When you watch a movie about a couple who decides to elope only to find out that one of their siblings also eloped the same morning, you think, this had to have happened to someone the filmmaker knew.The filmmaker did not (know anyone it happened to). The story simply developed when the writers began working on an idea that they thought had always worked with the Malayali audience – a plot involving elopement. But it couldn’t be just that. The narrative had to be fresh, something untested before. In the film, aptly titled Thrishanku, meaning neither here nor there, the couple somehow ends up on a search mission of the missing sibling, in the company of two uncles. So in place of the two people that you are accustomed to seeing in elopements, there are now four on a bus from Kerala to Mangalore, two of them being middle-aged uncles.
“We wanted a script that would be appealing and relatable to most of the audience. It did not matter that the idea was a cliché, so long as we gave it a fresh treatment. That is how one couple’s elopement became so complicated in the plot,” Thrishanku’s director Achyuth Vinayak says, a week after its release.
The film, featuring Anna Ben and Arjun Ashokan as the unfortunate couple whose elopement goes all wrong, is more a comedy than a romance with the idiosyncrasies of the uncles who tally along. But for the director, the film is at its heart, a romance between Megha and Sethu (Anna and Arjun) – a thread that connects the whole sequence of the movie.
Watch: Trailer of the film
Achyuth had fixed on his actors long before, noting Anna from her very first film Kumbalangi Nights, and Arjun in June. They are also well-liked actors, he says, stressing that he has been very clear about wanting his debut film to be a commercial success. “I wanted to make a clean entertainer that everyone from 6 to 60 would find appealing,” Achyuth says.
But he didn’t compromise on talent when he chose his actors. The uncles were played hilariously by Nandhu and Suresh Krishna, two actors who Achyuth calls brilliant but not explored enough. The physicality also worked. Both of these actors were six feet tall. It would be telling when the shorter nephew walked in between these uncles, his ‘trapped’ situation coming across all too visually.
Arjun (middle) with Nandhu and Suresh Krishna
When Achyuth chose the title Thrishanku, he meant it for every one of the main characters in the film – Megha, who doesn’t know if she should hop onto a bus that Sethu shows up in with two uncles, Sethu who doesn’t know if he should stick with these relatives or go to his girlfriend, and the uncles who are torn between standing with the nephew and the niece (the sibling who first ran away) and separating them from their lovers.
Through all this, Anna’s character comes across as the more decisive one, almost impossibly sure of what she wants to do in every difficult situation. Arjun’s is the more familiar, anxious character – wanting to act, but afraid of the consequences. “In a way, this trip makes him a little more mature, facing the many events on the journey. On the other hand, Megha, though bold and certain of her stand, is also not always right and goofs up sometimes,” Achyuth says, remarkably clear about the nuances of his characters.
He also co-wrote the lyrics of a song called 'Bhoomiyumilla' in the film. A modest Achyuth posted about it on Instagram: "By fluke penned a few lines with my co-writer @ajith.sugunan.nair for this special song that gets the ball rolling in the world of Thrishanku."
Achyuth’s interest in filmmaking grew as he attended the visual communication classes at the Mar Ivanios College of Thiruvananthapuram. He then took off to the UK to get a masters in the craft and came back to assist director Priyadarshan in a few movies, before becoming an independent filmmaker. Achyuth has begun work on two more scripts, and he says that one of them is an action comedy.