KOCHI: A glance at an old sepia tinted photograph and Anjali Menon could feel the floodgates of memories stirring and opening up. The result was ‘Manjadikuru’, a bitter-sweet nostalgic trip set in the 1980s. When the young filmmaker says there are a zillion colours in between black and white she means it. For her, each film is an indulgence through which she explores the tones and textures of life. ‘Manjadikuru’, her debut feature film and ‘Usthad Hotel’, for which she has penned the script, will be hitting screens in a couple of weeks and Anjali says she has butterflies the size of dinosaurs in her stomach. “I feel like a wide-eyed kid going to a new class,” she gushes.
Anjali says scripting Anwar Rasheed’s ‘Usthad Hotel’ had been a jolly good ride. The storyline is replete with an old world charm and much of the tale unspools in an age-old hotel in Kozhikode. “The graph of the film is pretty abrupt as many things happen so quickly. It’s a cross-generation film revolving around a subtle and sensitive grandfather-grandson relationship. We often think the old folks have a obsolete sensibility. The film is about how two generations come to accept each other’s life with a certain sense of kindness and generosity.”
Anjali finds scripting a wonderful challenge which opens up a lot more possibilities. “There are subjects which I absolutely love to pen, but would come out much better if someone else calls the shots. But if I have something I am completely comfortable with, I would give it to no one else. As a director who knows the pulse of the audience, Anwar has done a brilliant job in ‘Usthad Hotel’,” adds Anjali who reveals she was quite skeptical about the unconventional style and craft she used for ‘Happy Journey’.
Though her hands are full with a number of projects in the pipeline, she is anxiously looking forward to the release of her directorial debut ‘Manjadikuru’ in May. For Anjali manjadikkuru is a motif that brings back a torrent of memories and emotions. “It symbolises a certain period in my life and sparks off a spate of nostalgic flashbacks. ‘Manjadikuru’ is a coming of age film celebrating innocence and hope, which at the same time is a trip down memory lane reliving the pangs of guilt,” she says.
Anjali remembers that as the filming of ‘Manjadikuru’ progressed, it turned out that many of her crew members were ‘Gulf kids’. “So there was a live reference system on the sets. We were so sure about using certain period props as we had lived that era. The film rightly captures the collective memory of a milieu making it easy to connect to it,” she says about the film which stars Prithviraj, Thilakan, Rahman, Jagathy Sreekumar, Urvashi, Praveena, Bindu Panikkar, Kaviyoor Ponamma, Sagar Shiyaz, Sharan and Sindhu Menon among others.
Her first film was a hit on festival circuits bagging a string of accolades, but Anjali believes hardcore arthouse is not her forte and her concept of mainstream is quite fluid. “Certain films are pure artistic expressions like paintings and installations. They are so abstract and can have a plethora of interpretations. But when it comes to mainstream the only thing that counts is the audience,” she says.
She says helming a flick is no daredevil task and she is someone who enjoys each and every aspect of filmmaking. It’s a matter of perception. I am no autocrat on sets and there is no unalterable hierarchy. You need a certain level of interpersonal skills and the rest will automatically fall into place. If you work as a big family unit, it really helps,” she says. So when is the next time we get to see her name in the director’s place? “Well, I will set out on another trip by the end of this year. This time it’s going to be a fun outing, a film full of laughter and exuberance,” she signs off.