When his bestselling novel Aadujeevitham was going to be adapted for the screen, writer Benyamin had only one condition – it should convey the essence of the novel. “The pain, struggle and loneliness that a reader would have experienced through the text should be captured in the film, and that’s all I wanted,” he said. “I did not expect that the film should have the same events as in the book.”
Aadujeevitham, a fictionalised account based on the real life story of a Malayali man who goes to Saudi Arabia for better prospects but is enslaved in the desert as a goatherd, was first published in 2008. Since then, the Malayalam edition alone has been reprinted over a hundred times. The book has also been translated to English, Tamil, Arabic, Nepali and other languages. Najeeb Muhammed, the protagonist of the book, is subjected to such brutality that he gradually identifies as a goat, one among the herd under the control of his Arab master.
Director Blessy wished to adapt this novel, among the best known stories about the Malayali migrant struggle, for the screen 16 years ago. After numerous obstacles, not in the least the pandemic that put the brakes on the shoot, Aadujeevitham (2024) was released on March 28 in Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi. Prithviraj plays Najeeb in the film. Other actors in the cast include Amala Paul, KR Gokul and Jimmy Jean-Louis.
Ever since the film’s release, there have been innumerable comparisons between the book and the novel. Much of Aadujeevitham, the book, is about the introspection of a lonely man. The film, however, is in the mode of a survival thriller with elements of adventure. “It is quite easy to express certain emotions in words, but it’s not so simple to do it in cinema. You have to translate those words into visuals and music. That’s where Blessy’s craftsmanship comes in,” said Benyamin. “The novel may have had many incidents to highlight Najeeb’s loneliness, but Blessy has come up with his own ideas to convey it beautifully. Many viewers have told me that they felt like they travelled with Najeeb when they watched the film.”
Film journalist Vivek S lived in the Middle East from the time he was two years old until recently. He read Aadujeevitham over a decade ago after his friends recommended the book to him. “I was in college back then, and it is a very popular novel among the Malayali migrant community. I was not a big reader and this was one of the rare novels that I read cover to cover in one stretch. I found it exhilarating but was also heartbroken by it,” he recalled.
As a fan of the novel, Vivek wanted to see more of Najeeb’s relationship to the goats in the film. In the novel, there are several moving passages that describe how Najeeb comes to see the goats as his friends and family. He even names a baby goat ‘Nabeel’ after his unborn son – his wife is pregnant at the time of his departure – and pays special attention to him. When he escapes the desert, Najeeb is unable to eat mutton because of the extent to which he identifies with the animals.
The movie is subtle about this transformation. The opening scene shows Najeeb bending his head to drink water along with the goats, and later, there is a brilliant sequence where he is offered a leg of mutton – a rare treat – in the desert. Najeeb is sitting with the goats while his Arab master is celebrating with his people. He is at first happy to be given the food, but when the Arab fires his gun at the sky, Najeeb is immediately reminded that he is prey in the desert, not human. As the goats surround him, an expression of guilt passes on his face and he hugs the leg to his chest.
“I felt the film was visually stunning, and Prithviraj’s performance helps a lot. Compared to the book, I felt Najeeb’s relationship with the goats was missing in the film. When he says goodbye to the goats and leaves, we don’t feel as moved by the scene as we should because the bond isn’t properly established,” said Vivek. “I thought the first half was a bit meandering, but the second half is when the film came alive for me, especially the desert crossing.”
It was because she wanted to avoid making comparisons between the book and the film that independent film critic and writer Ashameera Aiyappan chose not to read Aadujeevitham. She watched the Tamil dubbed version of the film. “If I haven’t already read a book on which a film is based, I choose not to read it before watching the film. I’m usually not a fan of watching the dubbed version, and I prefer to watch the original version, but the Malayalam film did not have subtitles on the day of its release,” explained Aiyappan. “The Tamil dubbed version worked for this film because a huge chunk of dialogues is intentionally unintelligible. The emotions are so high and overwhelming that even the characters can’t articulate what is on their mind. Their words are incomplete, they are sobbing. There’s so much desperation.”
Aiyappan felt that the performances of the cast were outstanding. “This is a sorrowful film. You can call the idea something that would fit an arthouse movie. There is the fatigue of repetition,” she pointed out. “Plot-wise, such a film may not move like an action film. There won’t be leaps of dramatic progression. It will be the same emotion, you’re going to feel stuck a lot.”
This isn’t something that the mainstream audience might want to watch in a theatre. “They’re likely to find such a treatment slow and boring. I’m glad the makers took the effort to keep the film accessible for the mainstream audience and didn’t shut them out. You expect to hear a lot of silence in a film like this which is about one man and his frustration, but there is music in almost every moment, underlining what’s running in Najeeb’s mind,” she said. “The score is poignant and communicates a lot of sorrow, but there is also hope in it. It reminded me of ‘Nenje Ezhu’ from Maryan (2013).”
Aiyappan agreed with Vivek about the film’s effective cinematography. “It’s very hard to adapt an acclaimed novel into a film, especially a book like this where there are so many internal monologues. That’s the impression I got from the excerpts I read,” she said. “That one shot where Najeeb drinks water with the goats beautifully captures how he has metaphorically turned into a goat. Translating that internal transformation to a visual is very hard and I think the film did it very well.”
Benyamin began work on the novel in 2005 and it took him three years to complete and publish it. “When I was working on the book, I wanted to capture Najeeb’s loneliness and his dehumanisation to a point when he thinks of himself as an animal. I wanted to place all this within the diasporic experience,” said Benyamin. “Najeeb names the goats after people back home. He dreams about the landscape of his homeland in the desert. Though he’s in an extreme situation, such feelings are common among the migrant community. I wanted to talk about all this through the novel.”
But, when it comes to adapting the novel for the screen, Benyamin believes it should be about the director’s conviction. “What did Blessy want to take from the book? The protagonist of my novel surrenders to his Arab master, and spends days in such a state. But the Najeeb that Blessy shows in the film isn’t someone like that,” he pointed out. “He keeps thinking about his homeland and planning his escape. That’s how Blessy read it. He wished to focus on Najeeb’s survival.”
For the writer, watching the novel unfold on screen with people in the audience who could relate to Najeeb, was a moving experience. Like Vivek, Benyamin too felt that the walk across the desert was the best part of the film, especially what happens to Hakim, the young man who accompanies Najeeb from Kerala to Saudi. “I thought Hakim’s death was picturised in a very impactful way. The pain a reader would have felt in that part of the novel is the same that a viewer would have experienced in the theatre,” said Benyamin.
The book vs movie comparison is inevitable whenever such adaptations are made. The images conjured up by a reader in their personal space can rarely match a director’s interpretation and execution. Acknowledging this gap, Vivek said that at the end of the day, both are different mediums and must be viewed as such. “I also don’t think it’s mandatory for anyone, including a film critic, to read the book before watching the film adaptation. The film should work for the audience irrespective of whether they’ve read the source material or not,” he opined.
In Aadujeevitham’s case, there is one more comparison that’s being made – fiction vs reality. How much of Najeeb’s real life is there in the novel? There is especially a lot of lurid interest in knowing if a scene of bestiality that's there in the novel happened in real life. The writer recently stated that only 30% of the book is based on reality. This has led to angry questions posed at Benyamin for taking a real life story and fictionalising it though the real life Najeeb has not, so far, made any objections and participated in the film’s promos too.
“When something good happens, a lot of people feel the need to say something negative to register their voice,” said Benyamin with a laugh. “Anyone who reads fiction will know that a writer borrows from reality but shapes it with their imagination. Najeeb in real life may say he ran across the desert in two days. There is a lot of pain in that single line, and a writer can develop that into seven chapters. In cinema, this can be turned into a 45-minute excursion. That’s the prerogative of a creator. That’s the translation from life to art.”
Aadujeevitham is set in the early ‘90s, but it’s not as if there aren’t any more Najeebs. As fictionalised as Benyamin’s novel might be, there are still such incidents that the migrant community suffers through. “I know someone who’s a few years older to me who went through a similar ordeal. This happened in 2010. He was stuck in Saudi for 45 days. He was held against his will,” said Vivek. “People were looking for him and he managed to find a phone to escape. There are many such experiences that people are aware of."
This perhaps explains why the film is doing well not only in India but also in the United Arab Emirates where it has been released, collecting 1.8 million dollars (gross) in the opening weekend despite it being Ramadan, a time when theatre footfalls are low. It is yet to be released in the other Arab countries.
There have been several stories about the Malayali migrant struggle. What is it about Aadujeevitham that is so compelling? What makes people look up to Najeeb, so crushed by life, as their hero? “Najeeb’s story is one of hope. It is on the incredible human will to survive and not give up. In the film, one of the characters says that they should walk till they die,” said Benyamin. “All of us have problems, and there are humans who have gone through terrible, harrowing experiences – not necessarily the desert in the literal sense – who are watching such a film in the theatre. They will be able to relate to the film. They will identify their experience as the desert that Najeeb walked through.”