Amaram: the newcomer gamble built on a Karthi interview

Amaram reaches theatres on August 28 as a love story that plays out across three time periods and three landscapes, with newcomer Rajan Tejeshwar and Ira Agarwal at its centre. Presenting the film’s album and trailer in Chennai, writer-director Thiruarul Krishnan described it as a story about people whose lives have been denied to them, the kind of subject he says takes real courage to put money behind. “That courage was there in my producer.”

The most disarming stretch of the evening was Krishnan explaining, without a trace of embarrassment, how the film ended up with a fresh face in the lead. He could not get through to established heroes; their commitment lists are endless. Then he remembered something Karthi had said in an interview and took it as a working method: put yourself out there first. “If the story and screenplay are good enough, you can cast a newcomer and still deliver a hit, on a modest budget, at scale. This film is a big attempt at exactly that. What made the scale possible is planning.”

The candour did not stop there. Yogi Babu, a close friend since Krishnan’s assistant days on Junga, had agreed to act in the film before budget realities intervened. “There is no fault of his in this. That is just how cinema works,” the director said, a sentence you will rarely hear on a stage built for celebration. Krishnan is the first person from his village to enter cinema, drawn in by K.S. Ravikumar and Shankar, and he cut his teeth assisting Gokul and Rajan Madhav. His first plan was actually an action script inspired by KGF; when that fell through, his managers circulated his other stories, and producer C.R. Rajan picked this one.

Rajan, for his part, said the decision took no deliberation. He had been planning a safe remake until he heard this story, and his whole family voted for it. He credited every department with working for the film rather than the pay cheque, and thanked Durai Pandi for steering the production through a stretch when he could not be fully involved. R. Ravindran of Trident Arts, who is releasing the film across Tamil Nadu, has told the team he sees a Pudhiya Padhai, a Subramaniapuram, a Paruthiveeran in it, the kind of film that settles in as a cult classic.

Rajan Tejeshwar counted the cost of the shoot with some pride: over 40 days on location, through a storm, at 4 am call times in Kodaikanal and out on the Ennore shoreline, with more than 330 actors giving the film their full effort. He is saving the individual thank-yous for a success celebration he is confident the film will earn. Ira Agarwal said she had been counting down to this day for months, having trusted the director’s telling of the story from the first narration. “He taught me the performance, scene by scene. His guidance carried me.”

The film has some serious craft in its corners: Telugu composer Mickey J Meyer scores it, Bharath Kumar shoots it, and the editing is by R. Sriramar, who has worked on Vada Chennai and Asuran. Snehan and Soundararajan K write the lyrics, and Miracle Michael stages the stunts in what the team promises is a new style. Chief guest Dr. V. Ramaraj read the film as one that speaks for ordinary people’s pain and used his turn at the mic to call for wider awareness of the Lok Ayukta, the state’s anti-corruption body. George, Sai Dheena, Naagineedu, Kalki Rajan, Harish Peradi and Vasudevan Murali round out the cast of Amaram, in theatres August 28.