Exclusive! The beauty of Suni's Sakath is its tricky yet entertaining screenplay: Ganesh

Golden Star Ganesh was shooting for his second collaboration with director Suni, a film called Sakath, when the pandemic struck and everything went into standstill. Even though permissions to resume film shootings came a few months later, the actor took time to get back into it. But once he did, Ganesh has been working almost non-stop on not one but three films, Sakath, Tribble Riding and Gaalipata 2, all of which he’s completed and will arrive in theatres soon.

The first to release, of course, is Sakath, wherein Ganesh plays a supposedly visually-challenged aspiring musician. But the film, we are also told, is a courtroom drama and the sneak peeks that director Suni and Ganesh have revealed so far seem to point to the fact that the disability is a charade. Is it? “The confusion that we have created in the teaser is whether Balu, my character, can see or not. A lot of what he does and says has people wondering if he is actually visually-challenged, but then you also see him explain his way out of those situations. When you see the film, it will become clear. Until then, audiences may think that he can see after all, but then everything changes,” says Ganesh, refusing to confirm our doubt.

The film, adds Ganesh, begins with Balu participating in a music reality show as a visually-challenged contestant and explores how his life changes thereafter. “Balu’s dream is to become a popular musician, but he lands up on the show because of the show host, played by Surbhi Puranik. How his life changes thereafter is the crux of the plot. The teaser also shows Balu in a court, in the witness stand. Why is he there and what has he ‘seen’? How does he prove that he is a witness? The screenplay is tricky, yet entertaining and the challenge for us was to ensure a fun ride without making a caricature of people with visual disabilities,” adds the actor.

Sakath was a concept that Suni had told Ganesh about while they were planning their earlier collaboration, Chamak. “He had given me a one-line brief for Sakath, while he had a bound script ready for Chamak, which was an interesting romantic comedy, so, obviously, I decided to go with the latter first. In fact, back then, he wanted to call that film Sakath, which was later changed to Chamak. When the time came to collaborate again, there was a question of what to call the project and during the script narration, all that I kept saying was ‘sakath aagide’, and hence, the title,” says Ganesh.

But the beauty of working with Suni, adds the actor, is that even with a bound script, there’s always scope for improvisation. “Suni is open to ideas that elevate the script. For instance, if I tell him that doing a scene a certain way will make it funnier than it already is, he will allow it. I can take the liberty of giving him my feedback and ideas only because of the rapport we share. I have a certain comfort factor here, which I share with very few other filmmakers, like, for instance, Yogaraj Bhat. But this doesn’t mean that Suni will listen and adopt everything I suggest. If he doesn’t think it works for the narrative or isn’t a good enough improvisation, he will veto it then and there. As long as there is an idea that works for the greater good of the film, Suni will change things around even at dubbing stage and that, I believe, works well for the final product,” Ganesh signs off.