About Aadujeevitham
| Title: | The Goat Life |
|---|---|
| Original Title: | ആടുജീവിതം |
| Plot: | Indian migrant worker Najeeb Muhammad 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. |
| Cast: | Prithviraj Sukumaran, K R Gokul, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Talib Al Balushi, Rik Aby, Robin Das |
| Director: | Blessy |
| Cinematography: | Sunil K S |
| Editor: | Sreekar Prasad |
Aadujeevitham
Aswathy Gopalakrishnan
(for The Federal)
Indpendent Film Critic
A survival drama, fuelled by high-octane performances
Prithviraj Sukumaran’s brilliantly measured performance in Blessy’s deeply personal tale of a working-class man’s escape from slavery is one of the most powerful acts in Malayalam cinema
There is a poetic aspect in author Benyamin’s novel reaching the hands of director Blessy. In the journey of Najeeb Muhammad, a Malayali immigrant in West Asia, who gets abducted by one of the region’s many slave owners, there is an element of miserablism that resonates with the cinematic inquiry Blessy has been conducting over the last two decades. His films, in essence, are excavations of grief from the depths of unfortunate ordinary men who go from one tragic situation to another. In Thanmathra(2005) and Kalimannu (2013), the human body becomes his primary work material. Pain and suffering are visceral in these films, animated without any subtlety to pierce into the viewer’s consciousness. In Aadujeevitham, Blessy finds a goldmine.