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The Other Side of Midnight

Rajitha

At 0000 IST on the night of January 1, 2000 we will be busy shaking hands and hugging and kissing everyone in range and wishing them the best for the new year.

A minute later, at 0001 IST to be precise, Jayaraj will be busy releasing a movie -- the first to hit the marquee in 2000.

It would be easy to dismiss this as a gimmick, on the lines of a recent one that attempted to -- in fact, succeeded -- shoot a film in 24 hours. Except that 'gimmick' is not a word connoisseurs of Malayalam cinema will readily associate with Jayaraj, the maker of films like Deshadanam and Kaliyattam.

In fact, another of his films, Karunam, is also ready for release -- and has been selected for the film festival to be held in New Delhi in early January.

Millennium Stars, the film in question, is the story of two itinerant -- make that wannabe -- singers who end up in Dharavi, having come to Bombay with the sole intention of cutting an album and hitting the pop charts big time.

"Album making," says Jayaraj, taking time out from mixing work on the movie at AVM Studios in Madras, to talk to rediff.com, "has become a big craze. I thought I could make a movie on that theme. On two people who struggle to make it big, who after a lot of tribulations do hit the musical jackpot and about the misunderstandings that crop up between them, once they become rich and famous."

Produced by 'Kireedam' Unni and visualised by cinematographer Rajen Paul, the film stars Jayaram and Biju Menon as the two singers while Abhirami plays the female lead. "We shot in Bombay, though the film is in Malayalam. Most of the songs are in Malayalam as well, but there are Hindi and English lyrics too."

Girish Puthencherry provides the Malayalam lyrics, while Ricardo Barrantes -- from the US --provides the English lyrics and Tahir Faraz (whose credits include several ghazals written for Hariharan) does the Hindi bit.

The music is composed by Vidyasagar, who through a spate of hit songs, has changed the style of contemporary Malayalam film music and, in the process, earned from director Jayaraj the sobriquet 'Rahman of Kerala.'

An array of topnotch singers feature in the credits, including Hariharan who, in fact, makes a brief on-screen appearance as well. But the highlight, on the music front, is the debut of a certain Vijay Jesudas, son of near-legendary playback singer K J Jesudas. Father and son, in fact, team up on one song in the film.

Another highlight is the visuals for the songs. An instance in point being the Maha Ganapati number, which highlights the problem of child labour -- and, be warned, makes for spectacular, but hardly pretty, viewing.

This film comes in stark contrast to Jayaraj's two recent offerings. Deshadanam, which marked him out as a film-maker capable of spanning the great divide between the artistic and the commercial, is the story of a pre-pubescent boy who is moved to take sanyas, and the mental and emotional upheaval this causes within his family circle.

It was shot almost entirely in Thirunelli, a pilgrim centre on the banks of the Bharatpuzha that boasts temples dedicated to the Hindu triumvirate of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, and is the preferred place for Keralite Hindus who want to perform the last rites for their dear departed.

Then there's Kaliyattam -- a gripping, starkly realistic recreation of the Shakespearean tale of Othello, wherein lead star Suresh Gopi plays a Kathakali artiste who murders his wife after being bitten by the bug of intense jealousy.

And even as he focuses on the final post-production work of Millennium Stars, Jayaraj has one eye on Karunam, the film which awaits its public airing at the Delhi film festival. "I have dealt, in this film, with karuna, one of the nine rasas. And to enhance the effect of pathos, I have used rain as the backdrop for the film," says Jayaraj.

That's all he is saying about it, for now.