Jayarajan Rajasekharan Nair, popularly known as Jayaraj, is an Indian regional filmmaker from the Malayalam film industry. He has won several awards including the Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival (Germany), the Golden Peacock at the IFFI (Goa), the Golden Crow Pheasant at the IFFK (Kerala), and the FIPRESCI (the International Federation of Film Critics) Award. Apart from this, Jayaraj won two National Awardsin 2017 – Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay – for the film ‘Bhayanakam’, which is now competing among 15 films in the International Competition at the 49th International Film Festival of India (IFFI).
Working on the film since the year 2000, Jayaraj managed to finally release it last year with Renji Panicker as the main star for his famed movie, based on World War II and the emotion that people went through at that time. “‘Bhayanakam’ meaning ‘fear’ is what the world is currently facing, which is why 2018 is the best year for its release,” says the director.
Exploring the emotion of fear, Jairaj’s film is an adaptation of two chapters from Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s epic novel ‘Kayar’. Jayaraj shares that when he was a film student, he had read the novel and the two chapters of the postman caught his attention. “A wish grew within me to make a film of those two chapters and I planned first in 2000, then again in 2004 and finally I completed it and released it in July this year,” Jayaraj reveals.
The script goes around a postman – Renji Panicker– the protagonist of the film, who comes to a small backwater village, Kuttanad, in Kerala. He is a veteran of World War I, who comes to this village as a postman, distributing money to the family of soldiers and being seen as a symbol of prosperity and happiness. When World War II begins, he is seen as a sign of danger and an omen of death as he delivers telegrams containing news of death. With 650 people from this area joining the fight for the British army, the pain and impact of the war worsens. “The postman is a symbol of the pain and agony of the war,” says Jayaraj.
Having adapted Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s work in the past for his short film based on the story ‘Vellapokkathil’ (In the Deluge) in 2008, Jayaraj says that he finds Thakazhi’s work easy to adapt, with every story of his portraying great expression and minute details of each character.
“Renji Panicker, a well established actor and scriptwriter in Malayalam cinema, has skilfully put himself in the shoes of the postman in the film,” states Jayaraj, adding, “The producer of ‘Bhayanakam’, Dr Suresh Kumar Muttath, was also very supportive.”
With regard to the International Competition at IFFI, Jayaraj is of the opinion that the zeal and passion you have to make a film and the commitment you have to your work is fruitful when you receive an award for the film and so he is keeping his hopes high and wishes the best film to win the competition.
‘Bhayanakam’ is the latest in Jayaraj’s Navarasa series of films, which discovers fear. “My previous films in this series are ’Karunam and ’Shantham’. Then there was ’Bheebhats’ in Hindi, ’Adbhutham’ and ’Veeram’,” Jayaraj shares. After ’Bhayanakam’, Jayaraj says that he is planning to make films on ‘roudram’ (anger) next.
Regional language films usually are most likely to get national awards because of the way real life and people are portrayed. “Especially Malayalam films have traditionally done very well at the National Awards,” Jayaraj says. The films that Jayaraj chooses usually have an emotional connect with the Indian people and show nothing but the truth.
Earlier, at a joint press conference, Jayaraj, who was was present with the actor Renji Panicker, said: “Without showing any war sequences, gun fight or soldiers, the story of World War is depicted here through the mental trauma of a disabled postman. It was very difficult to recreate Kuttanadu of that era but we worked hard for it. I have been trying to make this movie for the last 30 years, and I am happy that I got the opportunity to do this now.” He also added that nowadays, there is no market for panorama cinema. “If we have a digital platform like Netflix and support from DFF for such panorama films, it would help,” concluded Jayaraj.
