For an Oscar winner, Resul Pookutty is very affable. Not just for mediapersons but also for indie filmmakers who approach him. Resul’s latest film is Gour Hari Dastaan — The Freedom File , a biopic on freedom fighter Gour Hari Das. He has constantly supported such films without limiting himself to big-budget blockbusters.
Resul says, “It’s a blessing that I’m still approached by a variety of people with interesting subjects. I enjoy working in big-budget films, but it’s when I work in independent cinema that my needs as an artiste get satiated. That’s perhaps why I have been able to work in American and European cinema, apart from films in so many Indian languages.”
For Resul, working in films goes beyond translating a filmmaker’s vision onto screen. “When I choose a film, it’s primarily driven by the story, along with my confidence in the director. As a technician, I work towards enhancing the experience of watching a film. But during the making, I need to use my skill set and knowledge to further what I’ve already done before. It’s by continuously raising the bar that I become an artiste beyond a technician.”
Resul says it was the life of Gour Hari Das that moved him to take up Gour Hari Dastaan — The Freedom File . “It’s the story of a freedom fighter whose struggles with the government to acquire a certificate to establish his identity lasted longer than that with the British rule. We knew who our enemies were before Independence, but that isn’t the case now. A patriot who has turned against his own country…the story needed to be told.”
Gour Hari Dastaan traces the life of the protagonist across 50 years, presenting Resul with the scope to depict time through sound. “The film opens with a pre-Independence march in the Forties cutting to the present day. By interchanging the sounds of a steam engine and that of an electric train, I’ve been able to sweep time… a stretch when Bombay became Mumbai. Using the surround sound format, we have also incorporated ‘confinement’ as a recurring theme to underline the confinement one experiences within the walls of a government office.”
The sound designer admits that winning the Oscar has created interest in an often-overlooked craft within filmmaking. “It’s not just contemporary filmmakers, even frontbenchers have begun to pay close attention to sound design. A visually challenged man spoke to me after attending a screening of my Malayalam film, Pazhassi Raja, and told me that he felt like he had seen the entire film frame by frame. There’s no bigger compliment to a sound designer than that.”
An alumni of the Film and Television Institute of India, does the ongoing strike against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as chairman affect him? “It is very, very sad. This shouldn’t be the state of a premier institute like FTII. Would the government have treated an IIT or IIM so poorly? More than 50 per cent of the students from IIT and IIM choose to work outside India, but 99 per cent of FTII students work here, contributing to the world’s largest film industry. The principals of even junior colleges are required to hold a master’s degree and to say that educational qualifications are unimportant in FTII is a travesty. A film school is a place of free thinkers where students are encouraged to invent their own languages of cinema. Free thinking was once considered a nationalistic quality and to think of it being called anti-nationalist…”
