THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Zillion possibilities and one unalterable destiny – this sums up the storyline of ‘Ee Adutha Kalathu’ in a nutshell. Arun Kumar’s latest outing is an attempt sans any conventionality bringing forth finesse in all aspects of filmmaking. The film unreels the intertwined destinies of six individuals in a spic-and-span style.
“‘Ee Adutha Kalathu’ has nothing to do with the regular narrative formula involving the hero, heroine, villain and an ornamental comedy track. This film doesn’t feature any stars, it has only actors. It’s a departmental film and also an incident-driven one at it,” explains the director.
The filmmaker, whose first film ‘Cocktail’ was noted for its sleek style, assures that though the film has many tracks it will not have any mind-rattling anomalies. “The film has been shot in a very straightforward style, but with a newness and difference. I didn’t want to manipulate the screenplay to suit any particular style or genre. We haven’t forced on any technical gimmickry to make it look out-of-the-box,” he says.
Arun says the film doesn’t have a conventional storyline as it deals with the accidentality of life in general. “Like a Rubik cube, life too has myriad possible configurations. But when you get right after countless wrong twists and turns, it looks perfect. Our fates might be intimately linked with that of some strangers. Some incidents that define our lives may have a synchrony while others can be mere coincidences.”
The film has Indrajith Sukumaran, Murali Gopy, Anoop Menon, Nishan, Mythili and Tanusree Ghosh playing key characters. “Indrajith’s character belongs to the lowest strata of society while Anoop Menon plays the city police commissioner. Tanusree Ghosh’s character has an unsuccessful tryst with Bollywood and is married to a business tycoon in Kerala. Nishan’s Rustam is a North Indian migrant worker with his imperfect Malayalam. How their fates intersect at a particular point of time makes the core of the film,” says Arun.
The filmmaker says ‘Ee Adutha Kalathu’ is an attempt to evolve a new brand of entertainment. “The film is a unifier of multiple narratives and does not belong to any particular genre. In ‘Ee Adutha Kalathu’ drama and humour are not add-ons, but natural offshoots of the narrative,” says Arun.
The title of the film may sound strange to some, but Arun says it has an elemental secrecy. “Ee adutha kalathu is a term every Malayali keeps repeating on a regular basis. It is not limited to a single context and it also has a tinge of mystery,” he says. Award-winning cinematographer Shehnad Jalal cranks the camera for the film. “Shehnad’s priority in the film is screenplay, not the artistry of the frames,” he says. Arun also adds that the film has not been placed in any particular city in Kerala and the story can happen at any place that is metropolitan in nature. “The film has all the sights and sounds you normally find in the metros. It has nothing that can be specifically attributed to a particular city,” says the director.
The film expected to release next week also stars Lena, Jagathy Sreekumar, Shanthakumari, Baiju, Indrans and Riza Bawa.