Netflix Fans Brand ‘Brutal’ Film Based On True Story An Absolute ‘Must-Watch
People are taking to social media to praise a survival drama that took 16 years to make and was initially banned across numerous countries.
One viewer pens: “Must-watch cinema.”
Another adds: “What a hard-hitting movie.”
“What a masterpiece! Loved it,” shares a third.
Somebody else writes: “Tears after watching the full movie.”
It’s also receiving acclaim from critics and has been described as a ‘cinematic portrayal of brutal struggle.’
Joanne Laurier wrote for the World Socialist Web Site: “The filmmakers in this case have confronted an immense injustice and tragedy of our time head-on and deserve full credit.”
Film Companion‘s Anupama Chopra said: “There is such ambition and artistry in it.”
“The movie doesn’t just focus on the physical survival but also on emotional journey, resilience, and adaptation,” commended Sunandhini Radhakrishnan in Random Whys.
The film has also scored an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score of 88% and 7.1/10 on IMDb.
Directed by Blessy, the well-received title stars Prithviraj Sukumaran, an Indian actor, producer, and director who primarily works in Malayalam cinema.
It’s an adaptation of Benyamin’s best-selling 2008 novel ‘Aadujeevitham,’ based on the real-life story of Najeeb Muhammed (played by Sukumaran), a Malayali immigrant laborer in the Gulf.
The film’s synopsis reads: “Indian migrant worker Najeeb Muhammed goes to Saudi Arabia to earn money to send back home, but he finds himself living a slave-like existence herding goats in the middle of the desert.”
Blessy bought the rights to ‘Aadujeevitham’ in 2008, having ‘never read anything like it,’ according to the BBC.
The director said: “I knew all the events in the story. That was how much people were talking about it, especially in the film industry. Even then, it blew me away.
“A standout feature of this story is this diffusion of identities between man and animal – this one man slowly losing his identity as a species, as a human, and becoming one among the animals. I had never read anything like it.”
But making the survival drama wasn’t smooth sailing as budget constraints prevented the title from progressing and it eventually found itself in development hell.
Development hell, also known as development purgatory and development limbo, is media and software jargon that summarizes a project that remains in the early stages of development for a long period due to legal, technical, or artistic challenges.
Many of these projects are abandoned by the involved parties and are never produced.
Yet miraculously, The Goat Life was an exception to this fate.
Although the film’s crew faced setbacks due to COVID-19 and became stranded in Jordan for 70 days, the title was eventually released worldwide on March 28, 2024.
Alongside positive reviews from critics, The Goat Life is now the third highest-grossing Malayalam film of all time and one of the highest-grossing Indian films of 2024.
The film, which has sparked outrage for its depiction of the Saudi Arabian labor system, was initially banned in GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries apart from UAE, however, this ban was subsequently lifted in all countries apart from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The novel was previously banned in the same countries.
