CHENNAI, INDIA, JUNE 3, 2014 (Hindustan Times): National Award winning art director Thota Tharani has played Swami Chinmayananda, a Hindu spiritual leader who inspired the formation of Chinmaya Mission, in an upcoming English documentary The Quest, scheduled to release in August.
R.S. Prasanna of Tamil comedy Kalyana Samayal Saadam fame has directed the film, which is currently in its post-production stage. “When you do a biopic of a character that has lived in the recent memory, it’s difficult to find someone who can act as well as physically resemble that person. When we were discussing this with my team, my costume designer Preethi, who worked as an assistant to Thota Tharani, suggested his name,” Prasanna said. “She told us he looks exactly like Chinmayananda. Two days later, I was at his office and he agreed to do the film without any remuneration. He said he’s doing so because it’s for a spiritual purpose,” he said.
Prasanna says Hollywood filmmaker Martin Scorsese was his biggest inspiration behind this project. “I was inspired by Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and Kundun. Here was a director who was not known for his spiritual leanings, yet he made these two wonderful films. That influenced me a lot and in a way I saw these two films in this project,” Prasanna said.