Actor R. Madhavan opens up about his directorial debut 'Rocketry: The Nambi Effect'

It had been whirlwind weeks of single-handed media engagements for R. Madhavan, the Indian actor.

In May he was at the Cannes Film Festival in France for the world premiere of Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, written, directed, co-produced and in which he plays the lead role.

Soon after that Madhavan was in the US where Rocketry’s trailer was played on the Nasdaq Billboard in Times Square.

Only a day before he arrived in Dubai — which is now his second home — Madhavan was in Kerala, just to return to India again for another promotional juggernaut. All towards July 1, when Rocketry will reach audiences globally, including here in the UAE.

If Madhavan was fatigued, he wasn’t showing it.

He had a select audience listening intently to how he transformed physically to play Nambi Narayanan at a recent press conference in Dubai, before starting another round of personal media interactions.

He came in, sans entourage, had a hurried word with the organising team, recalled he must do a few official stills, and then sat down for a freewheeling talk.

What shined through — as in all the conversations he has made about the film — was a sense of inspiring authenticity, a genuineness that can come only from a passion and conviction in his film, and his own unwavering value systems.

To put all their money into a project, and devote over four years to it, including a total rewrite of the screenplay, is not easy for actors who need conventional promotions and box office fixes.

But then, Madhavan has been anything but conventional.

An electronics engineer, public speaking champion, and television anchor and actor earlier, Madhavan was thrust into cinematic stardom with director Mani Ratnam’s Alaipayuthey (2000).

With his next films, Madhavan created a compelling arc as an actor ensuring he was one for the long run and not limited by cinematic image-traps.

From films such as Minnale to Run, Kannathil Muthamittal (set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war), Yuva and Anbe Sivam, to gaining pan-Indian recognition with Rang De Basanti, 3 Idiots and Tanu Weds Manu, Madhavan’s films invariably fit into the list of cult classics.

The transformation of the actor came full force ahead in the 2017 super-hit Vikram Vedha, after which he also did the web series, Breathe and Decoupled.

Now with Rocketry, he is traversing a path destiny threw at him.

Madhavan invested himself into the project after watching a television interview of the Indian space engineer, Dr. S. Nambi Narayanan, the mastermind behind the country’s liquid propulsion technology for rockets that is still relevant and has never failed.

Narayanan was working on cryogenics technology, the next leap in rocket propulsion technology, when, in 1994, he was falsely charged with espionage, endured mind-numbing custodial torture, and faced uncouth media witch hunt, before being fully acquitted of all charges and honoured by the nation with the Padma Bhushan.

As the scientist made a tearful recount of the ordeal he suffered and his journey to vindication, Madhavan was moved beyond words.

Now, with his passion film project realised, Madhavan is most vocal in celebrating the scientist’s achievements and explains why it is a story that must be shared with the world.

Excerpts from the interview:

You were in Dubai some 20 years ago to shoot Dil Vil Pyar Vyar. Now the city is your home, and it has been a fantastic journey for you. How do you look back?

I think it’s a very blessed journey. I’ve never expected to be an actor in the first place. And now to be considered an actor, and then, over a period of 20 years, getting to direct and produce my own film, have its world premiere — all that is like having an out of body experience. My wife and I still hold each other’s hands and think… what has happened, how did this happen…I think that childlike glee is still there with us.

You have said that the one thing you learned from films is to respect the screenplay and focus on it. So, as a writer, how difficult was it for you to script Rocketry?

As somebody has said wisely before, the script for Dr. Nambi Narayanan’s life has already been written. I didn’t have to rewrite it. I only have to rewrite if there was a lack of masala or lack of film-worthy scenes. But since many scenes, which are more than film worthy, have been written, my job as a screenplay writer, and a director, was only to select what I need to tell out of his life story. It was difficult to encompass 50 years of a person’s extraordinary life in two and a half hours. I really had to pick and choose the scenes. And I just had to stitch them together to make into a cohesive feature film.

My only guiding thought was: what if nobody cared about India, or about who Madhavan was, or about India’s space program, or the patriotism involved, does the film still work as a story? If somebody was to watch it in Brazil, or in Chile, or in Russia without knowing anything about anybody, that’s a film. That was my yardstick for my screenplay writing. The toughest part was to select what to keep and what not to keep.

How did you break down all this complex scientific jargon involved in Rocketry, which people might not understand?

I think this must be last statement you — and I — make of what people don’t understand. I don’t think there is any film that has come out of India, or anywhere in the world about technology that people have not understood. Look at Inception and Interstellar. The Indian public gave Rs100 crore to those films. The Indian public is vastly intelligent. We don’t give them a good [science-based] film.

So, you feel that we have been underestimating the audience?

I don’t feel. I know. As media, as artists, as directors, as storytellers, we completely underestimate them. They have moved way ahead. We are stuck in our own conditioning of our world.

I have completely ruined it for myself. That is why I do not want to be involved in any other aspect of filmmaking other than acting for the next few years.