“Evil is more dramatic. Gaur Hari Das was a good man without any blemishes. Depiction of the good is always a challenging job,” says journalist C.P. Surendran, who had to take a few liberties with creating the on-screen character based on the freedom fighter who got his due only much late in his life.
Gaur Hari Dastaan , directed by Ananth Mahadevan, was screened at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) on Wednesday. When Mr. Surendran was approached to do the film, he was not very interested in taking it up owing to this goodness of Das’s character. Then, he drew in on his own experiences, like his father’s fight with Alzheimer’s disease.
“The questions the doctor asks him in the film were the same questions that were asked to my father. Even the relationship between Das and his son is not like that in real life,” he says.
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The film is a fine balance between Ananth’s attention to detail and Surendran’s tendency to stay far away from reality. Before writing the script, he had only one meeting with the real-life Gaur Hari das. “He comes across as an infinitely patient man who just refused to surrender. In a way, he was lost among those files and never really had time for anything else in his life,” he says.