Bheema is all set for a new act. Nearly three decades after M.T. Vasudevan Nair's masterpiece novel ‘Randamoozham' (Second Turn), floored Malayalis, the Pandava warrior from the Mahabharata is eyeing the big screen.
M.T.'s celebrated novel is going to be made into a film by Hariharan. M.T. is working on the script, even as Hariharan is doing his own homework for what is perhaps the most ambitious project of the writer-director duo in their association of over 30 years.
Making history
Their last joint effort had resulted in ‘Pazhassi Raja,' the historical that made history in Malayalam cinema. It had lived up to the huge expectations the duo had generated as they were teaming up 18 years after the iconic ‘Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha.'
“After ‘Pazhassi Raja,' I felt ‘Randamoozham' was the obvious – if not the only – choice I had. I needed something that would challenge me further as a director. And ‘Randamoozham,' a brilliant novel that gave a whole new perspective to the Mahabharata, is the ultimate challenge for any director. M.T. felt I could take up that challenge and we have been working on the project for the past few days here in Kozhikode,” Hariharan told Friday Review in an exclusive interview.
The veteran director knows that the expectations would be even greater than ‘Pazhassi Raja' because ‘Randamoozham' is regarded as one of the finest novels ever in Malayalam and has been translated to several languages, including English. The novel narrates the story of the Mahabharata from the perspective of Bheema, the second of Pandu's five sons.
Hariharan is excited at the prospect of giving shape to M.T.'s Bheema, Draupadi, Kunti, Arjuna, Karna and others. Leading stars from different Indian languages will play them on screen. ‘Randamoozham' will just not be a Malayalam film, says the director.
Multilingual film
“It will be released in all the major Indian languages as well as in English, for the novel has its admirers in several languages besides Malayalam, through its translations,” says Hariharan.
Whenever Hariharan and M.T. have put their heads together, there has been magic on the screen, right from ‘Idavazhiyile Poocha Minda Poocha' (1979), their first film together. Remarkably, they never repeated themselves in any of their projects. Most of the M.T.-Hariharan works would find a place among the finest films in Indian cinema's history. Now the big question is: who will play Bheema? Watch this space.
