Theatre has been his forte all these years, from School of Drama days, through mini screen, advertising stint and even when he moved to Canada; but when Sujith Vigneshwar decided to wield the megaphone, he was pretty sure about his decision. When he decided to make his directorial debut with Rameshan Oru Peralla, he didn’t have to think twice about the lead actor; he chose Manikantan Pattambi.
The film, also starring Rajesh Sharma, Divyadarshan, Krishnakumar, Shylaja and Arun Nayar, revolves around the life of an online taxi driver who starts off on an Independence Day ferrying a group of youngsters to a hill station. While crossing many hurdles on their way, the movie delves into the life of Rameshan, a Good Samaritan, who struggles with ill-health. “Rameshan Oru Peralla is a realistic thriller that throws light on the lacunae in Indian judicial system. Considering the commercial viability, I could have tried Fahadh Faasil or Suraj Venjarammood, but Manikantan was my only choice to play Rameshan. Manikantan is an actor with great potential and his craft has not been used by our filmmakers so far. I was his junior at School of Drama and know very well about his subtle style of acting and his passion towards art,” opines Sujith, a native of Neyyattinkara in Thiruvananthapuram.
In filmmaking too, Sujith goes with his intuitions. It was one of his instinctive decisions to shoot the film without a script. “We had the storyline and the scene sequences ready. A day before the shooting, we discussed, brainstormed and rehearsed and the next day, we shot it. The advantage is that the output is realistic. We didn’t want to tread the usual path of cinematic pattern,” he says. No wonder Sujith won the best debutant director award at the Alberta Film Festival where the film was premiered to positive reviews.
Before entering filmdom, he was a media professional and a theatre person. A senior programme producer at various TV channels, Sujith has been an actor, compère and advertising professional before joining a new media firm in Canada. All the while, he has never let go of his greatest passion – theatre. At Canada too, he performs one-man shows – plays like Dineshante Katha, Velichenna, Puttum Kadalayum and Immigrant. In Immigrant, a one-and-a-half-hour show, Sujith plays six characters. “It was during my stint as an ad film maker that I fell in love with filmmaking. I brought out a few short films and now, this movie. I’m a self-taught filmmaker,” he quips.
Through his debut movie, Sujith unveils the flaws in judicial system. “Anybody can get trapped in our legal system. Look at the case of Nambi Narayanan, the scientist who was accused of espionage. It took him 24 years of legal struggle for the case to reach a conclusive point. One man’s whole life was doomed in the process; it’s a haunting thought. Rameshan also faces such situations. And Rameshan is not a person, it could be me or you or anyone,” he says.
As the film gears up for release on Friday, Sujith is excited about how the responses would be. “This is a time the gap between art house and mainstream is narrowing down. Rameshan Oru Peralla is my attempt to blend art and entertainment. I just want the audience to take home something from my film when they leave their seats, something that lingers in for a few days. If that happens, I’d consider myself successful,” he concludes.
