R. Chezhiyan, cinematographer who made To Let, dies at 57

R. Chezhiyan, the cinematographer, director and writer whose austere, unhurried images gave a generation of Tamil films their weight, died in Chennai on the morning of July 10 after a period of ill health. He was 57. He was cremated at Porur.

For most of his career he was one of the industry’s most respected eyes. He made his debut behind the camera on Balaji Sakthivel’s Kalloori in 2007, a film drawn from a real tragedy, and closed it with a realistic bus-burning sequence that people still remember. What followed was a run of films that trusted him with mood over spectacle: Bala’s Paradesi and Tharai Thappattai, Seenu Ramasamy’s Thenmerku Paruvakaatru, which introduced Vijay Sethupathi as a lead, Raju Murugan’s Joker, Rettai Suzhi and Seeman’s Magizhchi. His work on Paradesi was honoured at a London film festival, and his essays on world cinema, along with three books he wrote on the craft, made him as much a thinker about images as a maker of them.

The way he got there is its own story. An engineering graduate from Sivaganga, the son of two teachers, he came to cinema through books, music and then a black-and-white photo album that he carried around as his portfolio. It was that album that led the filmmaker Seeman to send him to P.C. Sreeram. Sreeram turned him away close to twenty times. On what Chezhiyan had decided would be his last attempt, after another long wait, Sreeram simply told him he was now his assistant and drove him off in his car. He spent years learning the trade at his side.

His one film as director remains his signature. To Let, a quiet, closely observed story of a poor family being pushed out of a rented home, won the National Award. He produced it under his wife Prema’s name, directed it and shot it himself, and it travelled the 2017 and 2018 festival circuit, taking best film at the Kolkata festival before its 2019 theatrical release. The Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi called it a complete film; Adoor Gopalakrishnan praised it as intelligent and beautiful; the Sri Lankan filmmaker Prasanna Vithanage called it a genuine film made with real care.

Away from his own sets, he gave much of himself to others. He made documentaries on Abdul Kalam and Jayakanthan, and ran a cinematography and filmmaking school in Chennai that put 34 independent directors behind the camera. His sense of loyalty was well known: having once taken a single rupee as a token advance from his friend Ajayan Bala years earlier, he shot Bala’s Mailanji for a fraction of his fee, and the film’s hill-country images drew some of his last critical praise.

The last stretch of his life carried heavy grief, including the earlier loss of a son to a rare illness, and he had been unwell in recent times, treated at a private hospital before his death. Tributes came in through the day from across the industry, among them a video message from cinematographer and director Vijay Milton recalling their long association. Chezhiyan is survived by Prema and their daughter Aditha.