Express News Service
Indians are film-crazy, but the fandom rarely goes beyond actors, singers, and sometimes filmmakers. The importance of a sound department in cinema first came to light when Resul Pookutty—along with composer AR Rahman and lyricist Gulzar—brought home the Oscar in 2008 for Slumdog Millionaire.
What followed for the sound designer was a decade-and-a-half of big-budget productions such as Kerala Varma, Pazhassi Raja, Enthiran, and Ra.One, 2.0, Pushpa and Radhe Shyam. Over the last couple of years though, Resul had slowed down to focus on his directorial debut, the Malayalam film ‘Otta’, which hit theatres on October 27.
Elaborating on the shift, the FTII graduate says, “Filmmaking is a dream for every student from the institute. We all hope to die having made at least one film.”
Otta (The Loner) is based on entrepreneur Hariharan S’s bestselling autobiography Runaway Children. Resul met the author at an event organised by his NGO, Children Reunited Foundation, where he saw runaway children rejoining with their families.
“It was quite moving, and I got curious about why these kids left their homes in the first place. The following week, Hari came to me and asked if his book could be made into a film,” the 52-year-old director says, adding, “I wasn’t interested initially because an adaptation must always go beyond its source material. To know more about Hari and his life, I kept talking to him, until I was convinced that there was a film in it.”
Two key factors contributed towards changing his mind. First, the reason why a child runs away—a search for freedom that every youngster craves for.
Second, the story of the writer’s bond with Raju, whom he met in Chennai after leaving home.
“Raju had a huge influence on Hari’s life, but it has been years since they met. Though the latter is a successful businessman today, he hasn’t been able to locate the man who laid the foundation for it all. Otta, in a way, is a love letter to that long-lost friend,” the director says.
The roles of Hari and Raju are essayed by Malayalam actors Asif Ali and Indrajith Sukumaran, respectively. The cast also includes prominent actors from the Tamil and Hindi industries, including veterans such as Sathyaraj, Adil Hussain, Rohini, and Divya Dutta.
“I did not choose them for their star power,” Resul says, adding, “I started looking for certain faces based on Hari’s descriptions. When he told me about his appa (father), the first face that came to me was Sathyaraj sir’s. Likewise, for the role of his mother, I wanted a benign presence like Rohini’s. Most IPS officers in Kerala are non-Malayalis, so to essay the role of a policeman, I got Hussain.”
With Otta’s timeline spanning over 35 years, a major challenge for Resul was to recreate the Chennai of the Nineties. His team chose a kilometer-long stretch in the city to build the set. To ensure the period portions looked convincing, the director shot with cameras from that era.
“We used still cameras as well as iPhones. Each device has an authentic tonality, which we can never achieve by manipulating with Digital Intermediate (a motion picture finishing process),” he explains. Similar experiments were done in the sound and editing departments, where “Hollywood-standard cutting-edge technology” was used to edit the 114-hour raw footage.
The filmmaker is currently in talks for directing three more projects, one of them being a socio-political drama set in Kerala. “I’m planning a sweeping narrative of the state’s history. I always believe in telling rooted stories. The more local you go, the more international you become,” says Resul, who also has a British production in the pipeline.
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