Slice of Life

M Manikandan on his award-winning Tamil film Kaakka Muttai that features two slum children in lead roles.

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A still from Kaaka Muttai.

Tamil film Kaakka Muttai (crow’s eggs) opens with Chinna Kaakka Muttai, the younger of its two protagonists, waking up in the middle of the night after wetting his mattress. The camera then follows the urine that travels across the room. Just when it’s about to reach his mother, who is deep asleep, Chinna mops it with his shirt and decides to hide the shirt in a utensil.

The scene sets the tone of a film that takes us through the adventures of two carefree slum boys, who want a slice of pizza from the new pizza outlet nearby. Ramesh, who plays Chinna, seamlessly blends into the space. Small wonder that the director M Manikandan was so insistent in casting real slum children — Ramesh and Vignesh, who live in Chennai — for the roles, although the film’s producers Dhanush and Vetrimaaran were opposed to it.

“I’ve seen from my experience how child artistes tend to get overwhelmed by the director’s instructions and that brings an artificiality in their actions. Slum children have a certain kind of wildness in them compared to urban ones. Their parents can’t be with them all day. They are used to facing a lot of unexpected incidents,” says the cinematographer-turned-director.

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Kaakka Muttai, which released on June 5 across India, is Manikandan’s debut film and has rocked the Tamil box office. Riding on good word-of-mouth and glowing reviews, it is that rare regional film that enjoys a second week run in metros like Mumbai and Delhi. A simple tale about the aspirations of two boys, the film’s other layers touch upon the issues of urban poverty and globalisation. The director says that although the film won the National Award for Best Children’s film, apart from the Best Child artiste for the two, it isn’t a children’s film. “The protagonists maybe children, the movie has content for adult,” says Manikandan, who has written, shot and directed the film.
Manikandan had one day taken his son for pizza and his eyes fell on a bunch of slum kids outside. It set off in his head the idea of the film.

He turned the added responsibility of being the film’s cinematographer into an advantage. He tracked the children with two cameras from different angles at the same time, thus reducing their burden of enacting the same scene again. “Their main problem was camera shyness.

We conducted a two months workshop that didn’t include acting. We worked on giving them training for voice, body language, concentration and making them comfortable with the crew,” he says.

“I’d told Ramesh and Vignesh that all the media attention and fame will last only about a month. They will have to go back to their studies and responsibilities for their family. The producers have assured they will take care of their higher studies and a big announcement is coming soon,” says Manikandan, who started his career as a wedding photographer so that he could buy film rolls to sustain his photography. He worked as as assistant cinematographer on feature films for seven years and made two short films before he made Kaakka Muttai.

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