Who can forget the Asian Paints ad? A bunch of painters cheerfully painting a huge mansion, happily proclaiming that it’s time to bid adieu to mosses and fungi. Well the leader of the pack is now in a new avatar Mr.Thalaivasal Vijay portrays the life and times of Sree Narayana Guru in the movie Yugapurushan and well we got into a telephonic interview and he spoke at length about his character and the movie at large.

He said he was surprised when he got a call asking him to come down to Trivandrum to do  a makeup and photo shoot for the role of Sree Narayana Guru his self-doubts were removed once he got into the groove. He had no previous knowledge of Sree  Narayana Guru and he was surprised and felt blessed on being able to play the lead of someone like Sree Naryana Guru who is revered in Kerala and his moment of joy came when actor Salim Kumar hugged him on the first day of the shoot.

The elaborate make-up by Pattanam Rasheed came in for a lot of praise and he narrated an incident about how after putting on his make-up actor Mammooty praised Pattanam Rasheed on his make-up who is usually very thrifty when it comes to compliments. He became a vegetarian, read a lot of books on Gurudevan and said it was challenging to portray since there wasn’t any videos depicting Gurudevan except for a few documentary. The director R.Sukumaran was of the opinion that it would be better if he did not watch those.

He considers it to be a great blessing and believes he was guided through out and how the team at Yugapurshan made him happy and took extra efforts to make it a successful project. He was profuse in his thanks to AV.Anoop the producer who went out of the way to ensure he was comfortable even getting him a dentists chair while working on the make-up. He looks forward to the movie and believes that it is one of the most important projects of his career.

Interview cine actor Mr. Jagahty at the Yugapurushan Movie set speaks about the movie.

Mohan Sitara has composed the music for Yugapurushan and he was understandably excited about his new project. He spoke about his entry into films through the Navodaya banner in 1985 and his first movie was “Onnu Muthal Poojyam Vere” relased in 1986. A call from Director R.Sukumaran five years ago paved the way for his entry into the movie Yugapurushan. First he was slated to team with Yusuf Ali Kecheri but later he teamed up with  Kaithapuram Damodaran Namboothiri.

The songs were composed taking into account that the situations were almost a century old. The film consists of four songs and two poems of Kumaranasan. It was easy working on the poems as it was tuned already. He mentioned how he was under no strain whatsoever during the whole project. All the four songs are tuned for separate situations. The first songs deal with caste and its effect on humanity. When the guru takes penance all these atrocities based on caste hurts him and he goes amidst the people and this forms the situation of the first song.

The next is song is about the Aruvikkara movement and the people associated with it. The movie features only three songs and one song was omitted due to the length of the song but it will feature in the album. Yugapurushan is the first of its kind and everything from the orchestra and final mixing has been given utmost care and attention and everything in the songs evokes an old world charm . Working with Kaithapuram is a joy he reveals stating that how there would be music for his lyrics and lyrics for Mohan Sitara’s music stating that they gel very well. Yesudas has sung a song and so have Unni Menon the rest of them being new comers.

He is very confident that the songs will be noticed at the national level and is completely satisfied with it. He said how he felt good about the whole movie and said it was hard to call the lead actor by his name as his performance was exceptional and so was the rest of the crew and he said was looking forward to seeing Yugspurushan like all.

Art Direction Krishan Kutty of Yugapurushan talked about his experiences in working for Yugapurushan. To the first query about how he got involved in this movie he replied stating that he got involved during the initial stages of the film itself going to places like Aruvipuram  to take measurements and visiting other temples established by him.  We moved to the challenges faced by the art crew and his view was that being a movie highlighting the ideologies of Sree Narayana Guru it was inevitable that every situation reflected it.

The temples that he made including the Sivagiri could not be used today as it was a period film and shots were required that highlighted the events before and after the setting of these temples.  The temples of today are much different than what it was at the time of construction and we couldn’t use them since they did not reflect or was similar to the times at which they were constructed. This made the team visit those temples like Sivagiri , Aruvipuram and others and to get a fell and take images so that we could reconstruct them to the times of days of Sree Narayan Guru.

It was a challenging task we had to visit the place, take measurements , photographs understand the landscape, the history to recreate that ambience and finding suitable locations to erect sets as even more challenging , as places similar to those had to be found without electricity, and other modern amenities dotting the landscape to recreate the feel of those days. Regarding the duration of erecting the sets he said there wasn’t a definite time period but it did take considerable amount of time in finding the proper destination and we did find beautiful locations to erect those sets. The director Mr. R.Sukumaran did collect a lot of photographs of various location associated with Sree Narayan Guru and those helped immensely in creating the sets.  To a question regarding how important is this film in his career he said in his career spanning over 30 years starting with Priyadarshan and Sathyana Anthikad films, and working with them to create huge sets and the highlight was erecting a Banglore street in Chennai he said the works of Yugapurushan was one of the best and magnanimous and the biggest of his life and he was happy to do it.

He said that this movie is to be watched by all sections of the people. In this age where love and other emotions are fading , when  people lose track of each it would be wonderful if people can imbibe the teachings of Gurudevan. He considered as a blessing of God to able to work in this movie and his grace was present on all the occasions an throughout this whole project. As a final word as a message the team of Yugapurusan he said this movie is something to be watched teaching people to lead the path of happiness as envisioned by Sree Narayana Guru .

Here is a podcast of an interview with the art director of yugapurushan Sri. K. Krishnan kutty

Podcast: Download

On a bright Sunday morning I stepped into the house of director R.Sukumaran who has left indelible footprints in the sands of the Malayalam movie industry in the form of Rajashilpi and Padamudra. He ushered me into his spartanly furnished house . A painted portrait of Sree Narayana Guru hung over the wall of which he later told me was painted by him. A painter at heart his painting had an aura which was hard to ignore. The simplicity in him humbles you and he has no qualms in opening up to a novice like me sharing all that he had about the movie .

He stressed one important thing that the purpose of the movie is to get the message of Sree Narayana Guru to the people by not just showing him or his life but his sufferings the pain that he had to undergo that is the essence of the movie, the totality that sums up the relevance of the movie in this era of hatred, violence, terrorism  and other social malice and movies being the popular medium he couldn’t  have chosen anything better.  The story of the painter turned director is enchanting but more enchanting was the making of Yugapurushan. Fifteen years in the making and into the sixteenth year he has not lost an iota of interest in the movie.

He brought some yet to be released posters with him to show me .  Like a child holding his favourite toys, he beamed and showed them to me one by one asking what he missed in each poster. I could only sit and admire his devotion to the medium. I kept my pen and notepad down I just wanted to listen to what he had to say and not miss anything of it. I made sure I was empty and not full for a cup that’s full can’t receive more.  Sree Narayan Guru was a childhood passion something that he held close to his heart , collecting stamps , following anything remotely close to Gurudevan . He had this feeling that h he should make a movie on Gurudevan even when he was nowhere near to the film industry. The passion lingered and today we are at the threshold of seeing something magnanimous, an epic mind you it isn’t a documentary as he stresses but a  regular movie a story that is told in  a regular movie format with all the frills and thrills something that he believes will take the movie more closer to the audience and not just the critiques  .

The story board contains over 2000 hand drawn images and the script was all done and set and the year 2009 saw the completion of the project. We dived into the cast and the process for picking up the actors to suit the characters was a long and tedious process. Similarities to real life characters were an important criteria in selecting the artists to portray the characters. Dr.Mammootty was initially chosen to portray the character of Sree Narayan Guru after extensive sketching  and scrutiny . He accepted the role but after going a bit deep into the character he was of the opinion that he wouldn’t be able to do much justice to the character and asked director R.Sukumaran to find a suitable replacement and he would be happy to portray another character in the movie. So after extensive search involving scrutinizing of more than 5000 profiles editor Sai Suresh stumbled upon Thalaivasal Vijay and seeing close resemblance to Sree Narayana Guru referred it to the director. He said that Thalaivasal Vijay was cast after extensive trials involving costume at Chennai, Trivadnrum and Cochin and well to get into the skin of the character he studied about Gurudevan, became a vegetarian  till the project was complete ,shed weight and well the director is happy for his excellent portrayal. Sacrifices the epitome of perfection. Mammootty  essays the role of K.C.Kuttan, an ardent follower of Gurudevan who is almost a rebel. He stressed on the need that what Gurudevan needs is not followers but people who can put into practise what he preaches.

The movie has two subplots which highlights the relevance of Guru’s teachings. One involves Jagathy Sreekumar portraying  the role of a drunkard who bullies his wife essayed by Kalpana. Into their lives comes Gurudevan leading Jagathy Sreekumar into the path of righteousness. Another sub plot revolves around the evils of casteism and the travails of a couple. Kalabhavan Mani essays the role of a pulayan who is ridiculed in the society due to his caste status. Into his life enters Navya Nair an educated Brahmin girl and they marry much to the fury caste Hindus and Kalabhavan Mani gains entry to the very place which he has been barred.

A wholesome movie that’s how he describes it complete with action, songs, plots and sub plots running for duration of two and half hours. The movie is dotted with four songs written by Kaithapuram Damodaran Namboothiri set to tune by Mohan Sitara and also includes a poem written by Kumaraansan and verses by Sree Narayana Guru all set to tune by Mohan Sitara. It was time to bid adieu and I bid him farewell with a Namaste I could see that the Sree Narayana Guru mounted on the wall was smiling. I left with a feeling that well we have something at last a capsule of the life and times and teaching of the revered Guru to be swallowed and this one will be a sweet pill for sure. It was dusk almost, the birds singing the sun into a lullaby as it set into Arabian Sea and coming January another sun is bound to rise much to the tunes of R.Sukumaran.

The characters portrayed by others , well are for another post.  Right now I want to sink in and absorb all that transpired between us.