A film that goes where few have ventured
While working on the script for her latest film Moothon, or The Elder One, at the Sundance Lab three years ago, Geetu Mohandas kept worrying about how she would transfer it to the big screen. Would the characters seem too edgy? Could she afford to shoot at the locations she wanted? Until, she says, her mentors at the lab gave her some game-changing advice: “When you’re writing, don’t be a producer”. And so she set out to write the script she wanted, buoyed by the mentors’ additional advice. “They said ‘write anything you want, go wild’.” Then came the reality check, sort of: “So I’m like ok, how much wild? And I wrote wild, and they said not that much…and when you come to shooting, the producers say, uh, not that much…and you bring it down.”
Even so, Mohandas has delivered a compelling film that boldly goes some places where Indian filmmakers rarely venture. For starters, it is set partly in Lakshadweep, a novel locale to Indian viewers outside of globetrotting, costume-changing backdrops for songs. It also provides a homosexual backstory to its central character, played by Malayalam film star Nivin Pauly. The film, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September, also opened the Jio MAMI film festival in Mumbai on October 17.
Moothon is mounted as a bilingual film in a Malayalam-like dialect used in the island territory and Hindi, with its Hindi dialogues penned by filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who is also one of its producers. It’s about the quest of a teenager who sets out alone in a rickety fishing boat from a Lakshadweep village in search of an elder brother who had gone to Mumbai years ago. Mulla is armed with nothing more than a telephone number of a fellow villager, also now believed to be living in the big city.
When Mulla manages to reach Mumbai, the teenager is flung straight into its underworld, complete with criminal gangs, prostitutes and groups of orphans, all consumed in a fierce struggle to survive. One of the bosses in this petty criminal niche is Bhai, a stocky, drugaddled, ruthless tough played superbly by Pauly in a role that’s vastly different from his usual fare as a popular star. He had to bulk up considerably for the part, a task that he carried out gleefully, according to Mohandas. “He was so happy (to eat), but that was the exciting thing for me, the fact that he’s got commitments with other films. That an actor would do it is one thing, a star doing that is something else,” she said in an interview in Toronto.
Yet Bhai’s physical appearance was the least of Pauly’s challenges. The film also delves into his past as Akbar, a fisherman, also from Lakshadweep. Akbar’s tranquil life is jolted by the brief return of his boyhood friend, the mute Aamir, who had gone away to Mumbai but has been summoned back by his family so that they can find him a local bride. As the young men lock eyes during a traditional kuthu ratheeb ritual that involves piercing oneself to the accompaniment of Sufi hymns, Akbar is awakened to his homosexual identity. As they explore their mutual desire, communicating tenderly through sign language, the spectacular beauty of Lakshadweep forms an idyllic backdrop. Predictably, their affair doesn’t go down well with the orthodox villagers.
In an interview during TIFF, Pauly talked about stepping out of his comfort zone for this role. “I badly wanted to do it but since it was so powerful, I didn’t know how to answer yes to it. Later, I told Geetu that I need a complete revamp, this is not a film which I've done so far, so I need to find Akbar in a better way,” Pauly said. That included an acting workshop with Atul Mongia. “He (Mongia) took out the inhibition to approach scenes, which was much needed for me. So from that moment I started believing in myself and felt like I could do Akbar, and I am Akbar.”
Mohandas added that Akbar’s character was not originally gay, but evolved organically after she visited Lakshadweep and worked on the script. “I saw so many closet homosexuals in that space and I just thought that I needed to tell their story,” she said. “And I think that a big star being part of a film like this is a big political statement and it’s much needed.” Similarly, Akbar was also originally located in a fishing village near Kochi, but Mohandas moved it to Lakshadweep to sharpen the contrast between his laidback life in a scenic village, and the frenetic pace and brutality of Mumbai’s seedy underworld.
Apart from Dipu’s heart-stealing performance as Mulla, another intense part in the film is that of the manic Salim, Bhai’s sidekick in Mumbai. Mohandas zeroed in on Shashank Arora for the part as soon as she watched Brahman Naman at Sundance. Mohandas said, “I knew that there was this certain madness and energy that he brought, just being himself, that I wanted for his character.”
Parts of Moothon evoke memories of Mira Nair’s 1988 film Salaam Bombay, and there are some portions that seem facile, as for instance, Mulla managing to reach Mumbai despite the ramshackle fishing boat capsizing soon after it leaves the shores of Lakshadweep. Still, Mohandas keeps a tight rein on the twists and turns of the plot and extracts powerful performances from her cast.