Karthik Subbaraj on criticism for Jagame Thandhiram: ‘It’s got lot of love and hate’

Filmmaker Karthik Subbaraj’s Jagame Thandhiram, which had its world premiere on Netflix earlier this month, garnered polarizing response from the audience. Reacting to the criticism on the film, Karthik has said the film has earned equal amounts of love and hate.

In an interview to Open Panna, Karthik opened about the criticism on the film and said that he was prepared for it. “We expected this sort of response. When we were making the film, we were prepared with this kind of response. We knew because we were talking about an important issue (immigrant politics), there'll be mixed responses. But, at the same time, the film has succeeded in making a lot of people talk about the issue we've tried to address. There's been a lot of love, a lot of hate for the film. Lots of positivity and negativity. But it's all been good,” Karthik said.

“You only have control over your film till it’s with you. Once you hand it over the audience, you can’t do anything about the response. Since Iraivi, I’ve been seeing a lot of mixed reviews and opinions for my films. Since we spoke about Eelam Tamils and their fight, we even hired a writer from Sri Lanka to work with us. We were happy when we handed over the film but at the same time we were prepared for the response,” he added.

Even though Jagame Thandhiram is a gangster drama at its core, it’s also a film that talks about man-made borders and immigrant politics apart from racism.

Jagame Thandhiram also has a subplot about Eelam Tamils and their fight for survival. Karthik said he wanted to talk about the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils for a long time in his movies.

The film, which also stars Joju George, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Kalaiarasan and James Cosmo, was originally planned to be released in theatres last year. However, the plan got quashed due to the pandemic and the streaming rights were eventually sold to Netflix.