‘Gauthamante Radham’ — the story of a car and its family

Debutant director Anand Menon on making ‘Gauthamante Radham’

Film director Anand Menon is nervous and excited as his first feature film, Gauthamante Radham, is all set to reach cinemas today.

This film is a dream that he has been carrying around for a while, for almost two years. This is Neeraj Madhav’s first film after his hugely successful outing in Amazon Prime web series The Family Man. Anand says he wrote the script with Neeraj in mind.

“The film shows the three stages of Gauthaman’s (Neeraj) life. Neeraj has a youthful innocence about him, he is the boy next door who, I felt, could communicate what I had in mind,” the 25-year-old says. The movie pans in on what a family’s first car means to them — “the emotional attachment they feel for the vehicle.”

This Anand’s first feature, but not his first film. He has been making shorts since he was in Class 10. The Eureka moment about how he felt about entertaining others happened when he was on stage as a student in class eight. “My job, I understood, is to entertain. I was acting, but I was more interested in the scripting part of it.” He made short films, and even acted in some including the viral Magneto.

Anand had to wait for close to two years to fulfill this dream because it took time to meet Neeraj who was filming The Family Man and then it was about finding a producer.

“The floods of 2018 also delayed the project as we were busy volunteering. When I had gone to drop off some material at a camp in Kochi, I saw Neerajettan there. I asked him if I could narrate the story but he said he’d listen another time.”

In between, the actor had to go to Ladakh for a shoot, and Anand was in Dehradun for some time. He was tempted to go to Ladakh, “just 400-odd kilometres from Dehradun to meet him, but he said we would meet back home since he was busy with the shoot.” The wait paid off, Neeraj heard the story and he was in.

By mid-2019, they started shooting the film. Some of the creative team members — Basil Joseph (art direction), Appu Bhattathiri (editing), and Vishnu Sarma (cinematography) — had worked in Kunjiramayanam. The music is by Ankit Menon.

Two elements of his life, that he is crazy about — driving and films — come together in this film. “I am car-crazy and love to drive. Gauthamante Radham is a family film, it has autobiographical elements, a healthy dash of humour and would be relatable to most people,” he says. Of course he is nervous about the release, but he is pragmatic, “I am not expecting too much, cinema is unpredictable...let’s see what happens.”