Director Sasikumaran isn’t too perturbed by matters of superstition. The title of his debut film is Papparapaam , and if you’ve seen the poster, the text lies on top of a paadai (a bamboo bier). “I don’t see why the portrayal of death needs to be a portent of misfortune,” he says. In fact, the first shot of the film is of a dead man’s toes being tied together at his funeral. “I even have a song that glorifies death.” He denies any morbid fascination. He just says, “These are necessary elements in my film.”
Papparapaam traces the life of a man who wakes up at his funeral. “I’ve captured life as it was in the 70s, 80s and 90s through this story.” Sasikumaran loves period films, an interest that germinated when he wrote the Tamil version of Santosh Sivan’s historical drama Urumi . “I wasn’t just the writer though. I also assisted him in the making of the film.” He assisted SJ Suryah too, in the Pawan Kalyan-starrer Komaram Puli .
Papparapaam has been submitted to the Toronto International Film Festival, with Sasikumaran nervously awaiting the selection committee’s verdict. He is at pains to point out that Papparapaam is not one of “those boring festival films”. Why that label? Films like Visaranai and Kaaka Muttai took the festival route too before their commercial release, didn’t they? “Yes, but those films still had a certain seriousness about them. My film is in the sweet spot between the commercial and the festival formats.” It’s like “ kalyana sapaadu ”, he says. “You’ll get a bit of everything.”
Papparapaam has as many as 248 characters with dialogues. Vinoth, who played the villain in Naan Mahaan Alla , plays the hero, alongside artistes like Aadukalam Naren, John Vijay and Mime Gopi. Originally, Sivakarthikeyan was to have done this film. “But our conversation happened before the release of Marina . And then, he jumped into a different league. We both knew that he would not be in a position to honour his casual promise to me.”
The silver lining, according to Sasikumaran, is that he too did not want his audience to walk in with expectations from the hero. “His fans would have definitely expected the film to accommodate his image. Papparapaam is not that sort of film.” Sasikumaran has already shown the film to his friends. “They all told me that it has come out as I’d narrated it.” And Sasikumaran has narrated the film at least 800 times so far. “I’m not just talking about producers here. I’ve narrated the story to everybody from acquaintances to taxi drivers.” Papparapaam appeals to all groups of people as it is beyond genre limitations, he says. “I’ve done everything from photography and writing to editing and filmmaking. Who am I then? Similarly, my film is about the life of my hero, from 1974 to 2016. It cannot be said to belong to any genre.”
