In the spotlight for his work in Dev.D and Gulaal, cinematographer Rajeev Ravi remains the determined outsider
When cinematographer Rajeev Ravi made his first foray into the Mumbai film industry nearly a decade ago with Madhur Bhandarkar’s Chandni Bar, Tabu, the star of the film, complained that his close-ups had distorted her features. “I was dismayed. I had studied the lives of bar dancers and tried hard to recreate the grim reality behind the fake glamour. That wasn’t the point though. Stars want to look glamorous. It’s not their fault. Bollywood has a way of shaping people,” Ravi says, leaning forward thoughtfully at the roof cafeteria of Pixion Studios in Bandra. Cut to a scene in Gulaal, his latest venture with long-time collaborator Anurag Kashyap. Mahie Gill, a small-town starlet, looks straight into the camera and asks through her tears whether she resembles Tabu. She does. Did Kashyap know about his Chandni Bar experience? Ravi denies it with a laugh.

Ravi has had an uneasy relationship with tinsel town. After Chandni Bar, he left Mumbai to return home to Cochin because he was deeply critical of the industrial film-making set-up. He still refuses to live in the city and believes that anybody who wishes to do original work must leave the place. “After you finish your first project, the norm is to go around offering yourself up for new ones, to market yourself. I didn’t want any of that,” he scowls. But back in Cochin, his mentor and renowned cinematographer Venu had just one question. “He asked me if I could think of one film-maker I wished to work with in Kerala. Quiet honestly, I couldn’t think of any,” he says.

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