Trisha), Arunmozhi Varman (Jayam Ravi), Vanthiyathevan (Karthi) or Aditya Karikalan (Vikram). For Nandini, he used direct lighting. To match Karikalan’s demeanour, Varman used cross lighting to create shadows, contrasts and silhouettes. In some portions, he worked with handheld cameras to capture the grandeur of some characters. “I chose to stick to a theme in the individual scenes of each character,” he says. “But this became tricky when there were combination scenes. I ensured the audience’s attention did not divert from the story.”
Varman was intimately familiar not just with Ratnam’s script for Ponniyin Selvan: I and II, but also with Kalki’s novel, from which the two films are adapted. As someone who hailed from Thanjavur, where the plot is set, he made his surname ‘Varman’ after getting inspired by the stories from there. “The surname ‘Varman’―which means warrior―was bestowed on the Chola kings Arunmozhi Varman and Kulothunga Varman for their valour,” he says with a smile. “Varman is a man who is successful in all the battles he fights. I wanted to be that.”
With Anurag Basu and Ranbir Kapoor on the sets of Barfi.
The ace cinematographer is known for his experimental style. He would use techniques which most cinematographers avoided. Why? “My idea is to never go for the best,” he says. “Because the best is what is obvious and comes easy for everyone. It is tougher to go for the least. I always try out [techniques] that others do not want to experiment with. And I will make it 100 per cent successful.” Being self-taught, it took him a long time to get where he is. Initially, he used to analyse the work of renowned painters to learn about lighting. “I like the colour tones of Rembrandt and the composition of Picasso,” he says. He learnt about ‘glare and flare’ when he bought his Zenith 6 camera. And he learnt about ‘out of focus’ when he took a group photo to a studio to develop. In the photo, his mother was silhouetted in the backdrop, and the man at the studio explained to him that the photo was out of focus. Whenever he looked at his mother’s photograph, his interest in photography grew. Now, he says his mother’s image comes to mind every time he lights up a scene.
Today, he has an impressive filmography, from Shankar’s Anniyan (2005) to Anurag Basu’s Barfi (2012). In Barfi, for example, he used light like a “technical ballet”. In Gautham Menon’s Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu (2006), he captured the vibrant spirit of New York with natural lighting. “It was very difficult to use artificial light in a city like New York,” he says. “One evening, I saw the light and asked Kamal Haasan to do the shot before it went.” In Jagga Jasoos (2017), he imparts a haunting beauty to the landscapes of Darjeeling, Morocco and South Africa. He undoubtedly has a wizardry with light that few can match.