From an inside room of the house, a tired old voice would emerge as soon as someone steps in. Loud reproaches, reprimands, barely muffled curses come from the bed in the corner, where lay an old woman whose face you never see. Nithin Lukose got his grandmother to play the faceless woman, hidden by the camera that never looks at her. He was directing his first film, Paka, a feature that narrated incidents he grew up hearing in his hometown, Wayanad, of old family feuds and never-ending revenges.
“Velyamachi (grandmother) would tell us these tales, of how families that migrated from central Kerala to Wayanad had these long lasting feuds, killing and drowning one another,” Nithin says, in an interview from Kochi where he is now based. He had taken off from Wayanad for his sound design course at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune many years ago, before moving back to make his debut film. It was to be a temporary stop, but he stayed back when COVID-19 brought on a lockdown just two weeks after he finished making Paka.
“During the church festival — a big event here — of 2019, I had dreamed of making a film with it as the backdrop. I was seeing the festival again after many years, and with my trained senses, I could see how the sound and visuals would make an impact. During the next church festival, we made it happen. I shot the last scenes on the last day of the festival in February 2020, just before COVID-19 put a lock on our lives,” he says.
Nithin Lukose
Nithin had not been idle after completing his course at the FTII. He did sound design for around 20 to 25 films in Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi and Telugu. He tried writing scripts too, but it never materialised until he thought of Paka. An IT professional friend based in the US — Raj Rachakonda — had first agreed to invest in the film. Later, after the film was shot and the first cut done, noted filmmaker Anurag Kashyap said he would like to pool in. Both Raj and Anurag became the producers.
The film is well-made, artfully using the peculiar landscapes of Wayanad — the rivers, streams and the wooded lanes that come with histories. The Orappu River, where a good part of the film is shot, is known for the bodies it has thrown up through the years. Johnny, the film’s male lead character, sighs when one more body is dug out by the expert diver Jose. “It won’t be murder,” he says. “If it was, it would be done by either their family or ours.”
Orappu river in Wayanad / Still from film
In the film, Johnny’s family with the mumbling Velyamachi has been in a decades-long feud with the family of the woman he is in love with, Anna, played by the state award-winning Vinitha Koshy. Not quite an original plot point — love blossoming between the youngest members of two feuding families, the Malayalam Godfather of 1993 being one of the most famous examples. But the making differs; a lot. There are no comforting songs or whisperings between the lovers to make it easy on the anxious viewer, wondering where it will all end.
Vinitha Koshy in Paka
Nithin picked his cast from among the people he knew in his town — friends of Johnny are his friends and cousins, Jose plays Jose, and so on. Only a few faces — like Vinitha, Basil Paulose playing Johnny, and Nithin George playing the antagonist Joey — are familiar. A lovely performance also comes from Jose Kizhakkan, playing Kocheppu, the uncle who returns from jail. Paachi, a young boy who does a marvellous job as Johnny’s little brother, is Nithin’s cousin. “We had a workshop to train all the non-actors. I’d say quite a few characters are inspired by the real life people I knew in Wayanad.”
Inspiration also came from Basheer’s Narayani in Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Mathilukal. Like how you only hear and never see the face of Narayani, the revengeful grandma’s face never emerges from under the sheets she’s covered in. It is remarkable how the voice of a bedridden character can appear so creepy.
Watch: Trailer of the film
The film, which was released on SonyLIV on Thursday, July 7, had its rounds of film festivals, beginning with the Toronto International Film Festival last year and making its Indian premier at the Mumbai International Film Festival in 2021-22.