Eyes Wide Open

MUCH BEFORE THE world discovered Malayalam cinema, Santosh Sivan conquered the world. Armed with a camera, he saw frames and colours the way others did not. He could shoot crowd scenes in Mani Ratnam’s Iruvar (1997), as easily as he could shoot Ayesha Dharker’s riveting eyes in The Terrorist (1998). He could shoot a song on a moving train in Ooty with one of India’s biggest superstars in Dil Se… (1998) as fluently as he could film the battle scenes in Urumi (2011).

Cinematographer, director, storyteller, it was no surprise when Santosh became the first Asian to be presented the Pierre Angenieux Tribute at the Cannes Film Festival last week. They awarded him a set of Angenieux prime lens with his name engraved on it, which joins his Padma Shri, 11 national awards, 20-plus international awards, six Filmfare awards and numerous state awards divid­ed between his homes in Chennai and Mumbai.

In a heady week of wins for India, it was one of the sweetest for a man who has worked across indus­tries in India, across languages, and across genres. Documentaries, feature films, his own films, those of other directors, if Santosh Sivan is behind the camera it is the equivalent of an ISI certificate.

Even the most uninitiated movie lover will remember certain frames forever: the light and dark on Aamir Khan’s face in the noirish Raakh (1989); Roja’s first glimpse of snow in Mani Ratnam’s Roja (1992); Asoka looking at the dismembered bodies in a muddy battlefield, the horrors of war brought home with power and punch; the puppy framed by a gramo­phone in Halo (1996).

Much as a great musician has a signature style, Santosh has a particular way of seeing. It is both art and science, a sense of visuals he has imbibed and the use of the camera as an exten­sion of his eye. The greatest in­fluence on him is perhaps that of his father, Sivasankaran Nair, a pioneering photo journalist in Kerala, Sivan. He worked with American news agencies and his Sivan Studio in Thiruvanan­thapuram became a hangout for many prominent cultural icons. He even directed a few films.

Equally it was the Raja Ravi Varma prints that his grand­mother brought back home from the Travancore palace where she taught paint­ing that affected the young boy—one of three boys, all of whom became filmmakers. His eldest brother Sangeeth passed away recently. The love for Raja Ravi Varma continued, with Santosh playing him in a 2010 movie, Makaramanju.

Santosh had a culturally rich childhood, sketch­ing with his grandmother; learning to read the weather while looking out for rain before a game of hockey with his friends, something which made him appreciate the fleeting beauty in nature; and tinkering with his father’s cameras. “My dad used to comment on my sketches,” he says. “Later on with photography as well. But those days it was a square format, so the framing was different. But he was always keen that as much as I followed the rules I should also know how to break them.”

Shooting on film has always been interesting to him, also a bit nostalgic. “The difference is photo chemistry, it is a different system altogether. But with film you can see what you’re lighting, what you receive is what you see. With digital you have to see it on a monitor to make final corrections,” he says.

He developed a love for travel and found there was nothing better than cinematography to take him places.

Loyola School, Thiruvananthapuram, gave way to FTII Pune where Santosh explored his love for travel, taking the camera (often without the insti­tute’s approval) to shoot wherever he could. After working with a series of new filmmakers, such as Mani Ratnam on Thalapathi (1991), brought him to the attention of a wider audience.

Everything is dictated by the script, he says. “Thalapathi [starring Rajnikanth] is essen­tially the Mahabharata and the story of Karna so you know the sun will be a big feature.” As a result Rajnikanth is usually shot against the sun in the backdrop or reflecting on his face. It created a new commer­cial visual language at that time. On his association with Mani, he says, “Mani is always full of enthusiasm. He gets obsessed with the film he is doing. He has not changed except becoming faster with his execution. The last film we worked on togeth­er, Chekka Chivantha Vaanam (2018), we finished it a week before schedule. He is always leading from the front.”

He usually works with people he knows very well unless someone new comes to him with a great story. “Working with new people, you also imbibe their energy and their way of look­ing at things. It becomes very interesting,” he says.

Cinematographer Ravi K Chandran was an assistant cam­eraman when he first heard of Santosh Sivan in the early ’80s. While watching a new movie, he was struck by the way a song was shot. He asked his senior about it and was told that he was the cameraman Sivan’s son and studying at FTII. A few years later, he saw Sivan’s photograph at Prasad Labs in Chennai on an Agfa-Gevaert poster. That was for Raakh (1989), which had an impact on many young cinematographers. “Santosh has many great qualities.” says Chandran. “He shoots fast which is very economical for the producers. Quick compositions. He is very good with wide angle lenses. His lighting is always high contrast. He always used mixed colour tones—warmer face, cooler background, or vice versa. The lighting is always strikingly beautiful, never flat. His imagery is very inspiring for us. It is very difficult to get that kind of lighting for commercial films because actors usually believe flat lighting is best for their faces. If you see Iruvar, Dil Se…, Kaalapani (1996), the use of wide angle lens is so amazing, Even now in Roja every frame looks like a picture postcard yet tells a story.” Sivan and Mani did many films, Chandran says, inspiring cinematographers across the world. He adds, “Even now I am shooting a movie, and the director came to me with Thalapati refer­ence and said he wants his movie to look like that.”

No wonder when The Terrorist was released, the late critic Roger Ebert said it was written by the camera. The film, loosely based on Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, was so beloved by the actor John Malkovich when he saw it as part of the jury at the Cairo Film Festival, that he presented it in the US in 2000. As far as his own films like The Terrorist are concerned, Sivan says he has made children’s films from things he learnt at school whereas the others have been about things that affected him. Says he: “I feel the landscape is a part of the film. All the films I’ve done have land as character.”

When he is not working he is reading and sketching. He has two acres near Auroville. He says, “I have a farmhouse and am trying to grow trees. In Mumbai, I have a small flat but I have a terrace garden, which I nurture and cherish.” He has a house in Chennai and Thiruvananthapu­ram too. “I don’t like living in hotels and I suppose I was wise in investing in homes.”

So what is his style? Is there a signature Santosh Sivan style? “Unconsciously, I suppose, style creeps in, there is a part of me which goes into the filming,” he admits. It could be most recently the guerrilla style of filmmaking in Thuppakki (2012) which was shot all over Mumbai or Darbar (2020) with its stylised interiors, Santosh is the master of it all.

Nandita Das, actor and filmmaker, worked with him in Before the Rains (2007), where he was the director. “Santosh is a very special person. He has a very special eye. He wears his talent so lightly. He will be chitchatting one minute and then, when he looks through the camera, he is transformed. He is spontaneous.”

At 60, he is in no hurry to retire. He has shot 15 days of Zooni, about the Kashmiri poet Habba Khatoon, with Shaylee Krishen, a Kashmiri Pandit now living in Bengaluru. Krishen was last seen in the Prime Video series The Last Hour. Santosh loves Kashmir, where it features in Roja as well as Tahaan (2008), which he di­rected, even when it was minus 14 degrees. “I have a lot of friends there now. Ironically, I find a lot of peace there,” he says.

Until, of course, he is back at work.

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