Reportedly the trailer of “Merry Christmas” shows the two central characters walking past a theatre showing the children’s classic “Pinocchio”, about the titular wooden puppet whose nose grows longer when he lies. “We have not specified the time but it is set in the early ’80s. ‘Pinocchio’ has many movie versions so we decided to design our own version of the ‘Pinocchio’ poster. We haven’t shown the movie on screen, you will only hear the soundtrack. So, thematically it’s very much like our film because it is about deception. When Pinocchio tells lies, his nose gets longer,” Raghavan told in an interview. Meanwhile the hindi trailer of “Merry Christmas” seems like a time capsule, taking viewers back to the era of weighing machines, landline phones and single-screen theatres. Raghavan, 60, said he decided to include these elements as they are all gone now.
“Merry Christmas”, according to the filmmaker, is an intimate story of two mysterious strangers. “You meet them on this particular day. What they were doing before, how much of what they are saying is true or false, it is all left to you to make assumptions as a viewer. These two strangers are meeting each other and the viewer is meeting each of them, and we have to figure out, ‘Okay, what’s happening here?’ It just makes you curious,” he teased. Just like his films, chance played an important role in the unique casting of Kaif and Sethupathi.
Kaif had once spoken to Raghavan about doing a film that is “out of her comfort zone” and that conversation stayed with him. “It is unlike the films she has done so far which largely, and I’m saying largely, project her as a very glamorous person. She once met me two years back and said she would love to do something in this sort of a zone. Luckily, I found this story,” he recalled. “This casting is so oddball that I hope it will create curiosity. You can’t write chemistry on paper. Chemistry has to be performed and enacted. It has to come through. What they have managed is difficult to achieve.” For the tamil version of “Merry Christmas”, Raghavan said they came up with a “gibberish” version of tamil for Kaif, who had to learn the language for the film.
click and follow Indiaherald WhatsApp channel