KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 29 — Local Tamil film Jagat which has been getting positive reviews since its release two weeks ago, is a 10-year-long tale of accomplishment for its director, Shanjhey Kumar Perumal.
The 35-year-old who produced the movie for only RM300,000 had to don many hats to put this story of the Indian Malaysian community’s vicious cycle of urban poverty and crime — a theme close to his heart — onto the silver screen.
The University Sains Malaysia graduate and winner of the 2009 BMW Shorties Award for his production Machai (The Apprentice) juggled scriptwriting, talent casting, acting instructor and even designed the movie’s posters due to the financial shortage.
“We were severely limited in all aspects but we took it as a challenge… every time we look at someone who complains that they don’t have enough resources, we decided to not do the same. We pushed aside our complaints and thought about how to best do our work. So we doubled our efforts because of the limitation we faced,” he told Malay Mail Online in a recent interview.
But the biggest challenge was finding the perfect actor to breathe life into his protagonist, a young boy named Appoi.
The search for Appoi took years, Shanjhey said and then one day, he got a lucky break. He was shooting a documentary on school dropouts in a rough neighbourhood in the city and one of the young boys caught his eye.
“I spotted this boy in a Melawati school… he was fighting with some boys, running around displaying so much energy and I liked that very much because in acting, you need a lot of that,” he said.
And that was how Shanjhey got 12-year-old Harvin Raj, who came from a rough background but who demonstrated a spark that immediately made the director think of his main character.
“If you see his face, there is innocence and he is also capable of bringing out a wild character and balance characters,” he said.
Harvin had never acted before, and Shanjhey didn’t know if he could act at all, but decided to take a leap of faith and took the pre-teen on in sheer hopes he could be taught — within a month of the start of shooting.
But that was only the start of a fresh set of issues for the director who had to get permission from the guardians to employ the minor.
Harvin came from a troubled background and was at that time living in a home, which meant a lot of red tape for Shanjhey to sort through, and nail-biting moments.
Harvin finally arrived on the film set three days before the shoot was to start, totally raw as an actor.
“After the boy came three days before shooting, we gave him on set training and crash courses as well as coaching… it was very difficult but after that, he managed to get into character.
“The shooting itself took about 33 days but the biggest problem was we were really limited in our resources for everything; budget, crew, and the actors were all new,” Shanjhey said.
In Jagat — which is a loose Tamil lingo for the Malay word “jahat” meaning “bad” — Shanjhey tells the story of the hardships faced by ethnic Indians in the 1990s, after the estates where their forefathers were shipped in from India by the colonial British to work were closed.
Told through the experience of a young boy Appoi who grows up in a very masculine circle, the movie deals with universal themes of migration, urban poverty and the resulting downward spiral into crime.
Jagat is currently playing in 10 cinemas nationwide.
