‘Rocketry’: Bollywood actor Madhavan shook ‘like a leaf’ in directorial debut

Muscat: When Bollywood actor R Madhavan stepped in at the last minute to direct his upcoming film “Rocketry”, he knew full well he was taking on four challenging jobs in making the film.

Set to release in cinemas in Oman and the rest of the Gulf countries this weekend, while the film does mark Madhavan’s directorial debut, he is also involved in producing and writing for the film, as well as acting in it.

Although a director had been roped in to oversee the film, Madhavan was required to jump in at the last minute after the gentleman in question could not come through.

“I had to take the onus of directing it, and in a moment of bravado I said yes, but I was literally shaking like a leaf, because on the first day, I had this mammoth task of shooting a film that has never been done before,” said Madhavan, speaking to TFM’s Evita Louis.

“This is the first film that aims to do a number of things that have never been done before: for example, it aims to show an actor ageing 50 years, without the use of prosthetics,” he admitted. “We had to show a rocket engine: that’s never been done in a film. Shoot in three languages in eight countries over 50 years… that’s never been done before.

“Somehow, somebody sent me a message saying “don’t get nervous… just do one shot at a time”, and that’s what I did.”

“Rocketry” centres on the life of Nambi Narayanan, a former aerospace engineer and scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), who towards the end of his career had to fight charges of espionage filed against him.

“Yeah, biopics are difficult, but they’re also easy,” said Madhavan, speaking on TFM. “The difficult part is selecting which part of the biopic you want to keep, because the script has already been written: somebody has lived that life, and you found it exciting, and therefore, you have to pick and choose the moments in their life to stitch together to make a movie.

“Nambi Narayanan’s life is so colourful and so cinematic that I had to exercise a lot of control and patience to see which elements I should leave, and which elements I should use in the film,” he added. “That was the only challenge, so that I could tell the story I wanted to tell, and give the message that I wanted to give. That was the tough part.”

Narayanan’s initial claim to fame was the liquid propulsion engines he built for rockets in the 1970s, at a time when India’s space programme was still reliant on rockets that used solid fuel.

“I understood the science involved: I understood the engine he built, I understood that stability, I understood the liquid fuel propulsion engine, and how he made it a self-rectifying and self-relying engine,” said Madhavan. “Also, I acted in it because every actor wants to be in a film where he plays (a character) from a young age to an old age, especially if it looks like a James Bond film – that’s how it started –  and I was very keen to do that.

“But then I didn’t realise what I was putting my head into,” he admitted. “I decided to produce it because nobody else wanted to produce it.”

Production companies asked Madhavan who he’d lined up for the heroine, how many songs the film would feature, and how many fight scenes the movie had: ingredients typically found in a Bollywood film.

“When my answer was no songs, no fights, no heroine, they said “no producer”, and I said I would produce it myself, and so I jumped in with a couple of other guys who believed in (the project) insanely: Varghese Moolan and Vijay Moolan and 27th Entertainment, and their passion and belief in Dr. Nambi Narayanan was so much that they stuck around with me with all my madness,” recalled the actor.