Blessy Ipe Thomas’ dream of filming Benyamin’s bestseller Aadujeevitham: The Goat Life went through many stages before it reached theatres in March, 2024. From what seemed like a mirage and, at one point, a nightmare, it became a dream-come-true when Aadujeevitham, a survival drama, swept the 54th Kerala State Film Awards.
It won the awards for best director, actor, adapted screenplay, cinematography, make-up, sound mixing, popular film and processing lab/colourist.
Prithviraj as Najeeb in Aadujeevitham, directed by Blessy. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
With Najeeb, the protagonist of the film, it was a survival drama of sorts for the cast and crew of Aaadujevitham as well. That it would take seven years for the movie to be completed was something no one had envisaged.
“I am not a person who exults over anything. My greatest award and reward have been the acceptance of a film like this by the audience. I can’t even imagine the consequences if viewers had rejected the movie,” admits Blessy.
Eleven years after Blessy made Kalimannu (2013) he returned to cinemas with Aadujeevitham, his magnum opus that narrates the trials and tribulations of Najeeb, who gets trapped in slavery after he reaches Saudia Arabia in search of better prospects. A widely-read novel in Malayalam, the multiple award-winning novel had made Najeeb a household figure among Malayalis.
Amala Paul and Prithviraj in a still from Aaadajeevitham. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Blessy spent seven years to bring Najeeb’s story of endurance to viewers. He says there were times when he felt he might not survive long enough to see Najeeb on screen. “It was not in the desert. I had that feeling right here in my flat in Kochi. In fact, at one point, early in the morning one day, I sat down and wrote all my liabilities on a piece of paper.” He says it was a terribly stressful period when he went through a low.
For Blessy, who had made a mark with his debut film, Kazhcha (2004), it was a period of trials and frustration. From consistently making films that were the talk of the town on account of thematic and narrative diversity, to be engaged with a film for seven years was a trying period.
“I approached the film by paying a great deal of attention to details and nuances and so it took time to write the screenplay of the story.”
The biggest challenge to bring the novel to the screen, Blessy said, was to visually narrate a bestseller that had ignited the reading of Malayalis after a dull phase. “Each person who had read the book would have distinctive visual images in his/her mind, in fact a film itself that they had created in their head.”
Prithviraj in Aadujeevitham, based on the book by Benyamin. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
The filmmaker believes it is like a re-reading of a story when a popular book like Aaadujeevitham is interpreted visually. “The book covers 43 chapters. I had to choose what to adapt and what to leave out. When a literary work comes face-to-face with reality, allowances have to be made and so is the case when it is made into a film.”
As he reiterates, there was no suspense or climax to keep viewers glued to their seat and almost everyone knew the genre of the film and the story.
Although the book talks about the travails of an immigrant abroad, Blessy decided to focus on the “survival drama involved in the book and the desert crossing, about which not much has been talked about in the book”. He feels that by dwelling on the crossing, he was able go beyond the literary work to keep viewers engaged in Najeeb’s efforts to escape from slavery. “That, perhaps, helped them to see the book and the cinema separately. That effort was the biggest challenge.“
The second challenge, he feels, was to ensure the support of a leading actor to put together an expensive film of this scale. Right from the time the film was planned, they were aware that this could only be done in two or three schedules over a year or two. Prithviraj came forward to shoulder this responsibility. “Only an intelligent actor could have understood the dedication required for a role of a lifetime and Prithviraj was aware of that. He completely gave himself to play Najeeb and went through gruelling physical changes to essay the lead character.”
Even choosing the location for the movie became a challenge as Saudi Arabia, where Aadujeevitham was set, refused permission for the shooting.
“But for the cold deserts on China, I must have seen almost all the deserts in the Arab countries and a few in Africa as well. I visited Saudi, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, UAE, and even Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt in Africa. There were questions of logistics, of permissions to be secured and so on. That is how we finally zeroed in on Jordan and Algeria. It is for the first time that any film was probably shot in Tinimoun in Algeria.”
To complicate matters further, the pandemic struck while the cast and crew were shooting in Jordan. They had no idea how long the lockdown would last and when they would be able to return to India or whether they would be able to travel abroad. They were stuck in Jordan for around 70 days.
Blessy says with a laugh that his next film, which is in the planning stage, will certainly not take this long to reach theatres.
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