Red lining to green cause

Being a part of tinsel town was the realisation of a long-cherished dream for Anoop Krishnan. The actor took his baby steps in films like Daivathinte Swantham Cleetus, Praise the Lord, Njaan Samvidhanam Cheyyum and Sarvopari Palakkaran where he did not command too much of a screen space. Then came along the Sanskrit film Ishti, in which Anoop had a good role as a man who rebels against the time-honoured traditions of a community. This film opened in the Indian Panorama section at the 47th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. To Anoop this was a dream come true and an intensely satisfying one.                      

Anoop will now be seen in another film that will be food for his soul titled Amma Marathanalil directed by Jibin James. The film, as the name hints, looks at the importance of environment and nature along with having a soulful story intertwined in it. Anoop stresses that the salient point of the film is its true-blue Malayali roots. Confused? He explains, “The film is shot in the rural areas of Palakkad where one would get to see some old traditions that some of us would recall from our childhood days, if we lived in a tharavadu.”

Anoop plays Prakashan and he is happy that he is getting good screen presence in the film. “I play a 40-year-old man who has a wife, kid and his mother-in-law staying with him. Prakashan is a Communist and has a deep sense of attachment to the kaavu and the trees in his tharavadu where he feels his mother’s presence. After his mother’s death, he has tried to keep the kaavu and the surroundings intact and tended to it like his mother would have done. The arrival of some people in his life becomes the turning point of the film,” Anoop says about his character.

To play the 40-year-old Prakashan, Anoop had to gain 5-6 kilos and he jokes, “In Ishti, I had to lose weight and here I had to gain weight.” The shoot finished in 22 days and he terms it as neither an art film nor a commercial one.  The actor does not make a distinction between art and commercial films and states, “I am not here to do films for only financial gains. What drives me is the creative satisfaction I get out of doing something that has been my passion for long.” The actor has some films in the pipeline.