The Goat Life (2024)

The Goat Life The real-life incident of an Indian migrant worker, Najeeb Muhammad, who goes to Saudi Arabia to earn money. However, in a twist of fate, he finds himself living a slave-like existence, herding goats in the middle of the desert.

The Goat Life (2024)

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The Goat Life Just days before the release of his new film Aadujeevitham, actor-filmmaker Prithviraj Sukumaran is in Mumbai, attending a press conference and talking about a project which he says is his One of the biggest projects in my career so far.

Malayalam director Blessy’s ‘Aadujeevitham’, which has been dubbed in other languages, will release on March 28.

The Goat Life (2024) Trailer

Blessy’s Malayalam language film titled The Goat Life will be released in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada on March 28. Aadujeevitham is adapted from renowned Malayalam writer Benjamin’s Goat Days, inspired by real-life migrant worker Najeeb Ahmed’s hellish experiences while grazing livestock in the desert of Saudi Arabia.

In addition to Sukumaran starring as Najeeb, The Goat Life also stars Amala Paul and Haitian actor Jimmy Jean-Louis. Filmed by Sunil KS and composed by AR Rahman, the survival drama promises to be a visually and psychologically rich exploration of one man’s attempt to free himself from modern slavery.

The Goat Life The director of the film is a reputed hit-maker. Sukumaran himself has had a prosperous career and has expanded his productions into Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. The 41-year-old film star will be familiar to Hindi audiences with films like Aiyya (2012), Aurangzeb (2013) and most recently Salaar: Part 1 – Ceasefire ((2023)).

Despite their collective influence, and the prestige of Benjamin’s novel, Blasey and Sukumaran struggled for years to get The Goat Life off the ground. Sukumaran spoke to Scroll during his visit to Mumbai about the hurdles he faced in making the film, the personal investment he made to play the role of Najeeb and the good situation the Malayalam film industry currently finds itself in.

The Goat Life Aadujeevitham looks like a very challenging film. But was it even fun to make?

The more challenging the movie, the more fun you’ll usually have. When you’re in the middle of the process, you get stressed and forget how much you enjoyed it.

Aadujeevitham was definitely one of the most difficult films I have made, not just in terms of character but the sheer scale and what we tried to achieve. It’s a 16-year long journey – the director came to me with the script in 2008.

How did The Goat Life reflect Benjamin’s prose?

Adopted? All the scenarios, different terrains and backgrounds in which the story takes place are exactly the same. The story actually happens inside the person. It’s a deeply reflective character study, and it really appealed to me and Blasey. It’s almost like a spiritual character study of this one person.

However, the challenge we faced was that the book was extremely detailed. We had to decide what exactly we were trying to accomplish here. Rather than challenge every reader’s imagination, we decided to leave it aside.

You’ll see spectacular backdrops and incredible desert topography. Even the Kerala portions of the film are fantastic. But all this remains a background – what you’re trying to follow is the character’s emotional arc. Our effort was to make you feel what that man must have felt.

The Goat Life After reading the book several times, having several discussions with Blasey, and spending a lot of time considering how to approach this character, I realized that it would be nearly impossible to understand him as a whole. Although this ordeal lasted three and a half years, the character arc is far more complex.

So I decided to break the character arc into three parts – denial, anger and finally coming to the realization that no matter how long this experience lasts, it is something the character will have to live with. Maybe there is death on the other end or maybe there is migration.

Not only did Blasey agree with my interpretation, but the interpretation matched the way the shoot was designed.

When you said this film couldn’t have been made 16 years ago, did you mean financing or technology?

Technology doesn’t really matter for you to tell a story. I don’t believe that better technology necessarily means better storytelling.

One factor was the budget – it was impossible for us to spend that kind of money on a film at that time. Since then the industry has been going through a metamorphosis in terms of revenue streams, so a film like Aadujeevitham is a more viable proposition.

Secondly, the network that we have today to be able to release a film worldwide did not exist before. Today, apart from my company releasing the film in Kerala, there are five A-list companies releasing the film in their respective regions. Distributors are also screening the film in many countries. This network was not available to this extent in 2008. I think it’s part of a divine design that the film had to endure such a long period of time.

Did you always envision The Goat Life as something that could also work as a non-Malayalam film?

We always knew that we wanted people to be able to watch this film in their own language.

A small percentage of the film deals with language. The rest of the film is just me and the animals. It contains some degree of computer-generated imagery, but mostly real animals. The interactions between the actors and the animals had to be real, so we decided to take the hard path and do it very quietly.

This is why Mr. AR Rahman is such a big player in this film. I have had the privilege of doing Mani Ratnam’s Raavanan and Vasanthabalan’s Kavya Thalaivan with him. I told him I wish I had the same music when I was acting. He has really created magic with it.

It is a big commitment for you to travel to Mumbai to promote the Hindi version of the film. Is this partly because Hindi audiences are more familiar with your work now?

I get more requests for selfies at the airport.

Acting in a film is as much a responsibility as promoting it. In Kerala, there is a strong buzz about the film because the story is so famous and everyone is eager to see its cinematic version.

Outside Kerala, where perhaps most people don’t know about Najeeb and the book, it is our responsibility to tell you why this is not another film. This is something that happens once in a lifetime. I don’t know many actors who can say that they have been associated with the same film for 16 years, that they have shot for a film for four years.

Most importantly, I don’t know how many movies you can watch and say, Oh my God, we saw something that someone actually saw, that’s still around today. It is humanly impossible for anyone to go through this.