Scripting for the silver screen
P.K. AJITH KUMAR
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T.A. Razak believes that there is more to cinema than entertainment. He says each film must have a positive message for society.
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This is the 25th anniversary of my play ‘Unarthupattu’ and Arangu, the troupe I founded, is planning to stage it once more.
Rooted in reality: T.A. Razak’s scripts are inspired by contemporary issues.
When the late director A.T. Abu needed someone with a literary background to help him with the making of ‘Dhwani,’ somebody suggested T.A. Razak’s name.
“I was surprised when I got that call from Abu. Cinema wasn’t in my dreams at that time, though I was writing and directing plays besides acting in them, even as I was working at the Malappuram office of Kerala State Road Transport Corporation,” says Razak during an interview at his house in Kozhikode. He joined Abu’s crew as an assistant director. Thilakan, who played a memorable character in ‘Dhwani,’ was impressed by the young man, recalls Razack.
First screenplay
“After the film was complete, Thilakan took me along to his house in Thiruvananthapuram and made me write a play. He also introduced me to G.S. Vijayan, who was looking for a story for his maiden film as a director. That was how I got the opportunity to write my first screenplay, ‘Ghoshayathra.”’
However, the film did not do well at the box office. Few films in Malayalam have told a story with a Muslim backdrop as realistically as ‘Ghoshayathra’ did. “The film didn’t do well primarily because it was released at the wrong time, during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims don’t go to cinemas. But I was fortunate that another film of mine ‘Vishnulokam,’ was released before ‘Ghoshayathra.’ And that film, directed by Kamal with Mohanlal as the hero, was a box office hit,” recounts Razack.
But he says he doesn’t aim at box office success when he writes a screenplay. “I don’t see cinema as entertainment alone. I believe a film is a good medium to popularise positive messages. I have tried to do that in my films. The screenplay I am writing is about how circumstances in Kerala encourage people to turn into alcoholics. Mammootty plays the main character, an autorickshaw driver, and M. Padmakumar is the director.”
In ‘Kanakkinavu,’ he had dealt with religious harmony, in ‘Bhoomigeetham,’ he had focussed on environmental issues such as encroachment of rivers and sand-mining, and in the more recent ‘Perumazhakkalam,’ he aesthetically highlighted the rare virtue called forgiveness.
“The characters of ‘Kanakkinavu’ were based on people I know well. ‘Bhoomigeetham’ was perhaps ahead of its time; the issues the film discussed are hot topics in Kerala today,” he says.
He conceptualised the story of ‘Perumazhakkalam,’ his best work yet, after reading a newspaper report about a case in Qatar.
“A Malayali was convicted of murder but he wouldn’t have been awarded the death penalty if the victim’s relatives had forgiven him, as per the law in that country. I was following the case, and was disappointed to find that the man wasn’t forgiven. I wondered what would have happened if he was forgiven and that thought became ‘Perumazhakkalam,’ which has been appreciated even by international audiences. Kamal, who directed the film, still travels with the film at international festivals.
“Kamal told me that at a film festival, a German told him in chaste Malayalam that she loved the film and asked him who the writer was; she was the great granddaughter of Herman Gundert. I was, however, hurt when I read the news that the film was going to be remade into Hindi (‘Dor’) by Nagesh Kukkunoor. When I called up the producer he told me that he had had a discussion with Nagesh,” says Razak.
State film award
‘Perumazhakkalam’ fetched him the 2004 State film award for the best story. He had won awards for the best screenplay for ‘Kanakkinavu’ (1996) and ‘Ayirathil Oruvan’ (2002).
But, more than those awards, he cherishes the recognition by M.T. Vasudevan Nair who had mentioned his name as a promising scenarist of the present generation in an interview in Friday Review.
“V.R. Sudheesh phoned me to tell me that M.T. had mentioned my name when asked about the scriptwriters of the younger generation. A little later, director Hariharan called me from Chennai and said that I had won a national award. He was right; no award can be bigger than the acknowledgement from M.T., whose ‘Nirmalyam,’ I believe, is the greatest screenplay ever written in Malayalam,” says Razak.
“I had begun writing plays when I was 13, while a student at Government High School, Kondotty (Malappuram). Actually this year is the 25th anniversary of my play ‘Unarthupattu’ and Arangu, the troupe I founded, is preparing to stage it once more. I really miss theatre and am planning to write a play soon,” says Razak.
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