Prithviraj in ‘Aadujeevitham: The Goat Life’
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Unimaginable are the methods through which adversities can reshape a human being. The bodily transformation is the obvious of those. But, Blessy’s Aadujeevitham — based mostly on the real-life story of a man who finally ends up dwelling in slave-like situations in a goat farm in the course of a desert — offers with way more than this.
For occasion, it’s attention-grabbing how the movie treats the ill-fated man’s struggles with language. Initially, when Najeeb (Prithviraj Sukumaran) winds up with a youthful compatriot at a Saudi airport, one sees him struggling to speak in any language apart from Malayalam. This additionally has a big position to play within the unlucky flip their life takes afterwards.
Later, after years of herding goats and camels within the farm, and with no human interplay (apart from the abusive phrases from his ‘owner’), he loses the one language he knew, nearly bleating like a goat when he sees his long-lost buddy. Aadujeevitham, which in any other case is usually crammed with excessive struggling and heightened feelings, has a few such delicate touches. One of the others being an emaciated Najeeb discovering sufficient time to savour a bathtub after lengthy years, within the small window of time that he received to flee from the farm.
Benyamin’s e-book, one of the crucial learn books in Malayalam, on which the movie relies, drowns itself in struggling nearly to the extent of monotony. The movie sticks to the fundamental textual content, apart from a few modifications, particularly in the way it stays away from the way in which Najeeb offers together with his sexual urges.
Aadujeevitham: The Goat Life (Malayalam)
Director: Blessy
Cast: Prithviraj, Amala Paul, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Ok.R.Gokul
Run-time: 173 minutes
Storyline: Najeeb Muhammed heads to Saudi Arabia with the dream of a higher life, however leads to slave-like situations in a goat farm in the course of a desert
Blessy, a filmmaker who has a knack for pushing the emotional levers over the utmost restrict, makes an attempt the identical right here. Indeed, there are some genuinely shifting sequences, however on the identical time, there are fairly a lot that go away one untouched, regardless of all the plain hardships in depicting them on display screen. Some of those repetitive sequences go away one with a sense of vacancy that a one who trudges up a sand dune feels as he sees yet one more expanse of sand extending until the horizon, as an alternative of that anticipated signal of life.
Amid all of the expansive pictures of the blazing scorching desert, huge sandstorms and the quite inconsequential people who’re decreased to a mere dot, Prithviraj holds his personal with some outstanding bodily and emotional transformation to turn into a character who went by way of unbelievable struggling. He does issues that can solely be performed by internalising the character — one thing he’s usually accused of not doing — and pulls off maybe the most effective performance of his profession.
AR Rahman, in his uncommon work for a Malayalam movie, comes up with a soundtrack that fits the theme and setting, with ‘Periyone’ and its varied iterations being the excessive factors. The few sequences of Najeeb’s life again residence are strictly purposeful, apart from that breathtaking shift from the river to the desert on the finish of a track. Amala Paul gets a role so quick that leaves no scope for performance.
If onerous work had been the only real benchmark for a movie, Aadujeevitham would rank proper up there among the many finest. And, fairly a lot of the onerous work does repay too. Yet, it leaves one with the want that the script had sufficient to interrupt the monotony that units in at some factors.
Aadujeevitham: The Goat Life is presently operating in theatres
