KOCHI: The age-old tussle between lines and colours finds a truce in the works of Joshy Benedict. His latest animated short, ‘Touched as Water’, gives lines the space to stretch their legs and tell a story steeped in emotional depth. Stripped of elaborate detail, the film allows its minimal drawings to carry the weight of an emotion that words might struggle to capture.
Joshy makes elements recede into the distance or emerge towards the viewer, but never lets this play with perspective take him away from the core of the story. The film follows two brothers and the grief that follows their separation.
This mastery of lines won him his second National Film Award for Best Animation Film in the non-feature category. His first came for ‘A Coconut Tree’, a play of colours set against the mundane yet meaningful life of a family. Narrated like from the eyes of a cinematographer, the film lets colours, light and shadows evolve with the story and the moods of its characters.
The two visual languages meet in his graphic novels, ‘Koprachevu’ and ‘Pannimalathu’, where lines and colours come together with remarkable finesse. There is little pomposity in the works of the two-time National Award-winning animator.
His stories take place in familiar settings of rural Keralam, preserving the nuances of a world where many everyday elements have already disappeared or are on their way out. A petromax in ‘Pannimalathu’, a kopra godown, a steel shaving set, or the windlass, rope and bucket of a well in ‘Touched as Water’. Even the ordinary rhythms of life in ‘A Coconut Tree’ find a place in his frames. There are conspicuous absences too. Mobile phones and modern buildings rarely enter his animated worlds.
Asked about this, Joshy says he may simply be drawn to nostalgia and to settings that suit the stories he wants to tell.
“Those are not conscious choices. It is the world I grew up in, so perhaps these settings emerge naturally from memory. Once I have a clear idea for a story, I build the narrative around it,” Joshy says.
His characters are rarely free of conflict. They carry their worries through ordinary routines until an encounter with nature offers them a different way of looking at life.
“Nature is the supreme power over us. I believe it stands by us through difficult times, and that is something I place my hopes in. I also feel that melancholy stays with people longer than happiness. Happiness comes and goes like a fleeting spark, while sorrow often lingers. That feeling sometimes becomes the starting point of a story,” Joshy says.
The idea for ‘Touched as Water’ began with a well.
“I was struck by the depth of a well, something our eyes can never fully comprehend. It reminded me of deep sorrow. Some sadness remains buried within us, much like the water hidden inside a well,” he says.
The film follows twin brothers whose lives revolve around farming. When one falls ill and becomes confined to bed, the other takes care of him. His death leaves the surviving sibling to grapple with a loss when nature comes to play. In one of the closing moments, the dead brother’s reflection appears in the water.
“The resemblance between the brothers, deliberately built into their character designs, makes the image particularly affecting. Animation offers possibilities that a camera may not always be able to capture,” he says.
In ‘A Coconut Tree’, too, the landscape almost moves in step with the character’s feelings. Set over a single day, the film uses changing colours, light and shadows to trace the emotional shifts of the story.
His fascination with the everyday extends to language. In the Vadakara region, he says, godowns where dried coconuts are stored are called ‘Kopra Chevu’. The expression caught his attention when he came across news reports about such godowns catching fire.
“The word ‘chevu’ did not sound Malayalam to me. It sounded more like a Russian word. That small curiosity eventually became the title of the graphic novel. I believe a story should remain close to its central idea. I prefer subtle details to elaborate explanations and trust viewers to make their own connections. Music also plays an important role in dialogue-free films,” Joshy says.
His own journey into animation began with drawing. As a child, he occasionally came across animation sequences in reels screened before films. But it was ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, which he watched during his Pre-Degree years, that left a lasting impression.
After graduating from the Government College of Fine Arts in Thrissur, he joined an advertising agency. An opportunity at Toonz Animation in Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram, brought him into the world of professional animation.
Working there also exposed him to animated films that dealt with subjects far removed from children’s entertainment.
“I began wondering why Indian animators could not explore similar possibilities. That question eventually led me to ‘A Coconut Tree’ and ‘Touched as Water’,” he says.
Joshy says the recognition through national awards does not make independent animation any less challenging.
“The process is labour-intensive, with even a second of movement requiring numerous drawings. The animation for ‘Touched as Water’ alone took around seven months. Such production demands also make it difficult to find producers willing to invest in short films,” says Joshy who currently works as a freelance animator.
He hopes to make a full-length animated film someday, with the support of a good team and producer. Until then, he continues to collect fragments of the world around him. A tree catches fire, a well holds its silence, a dilemma of addiction and an unfamiliar word that refuses to leave his mind. Any of them could be the beginning of another film.