Director Chimbudeven on Yogi Babu’s ‘Boat’: I don’t think the freedom fighters of our land got their due

Director Chimbudeven talks about his upcoming film, the Yogi Babu starrer ‘Boat’ how historical decisions, ideologies and movements inspire him

Director Chimbudeven is evidently in a hurry as we manage to get him on a call mere days before the release of his upcoming film Boat. As always, last-minute work has piled up but that doesn’t stop the cartoonist-turned-filmmaker from talking in detail about how he came with the Yogi Babu-starrer. Most of the film’s runtime is expected to unfold around a boat full of people out in the open sea, and Chimbudeven says it was an engaging experience penning the story.

“I’ve read Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ during schooldays and that’s the inspiration behind the film. Over the years, novels like Sandilyan’s ‘Kadal Pura’ and ‘Thanneer Desam’ and several films have also fascinated me with a story set out at sea. The sea is like a living being on its own — given the ambience with clouds, sky, wind and the weather — and it keeps evolving. That, along with the political situation back in 1943 and the power of humanity, is what Boat talks about. A friend’s grandfather’s grandfather was one among around 5 lakh people from Madras who vacated when a Japanese plane bombed the city, and he told me how a certain section would jump into boats and take to the seas to escape the bombings,” says Chimbudeven.

The filmmaker concedes he was clueless about how to go about the shooting process while writing the story. “We met with a lot of hurdles while shooting the film. Cinematographer Madhesh Manickam and I scouted for locations; all the spots had heavy tides. The tides were better at Rameshwaram but it’s crowded. We finally chose Uvari near Tiruchendur as the spot.”

But that wasn’t even half the bridge crossed for the makers of Boat. “We needed a boat that could hold ten people and the one we initially got barely had space for the artists to move around. Then (late) art director Santhanam found a boat in Kerala that had to be modified in Rameshwaram, as we don’t have oars-propelled boats anymore,” adds the filmmaker.

Despite getting the boat, Chimbudeven and his team faced several other difficulties. “If we were shooting in a forest, we could clean the surface; if it were atop a hill, ascending it would be the challenge and once up, we could begin. But the toughest terrain to shoot at must be the sea! For starters, we couldn’t predict when the tides would be high or low. Probably that’s why we call it ‘kadal thaai’ as it had to favour us,” says the filmmaker who only began shooting three days after they got a hang of it.

“We also had fishermen around us for safety, and had equipment fall into the sea that had to be recovered. We would shoot half of a scene and then the natural lighting would change, which meant we had to wait for days to shoot the remaining scene. When it rained, there wasn’t any shelter and the artists’ drenched clothes had to be dried before we shot again. But the best part is that we captured those experiences and hope the audience will also feel what we felt.”

Ask him if the audience would pay heed to the struggles that went on behind the scenes, and a smiling Chimbudeven says, “If anyone else decides to shoot their film on the same terrain, they would probably understand what we went through. The audience doesn’t have to know about it as only the final product matters to them. One can even shoot in space or inside a volcano, but it will work only if the experiences can be converted into an intriguing story... I believe Boat has done that.”