Veera Dheera Sooran director SU Arun Kumar says he’s shocked seeing girls celebrating a problematic scene from his film Sethupathi: ‘I regret doing that’

Despite the movie earning him significant appreciation and success, SU Arun Kumar is no longer proud of his sophomore directorial venture Sethupathi (2016), the Tamil action drama starring Vijay Sethupathi and Remya Nambeesan in the lead roles. Maintaining that the movie features problematic instances, Arun Kumar, who also penned Sethupathi, recently stated that he did not have the necessary insights at the time to notice such glaringly politically incorrect elements. He also mentioned that the gravity of these themes became clear to him when he began noticing gullible young women celebrating them on social media.

“There are a lot of political issues in Sethupathi. There’s a scene in which the character portrayed by Ramya Nambeesan says, ‘Even if he beats me, he will return after a while and prattle lovingly. For that, I should be here.’ That’s wrong. I didn’t have the intelligence to know better back then. What I did was wrong. I have said this earlier: ‘Our movie will be watched by 1 crore people, whereas our interviews will be watched by only 50,000. So, if we make a mistake in our movies, it’s as if we’ve made it forever.’ What really scared me was when girls started posting that scene as their WhatsApp status. I regret doing that scene. I can only apologise now, but I will consciously try to avoid making such mistakes in my future films,” he said during a chat with SS Music.

Also Read | Ayushmann Khurrana’s wife Tahira Kashyap confirms battling breast cancer for the second time: ‘Round 2 for me…I still got this’

Story continues below this ad

Mentioning that the scene didn’t seem problematic to him at the time and that it was well-received in theatres, Arun Kumar shared that the true implications of it only became apparent to him after writing Chithha (2023). “In Sethupathi, there’s another scene where their child takes a gun and Ramya’s character suddenly grabs it away. Despite being aware that a weapon should not be given to a child, I didn’t have the awareness to recognise the issue with the previously mentioned scene. I didn’t have the intelligence to comprehend that both people are equal in a relationship. After all, I am a man. When talking about a woman in a movie, I should go to at least 10 women and asked if what’s being depicted is right,” he added.

After making his feature film debut with Pannaiyarum Padminiyum (2014), starring Vijay Sethupathi and Aishwarya Rajesh in the lead roles, SU Arun Kumar went on to helm four more films, most of which received widespread acclaim. His most recent directorial Veera Dheera Sooran, featuring “Chiyaan” Vikram, SJ Suryah, Suraj Venjaramoodu and Dushara Vijayan in the lead roles, is currently running successfully in theatres.