Success and controversies go hand in hand. Now that Blessy and Prithviraj’s The Goat Life is a huge success in Malayalam, the controversies are crawling out of the woodwork.
The one that gets one’s goat(pun intended) has to do with a sequence showing the isolated disoriented Najeeb making love with a goat. The incident is recorded in the novel version of Najeeb’s story by Benyamin who at a public promotional event for the film claimed the eyebrow-raising scene of bestiality was shot for the first.
However when I asked Prithvi Raj if such a scene had actually been shot his reply was, “Never shot it, Sir. It was the director’s call that the character-arc of his Najeeb wouldn’t do that.”
Speaking about his experience of embodying the character of Najeeb, Prithviraj said, “In 2008 when Blessy first told me about doing this movie, my first thought was, how do I approach this character? Do I come down and talk to you about who you really are, or do I try understanding the character Najeeb that Mr.Benyamin wrote, or the Najeeb that Mr.Blessy has in his mind, do I try to understand him. This was the confusion I had. Finally Mr.Blessy and I decided that, from the novel Aadujeevitham, and the Najeeb that Mr.Blessy visualised, the Najeeb that I visualise in my mind should be the one I play in the movie, so you’ll see that Najeeb in the movie. .”
Added Resul Pookutty who is the sound designer of The Goat Life, “There is a scene in the book where Najeeb makes love to the goat…. All these crazy people were waiting to see that scene in the film.But director Blessy avoided that rather uncomfortable moment in the film adaptation…So that’s only loose talk that’s going around, a fantasy being spread by kinky basket cases.”