Malayalam film director Arun Varma says box office hit ‘Garudan’ is likely to have a sequel

Malayalam director Arun Varma scores with Garudan starring Suresh Gopi and Biju Menon

Arun Varma did not want to make his directorial debut with a run-of-the-mill crime thriller or police investigative drama. So, he waited to fine-tune the seed of a story that had been narrated to him in 2015 by his friend, Jineesh M, a faculty member at the Bharata Mata School of Legal Studies, Aluva. Arun’s wait has paid him rich dividends as the film Garudan soars high in cinemas.

Speaking from Chennai, Arun says Garudan is a genre-bender in which he tried to avoid many cliches common in Malayalam films. “The movie is at once a psychological crime thriller, a police story, a courtroom drama and an emotional family story. We have removed many of the usual cliches,” he says.

Arun says the story began from a place of anger at the brutal rape of nurse Aruna Shanbaug in 1973 at her workplace in Mumbai. She lay comatose for nearly 42 years. He wondered if such acts of violence were triggered in a fraction of a second or if there was something more that made a human being inflict violence on another person.

“The culprit walked out of jail after serving his sentence while Aruna’s life was nipped in the bud. What is the quantum of punishment for such crimes? Can the punitive measures serve as a deterrent to stop potential perpetrators? Is there scope under the legal system to reform such predators? These were the issues that we have woven into the narrative of Garudan. The first scene in the movie shows Theresa Philp, a smart, articulate youngster. It is the hunt for the criminal who molests her that takes the movie forward.”

Although what attracted Arun to the movie was its different narrative and plot, he felt that the long period between the ideating and scripting had made the script a little dated. “So, our producer Listen Stephen of Four Frames gave me a list of experienced scenarists to work with and I chose Midhun Manuel Thomas. He loved the story and felt he could complement it. Midhun felt there was a bigger cinema inside it and tweaked the narrative to craft Garudan,” adds Arun.

The script was crafted to break the narrative of a police investigation following a crime and “then showing someone out of the blue having committed the crime. What was initially a courtroom drama turned out to be a wholesome entertainer thanks to Mithun’s work.”

Arun’s confidence as a director is evident in the interesting narrative that pitches a cop Harish Madhavan (Suresh Gopi) against a cunning psychopath Nishanth Kumar (Biju Menon).