All we are and all we aspire to be: C Premkumar on the appeal of his fan favourite ‘Meiyazhagan’

For Tamil director C Premkumar, storytelling is about conversations. A married woman might find joy in talking to the one that got away, or a flower seller might insist that a troubled man join her for tea. Meiyazhagan, Premkumar’s second film after the acclaimed 96 (2018), is about the power of such exchanges.

Released in September and now available on Netflix, Meiyazhagan is a beautiful meditation on longing and loss. When Arulmozhi (Arvind Swami) is forced to revisit his hometown and a past he’s been avoiding, he meets a man he can’t quite place. Meiyazhagan (Karthi) overwhelms Arulmozhi not just with his knowledge of him, but also with unconditional innocence and love.

Upon its release, the film’s length was criticised, leading to the trimming of 18-odd minutes. Portions involving the leads talking about the jallikkattu ban and the 2018 Thoothukudi police firing were cut.

Streaming has given Meiyazhagan a new lease of life. Premkumar spoke to Scroll about the revived interest in the film, the controversy about the snipped scenes, and the real-life Meiyazhagans who served as inspirations.

Whether it’s 96 or Meiyazhagan, you’re drawn to emotionally overwhelming stories.

You don’t usually express your true emotions in front of people. But I don’t agree with that sentiment. I am short-tempered and emotional. Compressed emotions, whether love, anger or sympathy, come through in my story.

Others aren’t very different from me. That’s probably why they are able to open up and relate to the characters in my films.

You’ve spoken about how Meiyazhagan is a composite of people you’ve met.

Since my childhood, I’ve seen people who live only for others. I wanted to show this on screen without dramatising it.

For instance, my uncle is there for everyone. He attends every wedding he is invited to and does every chore, at the cost of taking loss-of-pay leave. This level of innocence might sound pretentious to the younger generation. But people like this do exist. If Arulmozhi represents all of us, Meiyazhagan represents what we can aspire to be.

How did the script fall into place?

During the pandemic, I was writing a survival drama. At the time, there was an opportunity to do an anthology and pitch it to Netflix. I pitched the Meiyazhagan story, but it didn’t appeal to two other directors on the team. They were confused as to how a man doesn’t remember the name of someone who knows him dearly.

Malayalam filmmaker Mahesh Narayanan, my junior at film school, was in that group. He got excited about the story, came out of the conference call and suggested writing it as a film.

I started off as a short story but when I finished writing, it became a novel. When I was about to publish it, Vijay Sethupathi read it and suggested I make it into a film.

What was the approach towards converting the novel into a screenplay?

It is all about the characters and their conversations. As the conversations evolve, the story evolves.

I learnt every technical aspect of filmmaking at college, but somehow the screenwriting principles didn’t really stick with me. I was taught the three-act structure, but I don’t know how it works.

Anything can be a story, and any story can become a film. I can even narrate this interview we're doing as a very interesting film. But what’s going to be the conflict and three-act structure in it? We can include them, but only if it interests me.

Why did you cast Karthi and Arvind Swami as the leads?

Meiyazhagan is a little tricky. He needs to be innocent but at the same time not ignorant. When an actor has this level of innocence in real life, your job becomes easy.

Karthi is the most practical person I’ve met. He breaks down the most complicated emotion or scene into simple bits.

Dhanush and Vijay Sethupathi can portray innocence beautifully. But for this role, I needed someone to look the part of Arvind Swami’s cousin. Somewhere, I knew this man would rock. This is an actor who does even action with a tinge of innocence.

There is a scene in Paruthiveeran, right before Paruthi leaves to ask for Muthazhagu’s hand in marriage. He puts thiruneer [sacred ash] on his forehead and sets off on his cycle. That was a brilliant scene because here is a character who has a rugged face, but when he keeps that thiruneer, he depicts the yearning and innocence of a child.

We have seen Arvind sir in sophisticated roles. In this film, his role has a duality because he is a boisterous guy forced to become an introvert. He is an actor with so much potential, who deserves incredible roles in all languages.

A house in Thanjavur plays an important role and yet, we hardly see it – we only feel it through the characters’ memories. Was that the idea?

The conflict in the story is that the house has been taken away from Arulmozhi. So I wanted the house to feel like a rarity.

I have lived in about 20 houses in my lifetime. When you move houses, your situation changes and so do your experiences and ideologies. The concept of veedu [home] has a lot of memories because you might’ve learnt to shave in one house, started earning in another, and gotten married in yet another.

I wanted a voice for the house, which became the voice of Kamal sir [Haasan]. It is a house that is over a hundred years old, so it needed to have that maturity.

Although Meiyazhagan is about two men changing each other’s lives, the film has other stories too, such as Bhuvana’s anklet and Jaggu’s advice on the bus. Why did you include these stories?

I remember this advice from a great screenwriter: in a movie, every scene has to be like a short film and should exist as an independent story. I love characters like Jaggu, Latha and the flower seller. They come like a wave, but leave you elated.

You reunited with 96 composer Govind Vasantha for Meiyazhagan. What was your brief to him?

Govind and I share a personal connection. All he needs is two to three minutes to catch the mood of a scene. He is an express train.

We usually compose and record in his house. But for Meiyazhagan, we were at his in-laws’ place in a village near Thrissur because his wife was pregnant at the time. Govind’s wife Renju’s brother, sister-in-law, their children and in-laws were there. It was a full house buzzing with noise.

All the tracks were composed amidst chaos. We crammed a laptop and keyboard into a bedroom and made music amidst the sound of heavy rains.

Only a section of the audience watched the full version of the film since scenes about the Jallikattu ban and the Thoothukudi violence were cut a few days into the release.

I was very confident that these portions would work. But opinion was divided. A few people felt it was a little boring as it was conversational.

It’s normal for a film to be criticised, but it was shocking to see a conscious effort to degrade this film among certain reviewers. Trolls pass as reviewers here, as hatred is what sells today. So many people told me that they didn’t watch the film because of the reviews.

On the contrary, reviewers and audiences in Kerala and overseas celebrated these portions. While a few people celebrated the film here as well, it wasn’t unanimous, and that was unfortunate.

How painful was it for you to cut the scenes?

A lot of friends told me not to trim the film. Suriya anna [Suriya and Jyotika’s 2D Entertainment produced the film) too didn’t want me to trim the film. Suriya said, “Nammale oru pullaiya pethutu adhuku kannu serilla kaadhu serilla nu sonna epdi paa?” [“It’s like blaming our own child for not having nice ears or eyes.”]

Unfortunately, the reviewers who troll films have the most viewership. I was forced by that factor. The first week collections are important for any producer. It is my responsibility to not let anyone down.

It wasn’t like trimming a song or a fight sequence. The portions spoke about issues that are socially relevant to Tamilians. It is not something that happened in Mysore or Delhi. It spoke about Thoothukudi and Ilangai. But it’s surprising that the audience couldn’t understand or relate to that.

We have such rich literature and cinema, but audiences still largely consume only grand films in theatres. The so-called reviewers say that we don’t have films that are as good as Malayalam films. But they don’t let such films happen. This is a serious issue. Despite this, the film thankfully made a decent profit. If not for that, it would’ve been a severe blow.

Meiyazhagan has received an outpouring of love on Netflix. What does this tell you?

The film had a second innings there. It was almost like a re-release. The challenge is that it gives the image that such movies are a better fit for streaming platforms.

All of this love is a little bittersweet because had this response come during the theatrical release, things would have been different.