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Saturday, April 20, 2024
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MALAYALAM THE WHITE FLOWER (ENGLISH LANGUAGE)
EDITOR'S PICK
A full length English language movie entirely produced and shot in Kerala is in the offing. This movie named ‘The White Flower’. There is a popular misconception that good English language movies can’t be produced in our country. But with this movie the scenario is rewritten. The film is the debut directorial venture of Charlie Davis Mathews, an engineer turned film maker. The director says that the movie will be a fresh experience altogether. Here is a movie that is born out of the intellectual conscience of a bunch of youngsters. This movie is a perfect proof of how well these youngsters have utilised the limitless possibilities of the global language to internationalise it. Being a movie of international quality and standard, it has a global appeal.
An interesting fact about the film is that there are only two main characters in it. The film opens with a well-choreographed chess match scene where the two main characters are involved in the game. They indulge themselves in conversations relating to various avenues of life. The entire story develops through the conversations between them. The film travels through the realms of reality, subconscious, spirituality, life and death, emotions, religion and various other perspectives of life. The movie conceptualises and symbolises the concept of agape. ‘Agape’, as Paulo Coelho defines, is the love that consumes. Breaking the conventional concepts of a hero, Suresh Babu.T who has acted in feature films like ‘Rain rain come again’, ‘Ananthabhairavi’ and ‘Sancharam’, portrays the character of a blind economist, who puts forward a theory which eventually gets misinterpreted as a pro-abortion theory. He is made an outcast because of his out of the box theories and concepts. The film explores the relationship between the economist and a young girl. Kani plays the role of the young girl. She has acted in popular films like ‘Kerala Café’, ‘Shikkar’ and ‘Cocktail’. She is a prominent and stand-out theatre artist also. The hero is a person whose spiritual completeness is evading him because of one last elusive emotion he hasn’t experienced. Will he attain his spirituality with the befriending of a young lady, is the question to be answered.
There are different perspectives to a particular situation in life and there will be as many interpretations to a situation as there are number of people. In this movie, for every situation people can find different interpretations. A main aspect of this movie is the conscious and subconscious interactions of the protagonists and yet another important aspect is that it does not specify any time and space or where and when it happens. The film does not rely on any sort of graphical stimulants to depict reality and sub-consciousness, but brilliantly makes use of original and natural visuals to conceptualise it. It’s a pure piece of visualisation of plain life of two people, which anyone belonging to any generation can relate to. The director has given special care in detailing every subtle detail in the story.
The name ‘The White Flower” is critical with respect to the movie because the white flower is an important element in the movie. The white flower is one of the symbols used in the film to symbolise a very important concept. The casting was done by the director himself. When asked about the aptness of the casting the director replies, “The casting of Suresh Babu and Kani were just perfect. They were the apt choice to portray the lead characters. This was underlined by the perfect chemistry between both of them which made sure that there were minimum retakes and the transitions between scenes happened so smoothly that even I was surprised.
It’s an unbelievably low budget venture without compromising on the quality of the movie. The production cost is minimised by meticulous and effective pre-planning. The entire filming is done on Canon 5D Mark II camera, which is sure to be a trendsetter in digital film-making in this part of the subcontinent. This is another major reason which contributes to lowering the cost of production considerably. With Canon 5D Mark II we get film quality output. Many Hollywood movies have been shot using Canon 5D. All the crew members are experienced professionals who have been assisting so far and this being their first independent work, have helped to lower the production cost. The young and fresh ‘The White Flower’ crew professionally and hassle-freely handled intricate concepts such as agape, spirituality, subconscious, etc. The movie is scripted by Charlie Davis Mathews and Ananthjith.P, an upcoming scriptwriter and novelist. The director of photography of the film is Joby James. The editing is done by Thanuj Ntx. Arun Chacko heads the art department. The music is scored by Firoz. The stills are captured by Kailas Gopakumar. Jitto James and Deepak Joseph are the production controllers. The film is produced under the banner of Eternal Bliss Pictures. This movie is going to be a major attraction in every film festivals to come this year.
