PremiumIrudhi Suttru: Sudha Kongara thanks R Madhavan for teaching her to ‘fly unfettered’
On Teacher’s Day, the filmmaker gets nostalgic about how Irudhi Suttru came about only because of Madhavan’s support
Last Updated: 09.20 PM, Sep 05, 2023
Today, Sudha Kongara is a much feted and very popular filmmaker owing to her films like Irudhi Suttru and, more recently Soorarai Pottru. Before Irudhi Suttru turned her fortunes around, Sudha had not done a film in six years, after her first, Drohi, tanked at the box office. “Badly written, decently directed, but just not enough. I am not ashamed of the film but was truly ashamed of myself at not having performed better in that opportunity,” wrote Sudha on social media in a long post about how she came back from the brink of wanting to quit cinema only because of R Madhavan.
Irudhi Suttru, a sports drama about a failed boxer who turns mentor to an amateur female talent, won multiple awards and received positive feedback. But getting to that point, she writes, happened only because Madhavan said he’d do the film only with her. She wrote, “Maddy, do you remember the day I came over to your place and narrated four lines of ZARA, as it was called then? And you said DROP everything and DO THIS, this is your calling card. I went back home and wrote it out over seven months. You loved it and said you were on.”
But having her leading man onboard was not enough. No producer was ready to back her and the actresses she approached to play a boxer also did not find it appealing enough. In those 4 years Sudha told Madhavan to get a better more successful director onboard and that she’d give them the story. “I told you (Madhavan) I’m your white elephant. I had personal issues and needed to take off for a few months and I said you go ahead. And you said, ‘If you don’t do this I’m not doing it with anyone. This film is YOU’.”
There was a lot of criticism around about the title, the first scene being immoral, that people would never like the character, that there were too many cuss words, to get an established actress and, that it would not work in Tamil. Madhavan, she reminisces, was the only one who was bullish and kept telling her that she was making an epic. “Never forget that, and do everything your heart says is right, I’m with you!” Madhavan told her. Sudha adds that the actor never asked her to sell her soul or compromise in anyway. Eventually, only one other person stood with them, their producer Sashikanth. “Today when I watch the audiences in the rain cheering for Madhi and Prabhu, I have only this to say… Thank you Maddy, my friend, for teaching me to fly unfettered. And thank you Sashi for letting me fly unfettered. Thank you for putting faith in this girl who was just a flop director. Or this director would have been dead before her birth,” she wrote.