Celebrating 20 years of Sriram Raghavan: The man, his mojo, and movies

Starring Vijay Sethupathi and Katrina Kaif, Merry Christmas is the most non-Sriram Raghavan film yet. Of course, it’s a thriller and there is a murder but there is so much more to this story of one night that by the time the end credits roll, the mystery and the dead body feel like asides.

Unlike Raghavan’s previous outings Ek Haseena Thi (2004), Johnny Gaddaar (2007), Badlapur (2015), and even Andhadhun (2018), Merry Christmas is not plot-heavy, noisy, graphic, or even fast-paced. It’s a tender, character-driven slow-burn that takes its time to build to the crescendo.

When it finally does hit its highest note, it’s so neatly executed that you don’t even hear the gunshot. And then, in its most pivotal—Yadhoom—moment, it decides to go silent.

That’s Raghavan’s magic. You think you know what to expect. The beauty is he knows it too and wickedly, ever so gently, plays with that knowledge. Few pleasures are more delightful than watching a filmmaker having fun at work and it translating onto the screen. With his directorial debut Ek Haseena Thi turning 20, Raghavan’s almost a veteran but it’s a joy to see that his craft is just as agile, nimble, and experimental.

Though it is unlike anything he’s made so far, Merry Christmas is full of quintessential Raghavan tropes. Motifs galore. If it was rats in Ek Haseena Thi and the number 20 in Badlapur, Merry Christmas has origami swans, teddy bears, and Pinocchio.

The film is his love letter to the Bombay that was before it became Mumbai, soaked in wistful nostalgia and old-world charm, the way Andhadhun was a beautiful homage to Pune. He grew up in the latter. His mother in the former. The affection, the familiarity show. The attachment, in fact, is so strong that barring Agent Vinod, all his films are tethered to either of the two cities.

Then there’s love, the all-consuming, underlining force that makes characters do what they do in Raghavan films. If it is a wronged, wounded woman seeking vendetta in Ek Haseena Thi, it is a small-time smuggler betraying his group members and risking it all to secure enough money to flee with his married lover in Johnny Gaddaar.

If it’s a man obsessed with avenging the murder of his wife and young son in Badlapur, it’s a piano player’s devotion to his craft that leads him into an unbridled mess in Andhadhun. In Merry Christmas, love kills. But it also saves.

Raghavan’s brand of neo-noir thrillers isn’t meant for passive watching. Even if he’s not seducing you with thrill-a-minute or aha moments every five seconds, his films demand your active participation. Watching his movies is as near an experience as one can have to reading a book.

He lets you spin messy, fuzzy yarns, go places obscure and macabre. Just when you begin to feel lost, he yanks you right back to the center. In an age of dwindling attention spans, he’s one of the few filmmakers who is secure enough in his craft and storytelling to want to test your presence, patience. Look into your phone or popcorn tub for two hot seconds and you are sure to miss something crucial.

An incorrigible cinephile himself, Raghavan often inundates you with references and trivia, checking your love for the movies, urging you to catch up. As much as he is taken by exploring the limits of love under duress, he also revels in making strangers share a moment or two of rare intimacy in high-stakes, extraordinary situations.

Whether it be Vikram admitting his crime to Sheshadri in Johnny Gaddar seconds before he kills him, Simi and Akash on the fateful car ride together in Adhadhun, or Maria and Albert dancing and burning paper swans in Merry Christmas, Raghavan’s filmography is richly peppered with eerie serendipity.

If you think it’s brave of a filmmaker to attempt a Hindi-Tamil bilingual movie for the first time at 60 and have the muscle to shoot with different extended casts and crew members for each version, you need to wait for Raghavan’s next. After having spent a lifetime making thrillers, he is currently working on Ikkis, a biographical war drama based on the life of Arun Khetarpal, a decorated war hero of the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War.

I met Raghavan at an awards night in 2018 organised by the media house I was working with then. Fresh off Andhahun’s wild success, he told me life was too short to keep doing the same thing, and that it’s important to continue to experiment. I haven’t forgotten his pithy advice. Turns out he hasn’t either.