Malayalam film shot in two hours 14 minutes

National Award winning director Jayaraj has set a record by completing his latest film Atbhutham in less than three hours. The shooting began at 11.46 a.m. Monday and ended at 2 p.m. In just two hours and 14 minutes, the entire 75-minute feature film was wrapped up. The bilingual Malayalam-English film starring Suresh Gopi is the fourth in the Navarasa series, after Karunam, Shantham and Bheebhats, by the innovative filmmaker from Kerala. Talking about the shooting, Jayaraj's assistant Anwar says: "Everything went off well. There were no retakes, thanks to all the rehearsals we had. We used only one camera so that the entire shooting was done under the direction of Jayaraj." Atbhutham is about euthanasia. The story takes place in Oregon, the only US state that has legalised euthanasia. The film is about a terminally ill world-renowned playwright and director Chandrasekhara Warrier, who migrated to the US when young and had never returned to his native place. He has been suffering from pancreatic cancer for two years. When he finds his pain too excruciating, he asks for death. His US-born Malayali wife and his attorney help him in that. On the day of his death, just before the irrevocable act, he meets important people in his life in the hospital. They are his parents, a close friend, his wife, his special "lady friend", who is an American, and a Tamil actor he had picked up from the streets of Chennai and who has made it big in the US. The story starts at 10 a.m. in a hospital and he is supposed to die at 11.30 a.m. What happens in that hour and a half is the story of the film. For actor Suresh Gopi, who plays the main lead, it has been an emotionally and physically draining experience as he is bedridden throughout the film with tubes protruding out of all parts of his body. The character is unable to speak, too, as his trachea is pierced. The entire crew was at the Ramoji Film City here rehearsing for the last five days, and the last two days were spent on shooting preparations so that there wouldn't be any problem on the final day of shooting. Except for seven Malayalis, all the other characters are from different parts of the world. The director was not ready to reveal anything about the climax.