mid-day's 42nd anniversary: From script to screen, to screen, to screen...

Mahesh Narayanan

Mahesh Narayanan, 39
Experimental Malayalam short, CU Soon, became critically acclaimed and India's first computer screen film

Malayalam filmmaker Mahesh Narayanan has a Salman Khan connection. Both have made a film inspired by the same event - plight of Indian nurses held hostage in Tikrit, Iraq, in 2014.

To gauge how two movies on the same subject, from the same year (2017), can be so different, you only have to watch Narayanan's Take Off, starring superstar Fahadh Faasil, and the Khan-starrer Tiger Zinda Hai! It was during research for Take Off in 2016 that Narayanan and his actor-producer Faasil came across online, a disturbing, distress video, in Malayalam, shot on phone, from a home in Qatar, basis which the Indian embassy acted upon to rescue the said girl.

Faasil proposed the video as a script of its own. It was just his vision, Narayanan recalls. Both moved on to do the crime-drama Malik together, which eventually dropped on Amazon Prime Video (July 15, 2021), after the pandemic's second wave. It's when Kerala, like rest of India, went on the first lockdown (March, 2020), that Narayanan had this thought about ‘Work from home': "In most professions, you can WFH. A film industry can't make films from home now; can it?"

Mahesh Narayanan could set CU Soon in UAE as most Kochi homes are inspired by Dubai interiors

Or maybe it can. Faasil reminded him of that solely SOS video-based idea - maybe there's a WFH film there, that simply stays within screens? "But nobody knew what a screen-based film could be like," Narayanan says.

The type, of course, exists. It's called the computer-screen film: "[Russian director] Timur Bekmambatov is widely considered brand ambassador of screen-based movies." Narayanan had seen Bekmambatov's Unfriended (2014; available on Netflix) - seminal movie of the sub-genre. Likewise, Mike Constanza's Collingswood Story (2006), considered the first. He wrote a script for a short film - of a guy (Roshan Mathew), who falls in love with a girl (Darshana Rajendran), having only met her on a dating app; even introducing her to his parents over screen. And then she disappears, while his cyber-security expert cousin (Faasil) investigates the case.

But how do you take this script, to screen after screen? Where multiple, personal tech devices serve as both lens/camera for the movie, as also therefore the canvas. All action taking place inside screens - visibly a metaphor for our own lockdown lives?

As Narayanan narrates, you basically point the camera on an actor on a phone/laptop, while they respond to lines from another actor (who's supposed to be on the other screen), but is behind the camera. The emotional depth of performance gets maintained. And you match/play with images.

Faasil's apartment in Kochi became the film's central location. They rented another flat in the same building, for a second location, plus cast and crew: "Headcount was 15, and at no point over 42." And Narayanan managed to set the story in a ‘foreign location', UAE: "Because a lot of top-end Kochi interiors, Faasil's apartment included, are inspired by architecture from Dubai." Which is also the repatriated wealth they're built on.

Here's what Narayanan didn't account for: "In a regular movie script, a page equals a minute." Screen time gets condensed through multiple cameras/angles/shots. Not so with a computer-screen.

CU Soon, with a 60-65 page script, is a 98-minute movie. This is how an experimental short, became India's critically acclaimed, first lockdown mainstream feature, as it were, while Narayanan learnt technique alongside: "The workflow is different. And I had no template. Collingswood Story took two years to make. We started CU Soon in April, released it in September (2020; on Amazon Prime)!"

He could also pull this off, being a prolific film-editor by training - an important BTS aspect for a film like CU Soon. That India's first ‘computer screen' film came from a corner in Kochi is becoming progressively obvious. If anything, Mallu movies have been the global toast since the pandemic, what with The New Yorker going gaga over Joji (2021), and The Guardian calling "Malayalam cinema, India's rapid response unit for COVID films!" Narayanan says, "Malayalam films were always great, even in the '80s. It's just that OTT platforms have given them global access. This attention means a lot of responsibility."