Arun Matheswaran interview: On ‘Captain Miller’ and why Dhanush is ‘not a regular superstar’
(Originally published in The Hindu on January 09, 2024)
Arun Matheswaran has had an unusual yet scintillating start to his career as a mainstream filmmaker in Tamil. His debut film, 2021’s Rocky, struggled to fill screens during its release, picking up pace only due to good word-of-mouth marketing. His sophomore project Saani Kaayidham in 2022, starring Keerthy Suresh and Selvaraghavan, was released directly on Prime Video, making it even more difficult to ascertain its reach and commercial success.
And yet, if those films persuaded a star like Dhanush to sign multiple projects with the filmmaker it is probably due to the filmmaking prowess that he had displayed in those two films. Rocky and Saani Kaayidham were terrific works of art that established Arun as a filmmaker with a confident film language and distinct style of storytelling.
Now, ahead of the release of his film with Dhanush, Captain Miller, Arun speaks about his fascination for de-saturated colours, casting Shiva Rajkumar in the film, and the bigger artistic journey that he is pursuing.
Excerpts from an interview:
Where did the idea behind ‘Captain Miller’ germinate from?
This is a story about the oppressed fighting for freedom. My uncle was in the Army and the idea originated from everything he told me when I was a child. I have also taken some inspiration from the events that happened in the 1980s during the Sri Lankan Civil War. I worked out a story based on all of that, but materialising that script in that original form wasn’t possible; many producers were…
Read the full interview here: