Director Sasikumaran, who started his career by assisting cinematographer Santosh Sivan, says he narrated the script of his first film, Papparapaam , ‘at least 800 times.’ But he insists the film hasn’t changed much from the first narration to the last. Judging by the trailer, it’s a film you’d be tempted to call ‘wacky’ or a ‘dark comedy’. “But it’s not,” corrects Sasikumaran. “It’s a film without a genre. How can it have a genre when it’s about the life of a person from 1974 to 2016? Doesn’t life have all kinds of situations?”
Nostalgia is one of the emotional forces behind the film’s earlier portions, feels the director. “It’s an effect that is quite difficult to recreate,” he feels, “The devil is in the details... if you make a small mistake, the audience are removed from that time period. We had to make hundreds of props to recreate little things like a tube of Colgate and the Big Fun gum. We also used a newspaper cutting announcing Rajinikanth’s marriage to Latha.”
The film explores the theme of death, with the trailers and posters showing its hero (Kishan) sitting on his own funeral pyre. “It’s not about death in that sense. It’s about a person who dies every day... that’s how his life has turned out.”
A Loyola connection
Papparapaam features 247 actors, each with a distinct role. According to the director, the film’s set was nothing short of a Loyola College reunion, given that almost everyone important on the sets was an alumni. “From the director to the producer (Preetha Prabakaran), actors (Kishan to John Vijay) to even the team behind the poster designs (Vinci Raj, Kannan Sundar), everyone graduated from the college.”
Given the director’s cinematography background, he calls it a “very visual film”. “Every single scene was storyboarded. Our cinematographer, Shanmuga Sundaram, was able to convert that into screen very well. That’s why even a Punjabi friend of mine was able to watch the film, even without subtitles. We didn’t need dialogues to spoon-feed the audience.”
Social eyes
The makers say that even Papparapaam ’s promotional activities will be as unique and wacky as the film itself. “We got all the cast and crew members together to clean up the Pattinappakam beach. We also painted the walls of a local school. While we did it for our film’s publicity, it was heartening to get the support of the local people there. Initially, they thought we were part of Swachh Bharat though,” he jokes.
