The Problem with Aadujeevitham / Goat Life

there is a problem with Aram and films like Aram and it's not just about the problems in the film but actually let me just tell you a recent story but if you have not watched the film please don't watch this video it may contain mild spoilers I know it's been quite a while since I put out a video sorry about that but there's just been a lot of personal commitments and a lot of work and one part of that work is a project that we are working on and just 2 weeks ago we were supposed to shoot an ad film for this project with actual celebrities two legends who have been such a huge part of my childhood so for this ad Shoot we hired a director a production unit and since we were technically the client or agency the production was supposed to take care of everything and we just had to be there to supervise things they actually gave us our own Caravan to chill but when we went onto the set there was just so much going on there was so many people from so many different departments the director was calling the shots and right next to her there was an assistant director who was making sure everything is clear in the frame there was a dop with this huge hary camera which I was seeing for the first time and to handle that camera there were other camera operators there were focus pullers there were people pushing it on the trolley there were light men there were electricians extras and Junior artists and at a little distance from the shot there was one set up with a monitor with a line editor sitting right in front of it and editing on the spot for one particular shot which is going to come for maybe 20 seconds on screen there was a car setup with green screens all around the actors were sitting inside with the AC on and there were two more guys with handheld ACS blasting air right in the act of face so they never feel any kind of discomfort while outside the car everyone else was working in the typical Chennai summer heat there were at least five or six lights alternating each time because it was supposed to show as if the car was passing through traffic and in front of one light there was one guy just holding a branch of leaves shaking it around as if Shadows of the trees were supposed to fall on the car there were two guys shaking the car just to mimic the movement of the car right next to the director was her associate noting down all the good and not good t akes in a sheet of paper and in the middle of all this while we were watching all this there were guys from production specifically one guy called subu who kept coming to us every half an hour asking us if we need anything bringing us juice coconut water buttermilk tea coffee fruit salad just forcing us to go and have lunch at the setup that they've made and then giving us sweets and soft drinks everything and this entire experience made me realize one thing film making is hard work from finding an idea to writing a script pitching that script to so many people getting people to believe in that script getting producers to fund that script to assembling a crew and convincing actors and all this is just before the shooting begins even after doing all this your film may never take off and if your film gets green lit then it's about actually planning the entire shoot the pre-production and then going and shooting it over months or years at real locations or sets places that might be completely out of your comfort zone and most of all managing hundreds of people and all the logistical nightmares that come with managing so many people and if you you get through this there is months of post-production editing VFX work sound work that happens until the film releases that is if your film releases and after this if a film releases there are critics and mainly audiences who can Trash your film in less than 10 seconds so it's hard work to get a film made it's hard work to make a good film it's hard work to even make a bad film and with arj Witham or goat life director blessie and his team have traveled with this film for over 15 years since production began which is like around half my life and when they finally began to shoot they ran into into hundreds of more struggles like production delays location problems the covid lockdown prv's physical transformation that had him gain weight and then lose all of that weight twice and just the shooting part took around four or 5 years and within this you have to adapt one of kerala's most loved novels of all time you have to stick to your original Vision or even remember what Vision you started with you have to keep motivating an entire crew of people who are counting on you even if on the inside you are filled with self-doubt you're filled with fear and you've lost all hope and here is a problem that lies with films especially like argm for us the audience the question is just because a team has put in so much of hard work should we appreciate it just for that and part of this answer lies in something that loesh kanagaraj said in one of his interviews he said that if filmmakers put in so much hard work so does the audience the audience who buys a ticket with their hard-earned money whether it's a software engineer a bank employee or an auto driver each one of them has to work their asses off to earn earn that 200 rupees with which they have to buy a ticket pay for fuel to get to the theater Beat the Traffic pay for mall parking and then he has to give the biggest payment of all his time so for giving all of this he expects a good product a good film he wants to be entertained and if the film fails on all of these fronts he has all the right to trash it and for me also I think the one thing that I look for in a film more than anything else is emotional engagement a film has to make me laugh or cry or curious or nostalgic or give me some something new A New Perspective to think about that is priority number one hard work social message political correctness all of this is secondary and considering this factor of emotional engagement did RG of them work for me partly the film looks absolutely spectacular you can definitely see the ambition and the scale with the way they've captured the vastness of the desert and the almost nothingness of those goats and naib in the middle of all of it and how they contrast all this with the green moist lush world of Kerala in najib's memories how a raman's haunting score becomes like his sadness his hope His companion in the desert praj looks like he almost gave his life for this performance and this is what hooked me and made me follow his journey and the film's journey also but at the same time beyond all this I felt like I wanted a little bit more the way the film begins with this shot of the stars the galaxy in the night sky transitioning to the reflection of those stars in water the same water which naib then takes a sip out of of and then we see that he is one among all of those goats it's such a beautiful shot visually but in the film there's a scene when he says goodbye to them and that scene is a potential national award winner that scene could have destroyed us but it didn't really move me that much because I never got to experience the bond that he had with the goats a great example is this movie Cast Away where Tom hanks's character gets stuck on this island for 4 years with no one else to talk to except this new friend that he made which is a volleyball a non-living object and when there comes a point when he has to say goodbye to that same volleyball as it just floats away it just destroys you it's such a powerful emotional moving scene and after Decades of watching the film that is something that remains right here and that emotion that bond is something that I didn't get to experience with naib and his goats the second half which is all about his Escape I understand that blessie maybe wanted us to feel like naib in that desert while trying to Escape that infinite hopelessness but for a viewer after a point of time it just starts to get a little tiring a little repetitive so when the film is not 100% in terms of emotional engagement what do you do yes they've put in a lot of hard work but so does every film crew whether it's a good film or a bad film actually 95% of the crew puts in the same amount of effort in every film but the remaining 5% and what they do that's what defines everything and separates Great films from the rest so beyond emotional engagement which is the first metric for me to judge a film for a film like Aram I think there could be a second metric honesty and moments of magic while a film is the sum of its total team effort the driving force of a film are its writing the direction and the performances and in a lot of cases even though you feel there's a lot of effort that's put into a film something doesn't feel honest either you feel that the director didn't do full Justice to the subject you feel that the writing was lazy or sometimes you feel that the actors didn't care enough for each each person this metric might be totally different but still in a lot of films you can sense a lack of honesty but that's not the case with RG withm blessie pitaj and the entire team of goat life could have taken a lot of shortcuts for example they could have just shot in blue or green screens and then just CGI the entire desert experience but they didn't do that they wanted to shoot at the real tough harsh terrains of the desert even if it means they had to cancel their shoot in Rajasthan and move all the way to shoot in the middle of Jordan just so that they could give you that real experience every time the sun rises or sets or how the clouds travel over the desert in the middle of the day it just feels so immersive like you're actually there when najib realizes that he can find Freedom the commitment that pitaj gives to najib's character firstly to lose so much weight to almost become a Skeleton version of yourself and then stripping down naked dragging himself across the sand all the way to the water tank which is just a few meters away and then the Ecstasy that he feels after taking a a bath after God knows how long you feel that emotion that conviction and you say to yourself This is Cinema and if this was an American Film 100% pakka this was an Oscar nomination guaranteed and then there are quite a few scenes like this when he meets his friend after so many years the one with a rolling bottle and so many others when you feel that there's so much honesty so much genuine passion and craft that's gone into creating these moments of magic and that itself is worth the price of my ticket this is what elevates arithm from any other film that uses the bait of hard work and struggle tell me what you thought of the film if the film fully worked for you if you felt that Honesty with which the makers have made this film but for now thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next [Music] video

Channel: Raunaq Mangottil

Views: 47,261

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Id: 8njp5eQ0AWQ

Length: 9min 47sec (587 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024