Face-to-Face The Cinema of Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Preface

Adoor Gopalakrishnan: Pathfinder

Beyond the admiration and gratitude any cinephile – or I should rather say, any viewer – is likely to feel for Adoor Gopalakrishnan and his films, what does a foreign observer like me have to say about him, and them? Certainly unable to achieve the precise and knowledgeable understanding of his work that Parthajit Baruah shares in this book, I can only point out a few significant aspects of Adoor’s cinema, and the way it appealed to me, and, I assume, to many non-Indian film lovers. Seen from afar, his films stand in a very specific place inside the huge modern current that vigorously swept cinema all over the world since the 1950s, from Italian Neo-realism and the French New Wave onward.

On that level, the specificity of Adoor’s input was mostly noticeable with his second feature film, Kodiyettam, that is, more than the more explicitly neo-realist Swayamvaram. Schematically, I’d characterize this by the almost impossible fusion of two qualities which are so often separate, if not antagonistic: a subtle mix of deep humanity, empathy for the body and soul of humans as they are, and, at the same time, a stylized organization of storytelling, defying the usual rules of narration, choosing time and space instead of action and plot whenever needed, boldly affirming the abilities of cinema to open up the viewer’s spirit, and to enhance and interrogate its relation with the world. It is most unusual that such an affirmed aesthetic option would cohabit with such a heartfelt relation with characters. Parthajit Baruah talks about Adoor’s work as ‘a voice of humanity who believes in the Gandhian principle’. I confess I don’t know much about Gandhian principles beyond superficial common knowledge, but obviously one from a different cultural background can relate with such an attitude towards mankind, social relations, and the world as a whole – including what westerners call ‘nature’ in a questionable separation of the cultural and social.

Adoor’s very rare ability to associate stylistic elements with emotional empathy reaches an unparalleled peak with his masterpiece Elippathayam. Though effective with all characters, it is even more true with the depiction of Unni, the childish landlord. In terms of finding the fusion between stylization and sentiment, the only acceptable comparison I can think of is with Chekov stage plays, though with extremely different components. But, and this leads us far away from stage theatre, it is unfair to talk only about the human characters, though they are unforgettably moving, specially thanks to the clever lack of psychological explanation. Unfair because one should also mention the house, the landscape, even the light and the sky of Kerala. Adoor’s cinema is deeply rooted in a geographical and climatic setting, which is much more than a film set: elements of a world as active protagonists of happenings around.

As a foreigner who, at the time, had never been in Kerala – and, I should admit, was hardly aware of the existence of this state, not to speak about the ability to locate it on a map – there was the immediate discovery of a certain quality of green and blue, that is, of a certain relation between heat and rain, clouds and trees, and a certain tonality in a language, which, I learned only later, is called Malayalam. It is only at the end of this book, in the chapter dedicated to Nizhalkkuthu, that Parthajit Baruah has this subtle insight about the meaning of palmyra trees as witnesses. But, at least for foreign viewers raised and living where no palmyra tree naturally grows, it seems obvious that these trees, as well as the elevated paths circulating between the fields, the shadows in the traditional houses, all testify to the reality and the specificity of a certain world, or a certain state of our common world.

Ignorant as I was – as I am still, but a little less though, and ignorant as most Western viewers were and are – ‘Indian cinema’ meant either Satyajit Ray or Bollywood (with, hopefully, the discovery of one Guru Dutt and one Ritwik Ghatak movie). Now, with these Gopalakrishnan movies, we were elsewhere. The atmosphere had changed, the physical aspect of men, women and children had changed, the rules of the game had changed. And though not quite lost, the immense humanity of Adoor’s point of view was opening access to this other world.

This is probably not obvious to Indian viewers, who are of course aware of all this, but one has to underline how mind-opening it was to discover such wonderful films, so different to what we used to call ‘Indian films’ – certainly even beyond Adoor’s consciousness of the phenomenon. Later on, we were able to discover yet more Kerala creations among the great cinema of the world.

These qualities also relate, and maybe in an even more important way, to another aspect. Worldwide, the modern cinema of the 1960s and ’70s belongs to a time of intense political activity. Almost always, in western as well as eastern Europe, in Japan, in Latin America, in the US, it related to liberation movements, youth uprisings, new forms of criticism of the dominant regimes and social organizations. This was part of the energy of the ‘new cinemas’ from all over the world but, as well, it became very often a limit, when the militant agenda prevailed upon cinema itself.

Hopefully, many among the greatest directors played with this threat in various creative ways, from Jean-Luc Godard to Oshima Nagisa, Glauber Rocha to Milos Forman or Bernardo Bertolucci. But very rare were those who managed to openly, frontally, acknowledge the complexity and the urge of the political issues in their countries, and invent a cinematic form that would, again, open up the understanding of the medium. This is what Adoor Gopalakrishnan did, the most explicit example being the amazing Kathapurushan.

Kathapurushan is a quite unique case of a political film which moves forward with the hopes and promises of activist action, and, at the same time, is able to display the contradiction and dead ends of what it stands for without despising or betraying it. A film that not only relates with human characters on a personal level and shares the emotion of generous engagement, but also shows up some of its ridiculous facets. A film which finds its way to ultimately laugh about all of it, in a way that does not dismiss what was previously done and seen, but on the contrary enriches it, bringing a larger understanding of the complexity of a social, political and individual situation, in a simultaneously heartfelt and light way. For an ignorant foreigner like me, it was also the discovery of the astonishing political history of Kerala, its very specific blend of utopia, progress towards democracy, corruption, traditionalism (in itself and as part of the larger Indian historical process) both before and since Independence. At the time, we did not know about Mukhamukham which, to a certain extent, anticipates what Kathapurushan fully accomplishes, in terms of giving access to the specificity of Kerala’s political history – a specificity which it is very possible to relate to, despite its local aspects.

If Elippathayam and Kathapurushan are probably the most significant and obvious achievements of this ability to bring together the life and depiction of real persons and the metaphoric parable, to articulate the individual and the collective with a proud sense of the emotional and intellectual effects of original formal choices, these characteristics also infuse each of Adoor’s films.

In the chapter dedicated to Kathapurushan, Parthajit Baruah quotes Adoor saying, ‘I am talking of things I know intimately.’ The director refers to the historical background, the factual events that happened and affected India, or more specifically Kerala, during the period of time covered by the film. But this sentence is appropriate for all of Adoor’s works, sometimes in some unexpected ways: though he did not personally experience the position of all his characters, he always engages with the viewer from a deeply felt inner approach – this is, for instance, very clear and remarkable in case of his feminine characters, who are so important in many of his films even before Naalu Pennugal.

Once again, in the twilight parable Nizhalkkuthu, the ‘Adoor blend’ does not only achieve a unique level of artistic and humanist triumph, it also turns out to be the base to elaborate the depth of meanings and questions contained in this astonishingly delicate, though violent, film. Adoor once said that the only thing he hates is violence. I figure that what he meant was brutality. Because, in their apparently soft tones, his films deal with the reality of violence, the violence of the world, but without taking advantage of it, without capitalizing on violence, even under the excuse of denouncing it, as so many films do. Which is paramount to an ethical work of art. In the chapter dedicated to Nizhalkkuthu, Parthajit Baruah appropriately underlines that ‘Adoor breaks the conventional and stereotyped notion of a hangman and makes an effort to show that the hangman is a normal human being who leads a family life’. This is one of the many ways, but one of the most significant, through which a director with an open spirit is likely to reconstruct the perception of humans mechanically associated with one facet of their complex being. Even more than a mark of respect for the character, and eventually for the real persons this character refers to, it is a mark of respect for the viewers.

Visually magnificent but always in a non-self-imposing way, inventing creative use of the musical score (and of the absence of it), redefining the relation between the camera and the bodies of actors as a resource field so rarely exploited, understanding the meaning and the efficiency of the films’ pace, and especially of the long take, Adoor’s mise en scène makes use of an extraordinarily large array of cinematic tools. With both his deep understanding of cinema language and his immense knowledge in various cultural fields (as many of his documentaries testify) this film-maker proves that the mise en scène itself can capture high spiritual values, and can help share them. In this sense, Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s films not only proclaim his own achievement, but serve as a kind of anthem for the very nature of film-making at its best.

Jean-Michel Frodon

Introduction

From Kerala to the World

Adoor Gopalakrishnan has brought about a renaissance in the narrative technique of Indian cinema. This technique grew increasingly elaborate as he went on to become not only a staunch practitioner of India’s alternative cinema but also one of the foremost film-makers on the map of world cinema.

Adoor is not handcuffed to the ethos of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; rather, he observes, probes and reflects upon the changes effected in the period his story springs from, giving it new shape and colour. The sense of belonging, of identity, of responsibility, the quest for selfhood, dreams and enchantments, the thirst and lust for power, identity crisis, spiritual progress or regression – are all themes that he explores and develops melodically in his films.

Adoor portrays the common man and his struggles to find his footing in a world ridden by political and social upheavals. His foremost concern is the capability of this man/woman to sustain and survive in such a world, to stand up against adversity, yet hold on to human values and moralities. But his visions can be optimistic: in spite of the harsh and bleak world that Sita (the female protagonist in Swayamvaram) faces after her husband’s demise, she is not decimated by her circumstances – life doesn’t come to a standstill for her. Rather, the film impresses on the viewer how Sita’s strength of character helps her overcome adversities.

Renowned director Shyam Benegal observes in the Foreword to the book, A Door to Adoor:

Adoor’s films are meditations on the human condition. He has an extraordinary ability to delve into the complexities of human existence: compulsions forced by history and tradition, and by the dynamics of social and political change. His narrative appears simple enough but as the stories unfold, nothing is simple any more. Moral ambiguities, multiple realities, spin their web around the protagonists who are driven by forces that are as much released by individual volition as they are by social, environmental or historical factors.

Adoor’s strength is the strength of his principles and convictions. He never compromises on these whatever be the marked (or market) trends of cinema. When Indian cinema was infected by cheap populist formulae (Malayalam cinema being no exception), Adoor, committed to the cause of pure cinema, never yielded. (On some film-makers who had fallen into the popular formula trap, Adoor noted, in an interview with Prem Panicker, ‘Moviemaking has become a gamble, not a creative endeavour.’) Adoor, for his part, continued to voice the predicament and angst of human existence through his creations.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan is always aware that change is inevitable. Nothing in this world is permanent. But an artist can through timeless works of art inspire posterity. Adoor has witnessed the hopes and dreams of Indians since Independence, their disillusionment at the failures, split of the Communist Party of India, the Naxal uprising, economic crises, the Emergency, the alarming rise of communal politics. The change in the socio-economic and political sectors in Kerala is a running theme through his films. Never giving in to commercialism, never compromising with his creativity, Adoor continues to draw and flesh out pictures of human beings caught in combative conditions.

Nandita Das is an established name in serious Indian cinema, and has received national/international awards for her brilliant performances in films both in Hindi and several other languages (four in Malayalam, including Adoor’s Naalu Pennungal) and won a national award too for the first film she directed. She candidly remarks, ‘He is one of the very few eminent film-makers who have really stuck to their commitment to good cinema. So it was an honour to have been asked to work with him.’

Another way of putting it is: Adoor is born and lives for good cinema. He once said to me, ‘Cinema is my profession and I treasure it. You do many things in your life. But cinema has given meaning to my life.’

Every time he ventures into cinema, he looks for a new grammar, a new language. He deals with ongoing problems that have universal meaning. He does not limit himself to any specific period, but rather the quality of timelessness of his works makes the film always contemporary and relevant. That is why he has a large number of viewers worldwide who wait eagerly for his explorations into untrodden zones. And while he is well aware and keeps abreast of changing technology, his cinema always employs a fresh language that is unhindered by the new technology.

Adoor’s films start from the 1940s and invariably focus on the traditions, history and aesthetics of Kerala. The eminent French film critic Jean-Michel Frodon, while discussing the thematic dynamics of Adoor’s works, states:

Adoor’s films are unique since they articulate stories of human and social issues that work universally but simultaneously have a very local base, form and setting. For me, it is very impressive to find an original answer to a very general question of how you translate local, social and historical questions to a global level and, at the same time, discover a new world. I do not know at all about the people of Kerala, the language of Kerala and the landscape of Kerala. But you experience it in his films so strongly along with the locale and its concerns.

In his forty-year journey across the cinematic map, Adoor has given us eleven thought-provoking films that transcend the linguistic, cultural and geographic confines of regional scenarios. Adoor’s own original, inimitable stories were visualized in works such as Swayamvaram, Kodiyettam, Elippathayam, Mukhamukham, Anantaram, Kathapurushan and Nizhalkkuthu. His adapted works are Mathilukal, based on a story by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Vidheyan (Paul Zacharia), Naalu Pennungal and Oru Pennum Randaanum (Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai).

In a personal email communication with me, film scholar Anil Zankar writes:

Over the years he has depicted a variety of subjects. If one considers films like Elippathayam, Mukhamukham, Kathapurushan and Anantaram, we find that he wants to explore the world within an individual living in a certain historical context. His protagonists are not men of action, who will drive the narrative forward. In fact, sometimes an intriguing stasis and ambiguity define them. In Elippathayam, the main character is confined to his own self and the limited space around him. He is completely frozen in time. In Mukhamukham, in the earlier part of the film, the hero is a leader, an organizer of workers. Then he goes underground for many years. After his emergence, he has changed irreversibly. He maintains a most intriguing silence from then on till the end of the film. Kathapurushan is a journey and growth of a person who has to overcome many obstacles. Anantaram gives us the delightful experience of discovering the introvert as well as the extrovert within the same person. It also is one of the rare experiences in Indian cinema of non-linear time created with multiple dimensions.

His concerns and the fact that his films are not plot-driven has shaped his mise en scène in some way. His mise en scène is quiet, contemplative, observing human beings in landscapes or in the architecture of their habitat and borders on the minimalist. The courtyards, the interiors of the homes, the various properties therein gain an eloquent presence in Adoor’s films. He has been an explorer, who has stuck to the difficult task of depicting ambivalence and multivalence of human life through his film narratives.

It was during the 1970s, when Kerala was experiencing severe economic crisis and the Emergency (the darkest period in Indian history) that Adoor emerged and evolved as a film-maker, his seminal works being Swayamvaram (1972) and Kodiyettam (1977). There followed Elippathayam (1981), Mukhamukham (1984), Anantaram (1987), Mathilukal (1990), Vidheyan (1993), Kathapurushan (1995), Nizhalkkuthu (2002), Naalu Pennungal (2007) and Oru Pennum Randaanum (2008).

Swayamvaram (One’s Own Choice), dealing with life’s choices and the consequences thereof, exposes the moral and spiritual crisis of the middle class through the protagonist of the film, Viswanathan. Kodiyettam (Ascent) describes the metaphoric journey of Sankarankutty from his waywardness to the realization that he is a responsible member of society. Sankarankutty is the epitome of the common man who is good at heart but is unaware that he has a duty towards family and society. Elippathayam (The Rat-trap) tells the tragedy of Unnikunju who has a feudal past and is trapped within himself and his claustrophobic ancestral house, unable to grasp the changes that are taking place around him. The film weaves in the theme of how women are caught in the web of the feudal system. Elippathayam, for which Adoor received the British Film Institute Award in 1982 – classing him with such world masters like

R.W. Fassbinder, Alain Resnais and Bernardo Bertolucci – established Adoor as a director of international stature. He is the only Indian director, other than Satyajit Ray, who has been honoured with this award.

Mukhamukham (Face-to-Face) is set against the backdrop of the political scenario of Kerala around the time of the great split in the Communist Party of India. People often prefer a myth to the reality as we see from the life and career of Sreedharan, the protagonist. Anantaram (Monologue) deals with the duality of reality. The film advances through a monologue by Ajayan as he seeks to find as well reveal the routes his life has taken to bring him to his present predicament. Mathilukal (The Walls) is a unique love story: Confined within the precincts of a jail in the pre-Independence era, Basheer falls in love with Narayani, a woman prisoner on the other side of the high prison wall. They cannot see each other but love blossoms regardless. Vidheyan (The Servile) probes the master–slave relationship through the story of Bhaskara Patelar and Thommi in a south Karnataka setting. Kathapurushan (Man of the Story) documents the emotional journey of Kunjunni, a young sensitive middle-class man who hopes to change a society into a more just and equitable one and in the process himself undergoes a change. Nizhalkkuthu (Shadow Kill) looks at the last hangman in Travancore who cannot deal with death any more. Naalu Pennungal (Four Women) records the journey, in a male-dominated social set-up, of four Indian women from different classes in the period from the 1940s to the 1960s. The four stories are adapted from works by the famous Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai. Oru Pennum Randaanum (A Climate for Crime) has four separate stories, again not directly connected