My-Kerala Movies

World’s best come together to create India’s first international film - Aakashagopuram

From Harry Potter to Titanic and Star Wars to Batman Begins, Medient Corporation PLC announces the release of its Malayalam film Aakashagopuram that brings together the best of talents from Hollywood, UK, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam film industry.

Shot and post produced entirely in UK, Aakashagopuram is the film adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play The Master Builder. Starring MohanLal in the lead role, national award winning director K P Kumaran brings to screen this intriguing story of an architect at war with his creativity and ego.

Shot in various locations in the UK by cinematographer Santosh C Thundiyil (Krrish, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Pinjar, Kaal), Aakasha Gopuram’s music has been scored by BAFTA and multiple Emmy award winner John Altman (Golden Eye, Titanic, Bhaji on the Beach, Shall We Dance). The sound design has been done by Nigel Holland (Batman Begins, Braveheart, Resident Evil). Rerecording mixers are Robert Farr (Star Wars: Episode II&III, Gangs of New York) and Matthew Gough (Harry Potter Prisoner of Azkaban, Cold Mountain). The visual effects have been done by John Harvey and Jonathan Trussler (Kingdom of Heaven).

“If you have a right product, attracting the best of talent is not very difficult,” says Manu S Kumaran, producer of Aakashagopuram, “and if the film in question is the adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Master Builder and directed by award winning director K P Kumaran, it’s a cake walk.”

“It’s a common practice in Indian film industry to involve a “foreign” cameraman” or a “foreign” makeup artist or stuntman to label the film as international collaboration. Medient as a film company however does not indulge in such gimmicks and believes in creating films that conform to international standard of production values. Aakashagopuram is an example of our commitment to take Indian cinema global,” adds Manu S Kumaran.

Aakashagopuram releases nationwide on August 22, 2008.

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Aaskashgopuram Synopsis

Cast: Mohan Lal, Bharat Gopi, Sreenivasan, Swetha Menon, Manoj K Jayan, Geethu Mohandas and Nithya.

Screenplay & Director: K P Kumaran

Produced by: Manu S Kumaran, Tutu Sharma and Taizoon F Khorakiwala

AkashaGopuram is an adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen classic Master Builder.

A film in Malayalam by renowned Indian film maker K P KUMARAN, AkashaGopuram is set in London among the Indian immigrant community and tells the story of ALBERT SAMSON (MohanLal), a middle-aged architect who has who has clawed his way to prominence.

His single-minded focus on his job, however, has hardened him and prevented him and his wife ALICE (Swetha Menon) from having a meaningful private life. The costs of Samson's ambition are also symbolized in his assistant, ABRAHIM THOMAS (Bharat Gopi), Samson's former employer whom he "scalped" to reach the top. Thomas, now dying, wants his son ALEX (Manoj K Jayan) to have more independence in the firm. Samson, however, fears that he will be eclipsed by a younger generation of architects, and refuses to allow Alex either to design original houses or to leave the firm and strike out on his own.

Into this tension comes HILDA VARGHESE (Nithya), a vivacious young woman who has idolized Samson since ten years before, when, in the early stages of his career, he had built a large church in her hometown and climbed to the top of its tower during its dedication ceremony. While in town, Samson had promised Hilda, then a girl of twelve, "a kingdom"; now, Hilda says earnestly, she has come to collect her kingdom.

As Samson struggles with the destructive consequences of his monomanical pursuit and his growing fear that he has lost his creative powers, the mysterious Hilda helps him gain a glimpse of his former robust self.

Known for his deep commitment to female empowerment through his films, K P Kumaran in AkashaGopuram paints an intriguing portrait of one man’s consuming desire for success.

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Henrik Ibsen

AkashaGopuram is an adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen classic Master Builder.

The Norwegian playwright is considered the starting point for modern drama, particularly realism, which dominated the twentieth century. Rejecting the spectacular, sentimental, and over-the-top plays that marked the nineteenth-century stage, Ibsen turned his eye toward societal issues that marked the waning years of the Victorian era. Whether questioning the confines of marriage in A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler or the hypocrisy of politics in An Enemy of the People, Ibsen subverted social norms and their controlling institutions. Although many of his plays were criticized for their content at the time, Ibsen’s works helped lay the foundation for even more radical explorations in the following century.

Henrik Ibsen was born in Skien, a tiny coastal town in the south of Norway. His father, Knud Ibsen, was a prosperous merchant, whose financial failure changed the family's social position.

The characters in his plays often mirror his parents, and his themes often deal with issues of financial difficulty as well as moral conflicts stemming from dark private secrets hidden from society.

Despite Ibsen’s being touted as “The Father of Realism,” his career is often divided into three distinct phases. His early plays, such as Peer Gynt, were poetic epics. The middle phase consisted of realistic classics like A Doll’s House and An Enemy of the People.
But with Master Builder (1892), Ibsen veered toward symbolism. In the play first staged at Berlin in 1893, Ibsen painted a moving portrait of an aging architect who, having given up his dreams of building great monuments and churches with towers reaching up to the heavens, instead devotes his life to building regular houses for people to live in. When the architect finally realizes that society doesn't even appreciate his sacrifice, he returns once again to the more mystical structures of his youth.

Master Builder was published in the middle of December 1892. It was acted both in Germany and England before it was seen in the Scandinavian capitals. Its first performance took place at the Lessing Theatre, Berlin, January 19, 1893, with Emanuel Reicher as Solness and Frl. Reisenhofer as Hilda.

In London it was first performed at the Trafalgar Square Theatre (now the Duke of York's) on February 20, 1893, under the direction of Mr. Herbert Waring and Miss Elizabeth Robins, who played Solness and Hilda. This was one of the most brilliant and successful of English Ibsen productions.

Beyond the phenomenon of William Shakespeare, whose works have been filmed over 600 times, HENRIK IBSEN is among handful of writers like Anton Chekhov, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky whose work has been repeatedly filmed over the years.

K P Kumaran - The Director

K P KUMARAN has been at the vanguard of the parallel cinema movement and his films reflect his deep commitment to female empowerment. All his films from the landmark Athithi (1974) to the National award winning Rugmini (1988) and Thotram, recipient of Suvarna Chakoram Award for Writing at the International Film Festival Of Kerala 2001 have female protagonists at the core of the film.

His first independent venture – the100 second Rock won the coveted gold medal at ASIA 72 Film Festival. Athithi his first feature film as director based on the breaking free of a strong woman from her indecisive and weak husband to chart her own destiny has often been described by critics as one the best films ever made in Malayalam.

Several films followed, all based on social issues that impact the lives of women. His film Rugmini based on Kamala Das’s famed short story Cages on the life of a child prostitute won several awards all over.

Thotram was an attempt at capturing the incomparable lyricism and lucidity of a primordial dialect in narrating an ancient tribal drama in the contemporary idiom. The film is the story of a strong willed young woman who resists tyranny and her martyrdom gives her a halo of being a deity amongst the tribal people. A poem never written, passed through generations by word of mouth forms the plot of the film.

An outspoken critic of the entrenched social biases; Kumaran made his mark with his fiery plays on social evils as part of the organized literary movement of Kerala in the sixties.

His new film, AkashaGopuram starring Mohanlal, Sreenivasan and late Bharat Gopi is an adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen classic Master Builder.

“What attracted me to the play was the intriguing psychological insights into human nature as well as the experiences of the characters in situations of conflict. That lifts the play from the level of the mundane,” says Kumaran.

According to Kumaran, Malayalam literature and Malayalis have a special relation with Ibsen.

'The pioneers of Malayalam prose drama such as N. Krishna Pillai, who revolutionised the stage with his plays Bhagna Bhavanam and Kanyaka (young girl) were inspired by Ibsen,' he says.

'In 1936, A. Balakrishna Pillai translated Ibsen's Ghosts into Malayalam language,' he says.

“Adapting Master Builder is the greatest tribute I can pay to the playwright whose dramas have always inspired me,” he says.

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Labels: Akashagopuram, Mohanlal