Tracing the origins of Shiva with Ram Gopal Varma

I was particular about not having a special shot for Shiva. I wanted him to become special in the course of the film. Even back then, as now, the priority was always to get an amazing opening shot for the hero. I went the opposite way. In his intro scene, you only see him through other characters’ POV. When JD shoves Amala, you see Shiva’s first reaction. It’s only when JD hits him much later when Shiva’s punch arrives. That entire build-up is why the first punch has that effect. Nagarjuna didn’t understand the style, but believed my conviction.

I never had a brief for Shiva’s role to give to Nagarjuna. Most of the times, I would narrate to him scenes from other films, or incidents I had witnessed in my college days. But the way Shiva bends down to yank the cycle chain without breaking eye-contact; that prime inspiration was from Bruce Lee. He always locked his eyes on the opponent.

Among all the characters, I thought about Shiva the least. Shiva had to be a normal man, who becomes heroic gradually. He is more of a reactionary character. If Ganesh or Bhavani does something, Shiva reacts.

The thing is, I had seen people use cycle chain in real life. But they used short pieces with a small handle. Here, Shiva didn’t have a weapon. He created one on the spot. The idea of an unlikely weapon is what created the impact.

In reality, if you punch or hit someone, they don’t fall 10 feet away. So even those who were never involved in a fight, knew these stunts felt real, because they know the physical limitations of human beings. People might enjoy the over-the-top action for its visuals, but they will never find it real in terms of the emotion.

In Shiva, when Jagan is being thrashed at night, I took a lot of time between the hits because I wanted people to feel the impact. There is no expression on the face of the gundas because they are used to this. Cutting their reactions with the pained reactions of Jagan gives audience the feeling that they are watching something real.

They still use this word 'sentiment' and even today, I don't know what it means. Like when Shiva decides to simply tell his brother that he will leave the house, a director expressed his shock at how the scene had no emotion. But that is the character. My film was not about the brothers. Before the information could turn into emotion, I cut the scene. 

Nobody says ‘dialogues’ in life; they converse. If all these years, characters like Shiva, Bhavani, Yadagiri are still remembered, it’s because they behaved like real people. And real people believe in reality.

The funny thing is, I had read about the steadicam in a magazine, and mentioned it to someone that they have such tech in the US. They replied, “It’s here as well.” I was shocked. It was lying in India for four years, and nobody had used it!

Except for Nagarjuna and Amala, I never really cared about casting known actors in Shiva. Raghuvaran was not a prominent name at that time, but the intensity he had, I didn’t see in anyone else. 

Similarly, Brij Gopal, the actor playing Ganesh, had come along with his actor friend who was auditioning. But I cast him instead. The producers wanted to cast Mohan Babu, but I thought the impact of an anonymous face coming and warning Shiva could’t be created with a face like Mohan Babu. Through all these elements, I wanted to create that sense of authenticity.

I just wanted a sound cut. Now, we cannot see the airplane. I thought the impact of a car sound wasn’t loud enough to emphasise the character’s arrival. So when you use an airplane sound, it works like background score. It tells you that someone major is arriving, and you need to take this character seriously. 

Similarly, in the opening scene, after the student is beaten, as the camera moves towards the silencer, it lets out smoke and we cut to the titles. I feel that each scene should have that one signature shot which will be memorable. So that you remember that scene for that one thing.

That was Ilaiyaraaja’s touch. He said, “these kids came to college to study and now they are involved in fights. Watching it made me sad — this is my touch.”

Right from my early years of watching cinema, films like Mackenna’s Gold, Sholay and The Exorcist made me understand the importance of sound. Those times, the Telugu film tracks used to be obnoxious with punch sounds. But then this film called Senthoora Poove came where I noticed the punch sound was different. I managed to track Deepan Chatterjee in Mumbai who had taken those punch sounds from a lab in London. But we also recorded many sound effects live, and it took 2 months for this process.

We showed the film to Ilaiyaraaja with all sound effects. He told me this is the first time someone screened a film for him that way, and said, ‘Let’s keep music to a minimal. You have already spoken with your shot-taking. If I too come in with my music everywhere, nothing will get noticed. Wherever the sound is not there, I will come in.’

There are a lot of specific visuals and shots that I lifted. For instance, the pole-hitting scene was a clear lift from Moondaram Pirai (1982). I understood the psychology behind what worked there. Kamal Haasan is on the left side of the frame, and we are focusing on the right side, wondering whether Sridevi will come down. So, we miss the entry of the pole. When Kamal Hassan hits it, I suddenly got a jerk. I tried to translate that jerk in Shiva, where Chinna hits the pole.

I would say yes and no. My unit members had no faith in the film, but I was hearing positive things from outside. The legendary LV Prasad, who would often visit Prasad labs just to check the technicalities, apparently asked a grader after watching my film’s rushes, “who is the director?” He never asks about anybody’s film. So largely, the industry people were talking negative, but others were talking very highly.

I always felt it was a very convenient thing. The little girl was missing for an hour, and she returns only to be killed by the villain. Whereas Amala was a pivotal character. So I thought the emotional surge would be better if Amala’s character died. Since Telugu viewers were fixated with the original, they didn’t like it. The Hindi viewers saw that directly, and loved it.

Yes, it was a conscious reference to the Thakur scene.

I felt some portions of the film were a little too loose in terms of convenience, especially the little kid episode. But I think the climax fight worked out so well, it put the film back on track. 

We re-did the entire sound for this re-release print. The sound effects track was completely recorded again. For background score, we took the original and used some AI tools to segregate the tracks completely, and then mixed again in Dolby Atmos. To my knowledge, nobody has ever used this process. We had mono track at the time it was done. If you use that mono track now on sophisticated sound systems, it will sound very bad.

To be honest, I remember the odd comments more than the praise. Filmmaker Suresh Krishna told me, ‘you have ruined a good opportunity.’ A major distributor Duraiswamy Raju said, “Will family audience even come for this? Will women like this? There is no repeat audience.’ One top director said, ‘Only editing is good. That’s it.’ My father also told me it will flop ‘because it is too intelligent for the audience.’

I can't recall any one single film, there was a group of films. My love for cinema is separate from me understanding the craft. Direction is entirely about craft, and first time I was attracted to cinema craft-wise was with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. That was the first time I understood what craft meant and what a director can actually bring to the table. Jaws taught me that. 

When we celebrated 25 years of Shiva, 11 years ago, I tried watching it and I was bored. I couldn’t make it past 20 minutes. Now, when we decided to re-release the film, I saw it with concentration, and it hit me like a thunderbolt.

You see, psychologically, you’re never the same person. We have our experiences and understanding which changes with time. This time, I clearly understood the character. Earlier, I was blindly imitating the effect of other films I had seen, without consciously understanding what it was. Which happened only now. You would never see me talking maturely about Shiva until now.