Three days have passed since the release of his second movie, Iblis, but Rohith V.S. is still keeping his fingers crossed. “I am yet to gauge the response. The reviews and responses are mixed - many called me up saying they absolutely loved the movie and there have been negative reactions too,” he says.
His second directorial after Adventures of Omanakuttan, both starring Asif Ali, this film is set in an imaginary village ‘Ikkare’ and is narrated with loads of fantasy and magical realism. To fantasy, Rohith prefers the word ‘ride’. It’s a journey from the land of the living to the land of the dead, across the river connecting ‘Akkare’ and ‘Ikkare’. The people, their customs, lifestyle and the setting of the village arouse child-like curiosity in the audience.
“The story is told from the perspective of an innocent child. Naturally, the story and even the movements of the actors are a little animated,” explains Rohith, who saw to it that the magical land and the people there are unique in all terms.
The colourful costumes, art direction, peppy music, yummy dishes and each frame throw hidden surprises. Often, it's the camera that narrates the story. Having followed a visual storytelling technique, wasn't it hard for him to convince the actors about the film's premise and their roles? “Luckily, it wasn't hard. Asif had listened to the story during our Omanakuttan days and he readily agreed. Lal sir, being a filmmaker himself, got the idea when it was narrated. It was Madonna Sebastian who took time to get convinced. When I gave a vague description of the story, she wasn't sure. After a month, I explained it to her frame by frame and it was then she agreed to do it,”recalls Rohith, who had his friends Akhil George and Dawn Vincent supporting him as cinematographer and music composer respectively.
Rohith reveals he has been toying with the idea for long. Narrating those interesting coincidences, he says, "Our script was almost complete when the animation movie Coco hit the screens. Both had a similar thread, and then we lost the ‘first-time-in-the-world’ factor. After we announced the film in November, Ee Ma Yau happened. All these films deal with death. So we had to wait. However, I can confidently say that Iblis is 100 percent original.”
That he got to tell the world a never-told-before story make Iblis all the more special. The director says, “As we have no models, designing the sets and costumes were all instinctive. The isolated place bordered by a river was built at Palakkad. Puppetry is one image we used throughout – how life is a puppetry and death happens when the strings are cut. What we do not know is that if there's a story even after that.”
Iblis discusses how people find happiness in death; Rohith has been cautious about conveying the idea. “The last thing I would want is to give a wrong message. So far, the audience has been very encouraging and I'm glad," says the filmmaker, who is not in a hurry to announce his next. “First, I want to ensure proper and maximum reach for Iblis,” he concludes.
