Of Life...On Films : Adoor gopala krishnan

Born in 1941, Adoor Gopalakrishnan started acting the amateur stage at the early age of eight. Wrote and directed over twenty Stage Plays during his academic career. A graduate in Political Science and Economics, he joined the Film Institute in Pune after a short stint of employment with the Kerala Government and got his diplomas in Script writing and Direction in 1965. One of the leading lights of the New Indian Cinema, Adoor pioneered the Film Society Movement in the State of Kerala and started the country's first film Co-operative, Chitralekha for the production, distribution and exhibition of quality films.

He has scripted and directed nine films and more than two dozen Shorts and Documentaries. Each of his feature films has won top national awards. His first film, Swayamvaram went on to win National awards for best film, best director, best cameraman and best actress. Since then He has won national award for best director four times and best script writer thrice. His films have been shown in every important festivals including, Cannes, Berlin and Venice. Adoor's third feature, Elippathayam won him the coveted British Film Institute Award for the most original and imaginative film of 1982. The International Film Critics' Prize (FIPRESCI) has gone to him five times successively for Mukhamukham, Anantaram, Mathilukal, Vidheyan and Kathapurushan. In 1983 the Government of India, Conferred on him the title of Padmashri and Padmavibhushan in 2006 in recognition of his contribution to Indian Cinema. His collection of essays, The World of cinema got the national award for Best book on Cinema in 1984. His pioneering work in the Film Society Movement has gone a long way in creating a better film culture in his home State. He has served on International Film Festival juries in Venice, Hawaii, Singapore, Sochi, New Delhi, Brussels, Alexandria and so on.

A complete retrospective of his films was held at the French Cinematheque, Paris in 1999. Other important retrospectives include the ones at the Lincoln Center, New York (1994), La Rochelle, Pesaro, Madrid and Fribourg. He has also been honoured with tributes and homage at the film festivals of Helsinki, Denver, Munich, Nantes, Alexandria, Figuera da Foz, Manila, Houston etc.

This interview with Adoor by C S Venkiteswaran was conducted in 2001.

Complete Interview

Venkiteswaran: What are your earliest memories of sight and sound?
Adoor: One of my earliest memories is of a boat ride in the night. Someone had come to inform my father of my aunt's death. I was five or six years old and we were staying at my father's office quarters, which was in an island in the backwaters. We started then and there by boat. The water all around us was calm and still and it bore a faint reflection of the night sky lending some faint idea of light and sight. The sound of the oars falling on water is still vivid in my memory.

Memories of the past have something to do with tragedies-pain, insult, loss, grief, I think...

When I was a child, I was a good marksman. I was adept at aiming at any mango or cashew fruit and bringing it down with stones. Once, while I was going to school, I saw an owl on a tree. I don't know what came over me. I aimed and threw a stone at it. And it dropped to the ground dead. This painful memory has stayed with me since then and still haunts me. There are many things in life that you can't repair later.

Our house was in the middle of a large garden with a variety of trees-mango, cashew, coconut, arecanut, jackfruit, tamarind. There was hardly any tree I had not climbed. Once on top of the tree I would forget about the laws of gravitation. And naturally it was normal routine for me to fall off them. As it became a regular affair, my mother kept a dish of herbal oil handy so that she could take it with her every time she rushed to the spot where I hit the ground with a big thud.

Animals, birds, trees and plants were all part of our life. We had cows, dogs and cats, all called by name. They were part of the family. I remember an incident concerning one of our dogs (we called him La Fayette)-old and infirm-and everyone thought he was about to die. He had almost lost all his hair and was always dozing in some corner of the house. One day he chanced up on the lehyam (ayurvedic medicine) kept out in the courtyard for sunning. Before anyone noticed it, he had lapped up the whole of it. My mother had got it prepared for my sister who was resting after delivery. In a couple of weeks, to everyone's surprise, the dog started growing shiny hair, and to regain his lost youth. A perfect testimony to the efficacy of the lehyam!

A lot many amongst us are living in an illusory world. They claim to be living in a fast world. But where is speed in our life? It is there only on TV or in MTV where images flicker fast and faster. In a place where the electrical power supply is frequently interrupted, how can life be fast? This speed we are talking about is totally artificial, like our popular heroes and villains, their costumes and vocations.


You are very fond of Kathakali and have made several documentaries on Kathakali artistes like Guru Chengannur and Kalamandalam Gopi. Was Kathakali always there right from your childhood?
There were regular performances at my ancestral house. Our family were patrons of Kathakali for generations and we had our own Kaliyogam (Kathakli troupe). There were artistes in the family too. A cousin of my mother was married to an all-time-great kathakali singer. One of the three husbands, all brothers, of my grandmother, had taken to magic as his pastime. While he proved himself a patron and connoisseur of arts, the other two took care of mundane matters like managing the farmlands and attending to regular litigation of sorts.

My earliest experience of Kathakali is that of watching it from my mother's lap. For my mother Kathakali was almost part of her daily life. So, even as a child, I developed a liking for it as I watched it in performance and listened to my mother as she explained what was happening on stage to the women sitting around us.

In those days, at my taravad (joint family house), we could watch a number of Kathakali performances- both with make-up and costume and also without them (Cholliyattam). On any special occasion like an elder's birthday, a performance was an essential item. We had the basic unit (a troupe comprising of performers, accompanying instrumentalists, trainees, singers, greenroom hands, gurus etc). We only had to gather the 'stars' as guest performers as is the general practice even today. The costumes and headgears my uncle had got made were of high quality. Whenever the legendary Krishnan Nair, who was a rising star in the Fifties, had any performance nearby, he used to insist on borrowing these very ones. Those days the glittering parts of the headgear were made out of the shell of insects like the blue beetle, not gilt paper as it is done now. Their glow in the light of the oil lamp was very unique. A number of labourers used to be sent out to the fields to hunt for blue beetles every time a headgear had to be got made. But the tragic part of it is that I grew up in a period when all this was considered worthless. What was considered 'worthwhile' was western theatre. So, we spent our time reading, studying, writing and producing such plays. We were always looking towards the west. I feel it was a great loss. It was thrust upon us that proper theatre should have unity of space and time. And we were totally convinced of that, no doubts or hesitations. So, Koodiyattam or Kathakali did not mean much to us. We had acquired different yardsticks of quality judgment, and these arts questioned such rigid conceptions of space and time.

Curiously, one doesn't find any kathakali performance in your films.
True. I have only shown the performers getting ready in Kodiyettam, and never beyond that. That also, very contextually, just to show a transformation-a man transforming into a female character.

I think your approach to films is deeply influenced by Kathakali, its basic elements and mise-en-scene that combine rigorous delineation of characters on the one hand, even while maintaining the possibility of improvisation during performance. So in a way, it is very much open and also rigorous at the same time. This, I feel, is a characteristic of your films also, especially the way you present your characters and organize your scenes...
May be it is there in an indirect way.

For e.g., when a pacha character comes on stage, his 'character' is very much defined. But in actual performance, it is the narrative context that determines expression, and the possibilities for improvisation are infinite. This precision about characterization is present in your films also, I think...
May be. After all, what is a character? A character is revealed through actions and reactions and the inevitable interactions (and also the lack of it) with others in given situations. There is possibly no other proper way to reveal it. All human situations are dramatically potent. So if the person who faces it happens to be plain wooden in nature without any potential for attitudinal changes, how would a credible and interesting development result? The lessons of the past as well as the fresh encounters of the present go on to define his place in the sun. There can be no single prefabricated approach in these matters.

Yes, the most popular characters in classical arts like Kathakali or Koodiyattam are all villains like Ravana or Bali, and seldom the satvic characters like Rama. For satvic characters lack drama and conflict in their personality, and as a corollary, in their representation.
Yes, they are also the most colourful characters. It is a red 'thalli' and 'kathi' that shines on stage rather than the satvic 'pacha' characters. But paradoxically, only those who play the pacha characters become 'stars'. People admire a Gopi more than a Ramankutty Nair, despite the visually spectacular and colourful presentation of the villains or demons in Kathakali.


Unlike art forms like the Japanese Kabuki, the presentation of which is more spectacular, Kathakali requires the minimum of properties and sets. You can perform it anywhere with the minimum of resources and stage settings.

Recently I made a film on Koodiyattam-the oldest living theatre in the world for UNESCO. It was basically an effort to document the theatre art form. A three-hour long film resulted though I had shot almost ten hours of it. But then they wanted a smaller version of 10 to 15 minutes duration. It was not impossible, but was not fair to the art, I thought. Instead, I suggested they watch any 15 minutes from the film. That would be more in keeping with this theatre art that takes a few weeks to enact an Act.

This great performance tradition of Koodiyattam and Kathakali, where there is infinite freedom to improvise, where time and space is fluid, has all this helped in developing a 'Malayali' film idiom or language?
I haven't analysed my films on those lines. But I believe that such a culture is part of my works and runs as its undercurrent.

Kathakali engrosses me completely. While watching a performance, I forget everything else-the external world, all the personal problems... There is hardly anything in it that relates to the present and there is no effort at being realistic. I think the percussion and the ambience as a whole transport us completely into a different world. And it has always been such a creative stimulus for me. Here each role is being defined anew by the actors each time they perform it. Now Gopi is defining how a Nalan should be. Earlier it was Krishnan Nair. Tomorrow it will be somebody else. It keeps on changing and evolving.

And there is never a performance that is 'the' performance making the act of recording often irrelevant.
Yes, that is its greatness. The problem with recording is that it would be taken for the norm. One of the great qualities of our culture is that nothing is staged or performed with a view to be preserved. Every performance is for that evening. Tomorrow it will be created again.

Once I went to Kadammanitta to watch Padayani. In the late evening they were all busy painting makeshift masks and making the costumes and those huge and spectacular headgears. All that is done on fresh arecanut sheaths and tender coconut leaves lending the make-up a certain ethnic authenticity. They take on a special glow in the light of the oil torches. Once the performance is over, those headgears and perishables are simply discarded. That night, when I came away I brought some of the masks with me. But after a day or two, they just withered and shrank. A Padayani performer doesn't have to create anything for preservation. He is confident that he can always create it anew, anytime, and always afresh. It is a great concept. Take our 'kalamezhuthu' for instance. We draw this colourful and wonderfully intricate Kalam only to erase it at the end of the ritual. This obsession with preservation is totally western-this idea of plucking something from its natural context and keeping it. For us it is part of a continuum. Our climate is not quite kind to the idea of preservation either. These torrential rains and sultry summers don't allow any kind of preservation. It destroys and in turn replenishes too. A summer would dry up everything. But rains would give everything a rebirth.

Has contemporary Indian art lived up to this heritage?
The question is whether we are aware of a heritage that is all our own. Whether we look beyond the present and the recent. Also do we really consider even the everyday phenomena around us seriously?

For example take the crow. Ours is a lifetime association with this ubiquitous bird. There is no event in life where this bird doesn't have a signification. Its crowing signifies the arrival of visitors, birth, death, betrothals - everything in our life.

Or take the coconut tree-a tree that is closely linked to our lives. Everything about it is significant. Its position in relation to the house, its girth, height, slant, the rings on its trunk and so on. Then think of the house-lizards. Their droppings, the 'tche - tche' noise they make, their own falls-a set of meanings and relationships are associated with it all. The cow and various other domestic animals are all inextricably intertwined with our lives and fortunes. So all these motifs form a natural part of our views and attitudes on life and hence films as well.

The hooting of owl is associated with a particular time of the day. Likewise the mood and temper of a situation can be suggested through bird and animal sounds. The crow is an interesting bird that way. There are crows that yearn to sing like other birds. I have listened to them with sympathy and understanding and I must say that they were quite sweet. Once I heard a caged mynah imitating the crow struggling to croon like a bird in all sarcasm!

And then there are the natural phenomena like the rain and the sun. All my films have rain at some point. I feel that the film is not complete without a rain. Maybe to set a mood, an ambience, to suggest something. The effort is to evoke the associations these elements resonate in us.

In my films I have used crows, dogs, house-lizards, and other birds in various ways. I don't know if everyone understands it. But still, it is part of my way of story telling. For example in MUKHAMUKHAM, there is a scene in which the head constable takes the liberty of demanding tea to be served. He is not a welcome guest and is told that there was no milk left in the house as the calf had finished everything. At that moment the bleating of a calf is heard in the background. An audience familiar with rural life would immediately realise that the calf is bleating for its mother's milk and the head of the household was simply lying to the constable.

What about the dimension of space?
The use of space within the frame of a shot and also in the film as a whole should positively be influenced by our architecture. The composition of a frame is not just a casual decision. It is something that is deeply related to the ambience of the living space. In our commercial films, it is a common sight that two rival characters are often shown together in close proximity simply because they have to be accommodated within a frame. It is a total negation of any respect for space and the advantages inherent in it. Ideally, space should have kept them apart. There are a lot of such things, like the way you use topography of a particular place etc. The objective is to make the viewer feel. The point is not in what you see or hear but in what you are made to see or hear. The visuals we see and the sounds you hear lead you to something beyond their sum total. We need to be reminded of other things constantly. But the tragedy is, even the most sensitive of viewers don't expect much from films. This is because they are constantly being exposed to such trite and trivial things on the screen where the facade hides an interior that is not there.

Have you ever felt it as a conscious challenge, the attempt to narrate differently as against the Hollywood or Western ways? For example take the kite sequence in KODIYETTAM, a delightfully lengthy sequence, which is pure cinema with no diegetic immediacy to it. And there is also something very much Malayalee to it.
It is pure abandonment, an expression of leisure and also typical of Sankarnkutty's rudderless life. It can only happen like that, for the film has an episodic structure. It is devised in such a fashion as the film would look natural and as if there was no intervention from outside. No visible drama, no major issues or conflicts, and the pace is unhurried. I have used no background score in it either. Most viewers didn't even notice it. In the background, I have used the sounds of almost all the common birds and animals in Kerala - the crow, the owl, the cow, the dog, the elephant.

Coming back to the question of cultural specificity, the same sound may signify different things to people from different cultures and lives. So a certain 'lived experience' is vital to the understanding of a film in all its details and complexities.

We enjoy Japanese films because we already share a common culture with the people of Japan. We think we understand western films because we have been prepared for it through the colonial rule, English education, spread of Christianity and the wealth and resources of the West. But coming to think of it, hardly any serious effort is made even by critics in the West to prepare themselves for our films-they are just films from the third world. And everything is subsumed by that abstraction, 'third world'. One can see the difference in the approach of critics who have visited India at least once and those who haven't had any such exposure.

In our all out effort to equip ourselves with things that are modern and imported, we have lost a discerning audience for our own works. In the past, Kathakali and Koodiyattam survived and thrived because a community of discerning and devoted home audience was there all through. When our meaningful cinema loses such an audience, that is reason for alarm.

May be this is a universal phenomenon when a monoculture is hegemonising the world and all the so-called little cultures are being swept away.
Yes, today we tend to think that only money-grossers matter. In the process we are losing our own identity. It also leads to a situation where the 'small' cultures are made to think of themselves as inferior cultures.

It is a fall-out of the colonial psychosis, this inferiority complex. In Malayalam, we have so many books and articles on Bergman and Kurosawa. We don't have as many even on Ray. This is fine as long as you don't consider our own works in the language of lesser importance. But unfortunately, we don't even bother to teach our children their mother tongue. The problem lies not in the exposure to the wide world outside but in our attitude and the wrong lessons we learn from it. Appallingly, it is inhibiting us rather than opening up.

Either way-that of imitating the west and trying to beat them at their own game, or to presenting ourselves as esoteric, are dangerous.
The idiom of cinema is also undergoing transformations with the changing times. There is no question of keeping a static position. This is not to say that we should pander to the irreconcilable tastes of the audience as the commercial filmmakers claim. A lot many amongst us are living in an illusory world. They claim to be living in a fast world. But where is speed in our life? It is there only on TV or in MTV where images flicker fast and faster. In a place where the electrical power supply is frequently interrupted, how can life be fast? This speed we are talking about is totally artificial, like our popular heroes and villains, their costumes and vocations.

Maybe it is precisely this make-believe, the exaggerations that we enjoy.
If you confuse that for the real, you are actually negating life itself. Not surprisingly, a cinema that deals with life as we live and truth that we value attracts fewer viewers. Only a discerning audience can create good cinema. Take for example, our film criticism. Even the critics don't approach cinema seriously.

Was it there in the seventies when you were beginning to make films?
No, it was not there at all. In fact what we were trying then was to create an audience by taking good cinema to the colleges and universities. It is from there that change should come. One feels sad to see college students lapping up trash and becoming unquestioning consumers. They would even ridicule serious cinema. Media has played a very negative role in this. They have branded alternate cinema as boring, coining phrases like the 'indolent pace of art cinema'.
Were you fond of films when you were a child?
Not much. Actually I could have seen a lot of films if I wanted; my uncle had a couple of theatres at Adoor, Enath and Parakkode. But I was never an ardent cinema fan and I never ever thought that I would work in cinema. From the beginning I was more involved in theatre.

Have you also acted?
Yes. I first acted in a play when I was eight. It was during a school function (marking the birthday of Maharaja Sree Chithira Thirunal). The play was written by one of my teachers and I played the role of Sri Buddha in it.

Outside the school we had a group of friends. We used to write and enact plays, usually in front of elders at home. They all used to come and watch our plays. They took us really seriously. For, in those days of joint families, it was not usual for children to get any serious attention of the elders. Now I think they get too much attention and are pampered.

Maybe I owe it to Gandhi. For he taught us there is dignity in doing any work. Another element is that of self-respect. We have become a people who lack it totally. May be it is due to the national experience of the fifties when we lost all our morale-we were a country begging for alms all over the world.

How did you get interested in plays?
From childhood, I was interested in literature. During my schooldays I had membership in every library in our region. I used to read all kinds of books. We also started a library of our own and an arts club.

What kind of plays did you do at school?
At the primary level, most of the plays were imitations of the plays I saw. There was nothing original in it. We had a group of three boys of the same age. It was called the RNG Company (R for Ravindran, N for Narayanan and G for Gopalakrishnan). We met at the cashew grove on weekends. Each one will climb atop a cashew tree with a note-book and pencil and around lunch time, everyone will get down one by one with his creation-short story, poetry, play or anything. And then we would discuss them among ourselves.

What kind of plays interested you while you were a college student?
Mostly socials. We have staged the plays of Thoppil Bhasi, S L Puram etc. and I have got good many prizes while in school.

While I was studying in Gandhigram, I did a play titled Aniyara. It even went on to win the best prize at a theatre festival. It was an interesting play about an amateur group, getting ready to stage a play. All the action is in the green room, and ultimately, the play fizzles out before it gets staged. What we see in the play is the green room and the stage is behind, unseen. It was a novel concept then, later a lot of plays came out with similar themes.

I also wrote a few full length Plays during that period. Two of them got published: Ninte Rajyam Varunnu and Vaiki Vanna Veliecham, one was published while I was studying at the Film Institute, and G Sankara Pillai wrote the preface for it. Later, I felt I should never have published them. It was out of one's desire-typical of my age-to see one's works published, to win recognition as a writer.

Theatre was my first love. And I had also staged a number of plays while in Trivandrum before I joined the film institute.

Any memorable events in your college days?
I used to do Plays regularly. I had even played female roles while in college!

One good memory I have of that period is of poet G Sankara Kurup coming to our college and delivering a lecture. I have never heard such fluent, poetic speech. It still rings in my ears. It was a great experience.

Were you involved in student politics?
No. There was not much of politics in the campus then.


What was the mood of the times before you graduated?
It was a period of hope, optimism, nation building etc. I can't explain why. But from the beginning, I was attracted to Gandhi and I became a great admirer of the values upheld by him. Maybe it grew out of listening to the elders or reading newspapers. Another hero was Bose. There were always these speculations about him, "If only Bose were here, things would have been different". Nehru was not that glamorous then. May be because he was already in the seat of power.

Gandhi finds a recurring mention in KATHAPURUSHAN. Has Gandhian philosophy influenced your aesthetic approach? I feel that one could glimpse such a strain in your films, for example in the economy of means employed, the stoic approach in the mis-en-scene, the avoidance of frills etc.
It may also be the result of my theatre experience. As my cinematographer Mankada Ravi Varma has observed, on the sets, I am ready to do everything myself, instead of just ordering others about it. Even today, I am not averse to do any work; in fact, I find pleasure in it. Maybe I owe it to Gandhi. For he taught us there is dignity in doing any work. Another element is that of self-respect. We have become a people who lack it totally. May be it is due to the national experience of the fifties when we lost all our morale-we were a country begging for alms all over the world.

We are poor, poor in our attitudes. We repair the same drains and build the same culverts every year. This, I think, is a sign of poverty.

Theatre-wise it was a period when playwrights like Thoppil Bhasi and movements like KPAC were dominating the scene. To become a Gandhian during that period sounds strange.
Thoppil Bhasi arrived a little later. He was from my neighbouring village. He was a hero those days. It was only in my college days that I first saw a Play by Bhasi though. It was Mudiyanaya putran (The Prodigal son). And I remember having gone to see him in the lock up at the Adoor Police Station where he was detained in connection with the Sooranadu uprising. Clad in a single mundu, he looked unimpressive, like any other man, a common criminal or a petty thief. Not an image that suited a hero of contemporary legends! Later when I met Bhasi I told him about it.

You were acquainted with Sankara Pillai during your college days?
I was doing my BSc in Pandalam College. In the middle of it, I got admission for a course in Rural Administration at the Gandhigram Rural Institute in Madurai. It was a three-year course. G Sankara Pillai had just joined there as a lecturer. He was a great source of inspiration to me. He had single-minded devotion to theatre. His life and approach to art was a great lesson that one should not do things half-heartedly.

Why did you switch to that course?
There was an assurance that once you complete it, you will get job as a Block Development Officer. And I could not resist the temptation. I think it was 1957.

Did you do Plays at Gandhigram too?
No, but I could read a lot. There was a good library there (G Sankara Pillai was in charge of the library and he did the selections). Till then my reading was mostly limited to Malayalam. It was there that I was able to read plays and books on theatre in English. Till I joined the Film Institute I used to read a lot of Plays, that also in a very systematic manner. At that time I behaved like an authority on theatre. I had read almost all the available books on theatre.

Were you able to watch theatre performances?
No. There were no opportunities to watch Plays. I had chanced to read some of the manuscripts of Plays by G. Sankara Pillai. Even after I joined the Film Institute, my interest in theatre continued. For the whole of the first year, I was still reading Plays there. Waiting for Godot came out around that time.

While you were in Madurai, did you watch movies regularly?
I went to see movies, but not very frequently. I used to like Sivaji Ganesan films. I had seen most of his films during that time. Everyone admired him. All those films with names starting with 'pa' by Bhim Singh like Pasamalar, Pavamannippu etc. came out then.

After you passed out of Gandhigram?
Immediately after that, I was employed for two months in the Bharat Sevak Samaj in a slum service project. Then I got a regular job in the National Sample Survey as investigator.

In Trivandrum?
Yes, the zonal office was in Trivandrum, but I had to travel all over Kerala as part of my work. It was interesting work as it gave me an opportunity to travel and live in distant and remote parts of the State. Most often I used to stay in someone's house or in tiny rooms atop shops. The pay was good, about Rs 600/- per month. In those days a college lecturer used to get only Rs.120.

Then slowly I started to hate the job and wanted to leave at the first opportunity. What I came to dislike was the lack of dignity that the job entailed. Even if I did a good job, my immediate boss the Inspector would find some fault, which irritated me. When it became routine, I thought it was time to quit and save my self-respect.

Moreover, the job was also making my theatre work difficult. I would be preparing the production of a play when I am asked to go to Malabar. Above all, my mother fell ill at that time, and I wanted to be near her. And instead of posting me somewhere here, they sent me away to Malabar. My initial excitement of getting a job and becoming an earning member of the family was all gone by then.
And it came in the form of Film Institute?
Actually I wanted to join the National School of Drama at Delhi. But the medium of instruction there was Hindi. I was not very proficient in Hindi. Only those who knew Hindi could join there. Just then, I accidentally came across an advertisement inviting applications for a course in Screenplay Writing & Direction (I saw that paper when I was having a cup of tea at a teas hop opposite Chengannur bus stand). I thought Screenplay writing was similar to Play writing, for I had some experience in that. I applied and got selected. In those days you had to go to Pune to appear for the entrance exams.

The institute was started only in 1961 and it was the second year. K A Abbas was chairing the selection board. I got the first rank and the only scholarship that was available (Rs. 75 per month). Then, with the money I had received as gratuity and other benefits from my previous employment (I had served there for about an year and a half), the first thing I did was to buy a portable typewriter, and a book-'Teach Yourself Typewriting'-by Pitman.

We had a teacher there, Prof. R S Pruthi. He was a brilliant teacher who was thorough with dramaturgy and his classes in script writing were stimulating. He wanted us to write one screenplay a week, which I didn't find difficult because of my experience in theatre.

The typewriter was very useful in this regard. It helped me a lot in later life also. All the initial office work for Chitralekha Film Cooperative was done on that. Later, I replaced it with an electronic typewriter and now a PC. I know both English and Malayalam typewriting and this comes in handy in office work and scripting.

Were there any other Malayalees in that batch?
There was John Sankaramangalam in my class and the late Devadas and a couple of others in the technical departments. Only a few of my batch mates completed the course, many of them left in the middle for various reasons. And of the ones who successfully completed the course, very few made films. One of them worked for his whole life as a first assistant in Bombay. No risks, and good payment. Some of the others made one or two films before quitting. John Sankaramangalam joined there as faculty. Many years later, I became the Chairman of the Governing Council while he was the director.

There are a number of Film Institute students who have never been active in filmmaking. They come with great hopes there and after watching all those classics they feel small, often lose confidence to do anything on one's own. Only the self-confidence, the conviction that you also have something to say, can help you to survive.

Interestingly, it was not the so called intellectuals and writers who showed enthusiasm to watch these films, but students from the university, engineering college, medical college, 'ordinary' employees at the bank or government. It was a revelation to me. Among the intellectuals, there was always this tendency to look down upon films.

How was life in Pune?
It was a hard life. I had to live on frugal means. The meagre scholarship amount had to be supplemented with money orders from my elder brother back home. The Institute had a very good library. So after the classes I spent most of my time there. In the second year Ritwik Ghatak came as teacher. Things turned dramatic with his entry. But I have never met any teacher outside the classroom. I was also a very shy person and it was difficult for me to make acquaintances.

For one full year I stayed in a simple State Government hostel not far from the Institute paying a nominal rent of Rs.10 per month. During my second year I found myself shifting to a better abode, the outhouse of a private bungalow called 'Nikunjam' and sharing the room with a University student from Maharashtra. In the third year I shifted to 'Gurukripa' sharing a room with Devadas.

It was only after joining the Film Institute that I even touched a still camera. When I was handed one as part of my practical lesson, I did not know what to shoot. And after a lot of deliberation I did click with apprehensions. To my great surprise, the result was well worth the doubts and hesitation. The teacher liked it a lot.

During weekends I went to down town theatres to watch vintage Hindi and English movies; they had special shows at half the rates! That is how I caught up with most of the old Hindi and Hollywood films.

Anything significant during those years?
My mother died in my first year at the Institute. In those days it took almost two days to reach home. By the time I arrived, everything was over.

What about the student community there?
Most students came from an urban background. And students like me felt pygmied, for I was not very articulate in English then. Most of the Malayalee students have this problem, even today. In a way it is good, I think. It makes one work inwardly. There is a conflict between what you have and what you show. It is good for an artist's development not to be too facile with spoken words.

During the second year I still remember two students, Asrani and Mani Kaul who came there together to join the acting course. Asrani continued with the acting course, while Kaul switched to direction.

It is curious that many students who show great promise while studying at the institute seldom make it once they go out. Maybe they don't really try.

John Abraham joined the institute later?
Yes. Though he was older than me, he joined the institute later. Pavithran was studying at the Law College nearby. He was a regular at the film shows in the Institute.

What about the teachers?
There were some teachers who were really good. Ghatak was one. Then there was Prof. Satish Bahadur, who was a Marie Seton discovery.


Ghatak must have been a great presence?
Actually many people do not know that Ghatak came to the Institute through the recommendation of Satyajit Ray. It was Ray who prompted Indira Gandhi (who was the I & B Minister) to appoint him there. Ghatak was going through bad times then. By that time, he had already done his major works. His reading was wide and he was well versed in Sanskrit texts like Vedas and the epics. His lectures, especially on his own films, were inspiring. Similar is the case with his insights on Ray films; he had great admiration and understanding of them. But ironically, what got greater currency were his casual remarks during his drunken bouts.

What was your diploma film about?
It was titled 'A GREAT DAY'. A humorous film on a lazy man on the day his fiancé's father was to visit him. He is so lazy that he never bothers to clean up his room or venture to do anything to put things in order. He had even developed an ingenious device to collect the milk bottle in the morning without getting up from the bed. On the great day, though he tries his best to tidy his room, he is not able to gather himself to do it. His would be father in law comes and goes, and he sits depressed only to be informed by his joyful fiancé that her father liked him. He is aghast! Then she tells him, "He liked your smile, especially your teeth". Her father was a dentist!

After the completion of the course, the natural destination is either Bombay or Chennai to work in the film industry. What prompted you to come back to Kerala?
There was no doubt in my mind as to what I should do after graduating from the Institute. I wanted to come back to my own land and make films. Even while in the Institute, I was planning a lot of activities in Kerala. It was then that the All India Writers Conference was convened at Alwaye. M Govindan was one of the organizers. During our discussions, he suggested that the conference could have an international film festival also as part of it, and he wanted me to organize it. I gladly accepted the responsibility. And we organized a festival of films from all over the world for one week in nine towns of Kerala, at all the district headquarters simultaneously in January 1965. It was the first international film festival in Kerala and was received well. I had prepared a detailed brochure and set the theme of the festival as setting up of film societies. In fact we were trying to create a future audience for quality cinema. The idea was to start a film society in each of these places. The first, Chitralekha, was inaugurated in Trivandrum in the month of July. Many film societies came up as a result of this. It was like preaching the gospel of cinema.

Chitralekha was formed then?
Chitralekha had taken shape in 1964 with a three pronged approach: set up film societies, publish film literature and make quality films. The Chitralekha Film Souvenir, the first ever serious publication on cinema in the language was brought out that very year. The idea was to make a comprehensive intervention in the film media. On the one hand we wanted to show classics, discuss them and publish writings about them. On the other we wanted to distribute and produce films. For the latter we decided to establish a studio of our own. Chitralekha succeeded in all these.

In the early days of film society, was there an enthusiastic crowd to watch films?
Viewers were very few in number. We used to arrange the screenings with great difficulty, financial and infrastructural. We didn't have a permanent venue to screen. Each screening was held at different places. And even when you arrange everything, only a handful of people came to watch them. People thought it was madness.

Standing and watching people passing by in the street while a classic was being screened before a thin audience, I used to wonder: What a pity, they don't realise what they are missing!

What was the response of the writers and intellectuals? Did they participate in your programmes?
Interestingly, it was not the so called intellectuals and writers who showed enthusiasm to watch these films, but students from the university, engineering college, medical college, 'ordinary' employees at the bank or government. It was a revelation to me. Among the intellectuals, there was always this tendency to look down upon films.

After coming back from the institute, were you confident of making a living as a filmmaker?
Yes, for, I could not have done anything else. At that time, I had several lucrative offers from organizations like UNICEF. But I refused them.

Initially I thought I would try for five years: If nothing happens by then, I will reconsider my decision. Nothing happened after five years. So, then I thought, I would try for another five years. I could make my first film only after seven years.

Did you ever think of assisting other directors? Were there any offers?
Never. Assisting another director never occurred to me. As for offers, there were none. We had approached some people for financing, but nothing was working out. Then one of our friends who worked in Kuwait agreed to produce a film. And we ventured into the film Kamuki. G Aravindan was associated in its production. We travelled a lot on his scooter to scout for the locations. I had reworked the script that was originally written by the noted Playwright, C N Sreekantan Nair. I even shot for three-four days. But by that time our producer had diverted the money to some other venture, and we didn't know that. He never told us about it. Then he thought that we would get some distributors to invest in it and started showing the rushes around. But it didn't work either. We had cast a new face as heroine, along with established actors like Madhu, P. J. Antony, Adoor Bhasi ete. But nothing came out of it.

What was its theme?
It was an ordinary story, very conventional. So I did some repairs on the treatment. I had a bad experience with that. Someone who saw the shooting went and told the author that we were not shooting what he had written. And it created a lot, of misunderstanding amongst good friends. I too lost interest in it. Eventually, the project was abandoned.

But I learned a great lesson from it: never start shooting a film unless and until one is sure of the money for completing it. We also had problems arising out of lack of work experience. It was during a rainy season that we decided to shoot. The moment the camera was set, the rains would start pouring down. It happened again and again, and the sun hardly showed up.

Which was your first film after you came out of the Institute?
It was a short film of 50 seconds duration. It was made in 1967 for a competition at Montreal on the theme 'Man and His World'. I was broke and had no money to hire a camera or other equipments. Fortunately at that time, a filmmaker friend from Bombay K T John was making a documentary on Swati Tirunal. I helped him in collecting relevant materials and to coordinate production. After his work some film was left, which he gave me. He also had his own camera. My film became possible only because of that. When he went to Bombay to develop his film, I also went with him and processed mine, and edited it there.

Then it was sent to Montreal. Sometime later, I received a telegram informing that the film was selected as one among the best twenty films in the festival, and that it was being preserved at the Cinematheque of Canada. Karamana Janardhanan Nair was the hero in that film.

What was it about?
It was about life, desire etc. No dialogues, only a series of extreme close shots. It was a sort of collage.

Could you elaborate on the early days of Chitralekha?
Initially we were trying to get some assignments from various government departments and agencies to make documentaries. We had no choice but to accept any offer that came our way. I made documentaries on family planning, lottery etc. It helped Chitralekha to establish itself financially. Whatever money we got, we used to invest in equipments. So we had equipments, but no money.

The biggest project was a documentary on the Idukki Hydel Project. It was an eight-year project covering all phases of dam construction. But we had not enough money to bring Mankada Ravi Varma from Madras to shoot it. So I myself shot it. We completed it in eight years. It was to be released in all the main cinema houses in Kerala the day Mrs. Indira Gandhi was to inaugurate the ldukki project. So M N Govindan Nair who was the electricity minister then, wanted the film to be ready for the occasion. The advance money came forth quickly and Chitralekha made substantial gains from it.

SWAYAMVARAM



When was SWAYAMVARAM made?
After coming out of the Film Institute, I had to wait for almost seven years to make my first feature film. Mean while I had submitted a script Kamuki to the Film Finance Corporation, but they were not willing to finance it. Later, I happened to meet its MD. When I enquired why our application was turned down, he said, "why do you want to make films on romance and all that? India has become a free country and we have a lot of problems. Why don't you make films constructively? I told him I couldn't tackle India's construction problems all by myself (later I came to learn that he was also acting as the M D of a cement company!)

Later, under changed circumstances, I submitted the script of SWAYAMVARAM and it was accepted. The loan was for one and half lakh rupees. The cost of production of the film was around Rupees two and a half lakhs. Before that we had made a documentary on family planning, a popular one with stars and all that. We also had some money from it. Initially there were problems distributing the film, but later we did it ourselves.

Were you able to complete SWAYAMVARAM according to your plans?
We shot it in two schedules, because we had problems getting the dates of the actress, Sarada. She was working in several films at that time. So we had to arrange the schedule to suit her convenience. But usually I like to complete my films in one schedule. I prefer to do a film at one stretch when my creative energies are at its peak; you need complete concentration while doing a work.

In SWAYAMVARAM, the couple is coming to the city, and the rest of the film unfolds in the city. But after that, city has not been a significant presence in your films.
There is no city in Kerala; the urban reality is something alien to us. Just-electricity and telephone poles don't make a city. You have a semblance of a city in Kochi, but it is within a small radius. It is actually a big town. We don't have a city like Bombay or Calcutta in Kerala. So stories of the city are improbable in Kerala, which is basically semi urban. Neither do we have a typical rural population as it exists elsewhere in the country.

While making films I am not concerned about strictly contemporary, day-to-day issues. Any good film has to survive the period of its making. It has to go beyond today to be relevant tomorrow. I am very particular about that. As a result these films also don't age, I hope. They remain contemporary.

While most of the fIlms of the Indian new wave went back to the village and dealt with rural violence and caste issues, SWAYAMVARAM was a love story set in a town.
In Kerala, there are no such villages or such feudal situations. All that is in the past. It would be falsifying a reality by hankering after such themes.

While making films I am not concerned about strictly contemporary, day-to-day issues. Any good film has to survive the period of its making. It has to go beyond today to be relevant tomorrow. I am very particular about that. As a result these films also don't age, I hope. They remain contemporary. When SWAYAMVARAM was shown in Paris last year, it was the youth who particularly liked it. A film I made more than thirty years ago in Kerala is liked by the youth of Paris today! Its theme is universal. It is basically about youth, its struggles, aspirations and ambitions, etc. And it is about a real situation, which has a haunting quality about it.

Another interesting thing is that Viswam is an aspiring writer. Hero as a writer or one aspiring to be one is a recurrent theme in your films. It is there in KATHAPURUSHAN also. In MATHILUKAL, the hero is a writer.
And ANANTARAM is about the process of writing.

Has it something to do with your own adolescent dream to be known as a writer?
Probably. Our views are formed in the years of our childhood. Our worldview is also influenced by the way we saw and experienced the world around us. All this goes into our work. ANANTARAM deals with this. The artist is revealing and also rediscovering himself through his work.

In conceiving SWAYAMVARAM, were you influenced by any films or filmmakers?
In SWAYAMVARAM, you may find traces of some influence, like Ghatak, Ray etc. But in later films, it is not there at all. Some have pointed out its resemblance to Ghatak's SUBARNAREKHA. In that film also there is love and an elopement to the city. But SWAYAMVARAM is more about the trip. And its treatment is entirely different.

Was it invited to any international film festival?
Yes, it was in the competition section of the Moscow film festival. It was greatly liked by all and was rumoured to win the prize. But as things turned out, that was not be. Decisions were made elsewhere, not by the jury. I think it was the first film from India that didn't get an award in Moscow. A dubious distinction!

Today things are different. Young filmmakers have great opportunities before them. If a filmmaker's first film is outstanding, he has every encouragement, moral and financial, to make his next. There are several agencies to fund him. World today encourages new talent.

How was the critical response in Kerala?
Not much. I think it was more of a question of insensitivity rather than personal enmity. Or, may be, powers-that-be in certain quarters felt threatened.

There was a good write up by T M P Nedungadi. Another one was by Murkoth Kunjappa. It was actually a letter to the editor. It was very encouraging, because it appeared at a time when many people were running the film down. All this gave me great courage to continue. T M P Nedunagadi in his article asked, 'SWAYAMVARAM over, what next in Malayalam cinema?'


What about the film societies?
Film societies were not a strong presence then. It was not yet a movement. I don't think they ever had a positive attitude to local initiatives. From the beginning they were addicted to films from outside. What is a film society movement for? All this exposure should lead to the making of better films here. Otherwise what is the point? What happened here was the opposite. Always looking outside for inspiration, they only helped in developing a sort of disdain for our own films. We respected only a Bergman or a Fellini, no one from our own midst. What it should have developed is a cultured mind.

When SWAYAMVARAM was completed, there was a preview and the noted writer and thinker M Govindan wrote a cover story in his prestigious magazine 'Sameeksha' and organized a seminar on the film in Madras. A number of intellectuals and writers took part in it. They all welcomed the film without any reservation. I had invited all the film people in Madras. I can't forget P Bhaskaran coming out and talking in such excitement, he was deeply touched by the film. Balu Mahendra came and hugged me and said, "You saved us". It was a time when new filmmakers, particularly Film Institute graduates were going through a tough time in Madras and elsewhere.

When it was screened in Thiruvananthapuram, many people came and said that they had the same feeling as watching an 'English movie' (whatever that meant). May be because of the theme and treatment, or because of the careful use of sound and economy of story telling.

How was it received at the theatres?
I used to get calls from the theatres. They said "If only you had some songs in it, it would have done well". But the awards helped us. After the announcement of the national awards we could re-release the film properly. And it ran well. Probably for the first time in the history of FFC, the whole amount of loan was repaid! In those days no one used to repay FFC loans. We were able to repay it because we ourselves did the distribution.

The FFC didn't finance any other project?
No, after SWAYAMVARAM I never approached them.

The Indian 'new wave' was in a way financed by the FFC. They produced most of the offbeat films of that period. How come they didn't finance many films in Malayalam?
Probably not many from Malayalam applied. In contrast, the Bombayites had access. Among other things, the distance too came in between. It was difficult for us to travel all the way to Bombay. So, it was Bombayites who made the most of it. We were lucky to have got it for SWAYAMVARAM.

I think SWAYAMVARAM may be the only film by FFC that got its money back through theatre exhibitions. I don't think it has happened anywhere else. Very few of the FFC-funded films were released, and if at all they were released, not many were successful at the box office.
Yes I think it was an exception. And in spite of all that, that year's Kerala State award committee chose to ignore it completely. The bureaucracy and the vested interests in film industry campaigned against it. P K Nair was the Chairman of the jury. They outnumbered him and even abused him afterwards. This happened at the regional selection committee for the national awards also. The regional committee at Madras didn't recommend the film for the national awards.

Then we sent a lengthy telegram to Ramesh Thapar, who was the Jury Chairman. We heard nothing from him, but evidently he took it seriously and overruled the decision of the regional committee. He also strongly recommended for the dissolution of regional committees. SWAYAMVARAM was instrumental to that historic decision.

Why did you use 'stars' like Madhu and Sarada for the film?
Actually I wanted fresh faces for both the roles. And I tried in various ways. I wrote to the heads of colleges and universities. But there was not a single response. Later we decided upon Sarada. She readily agreed to do the role. Then we couldn't have cast a novice against her. So we invited Madhu. He was an old friend and right from the time he came back from the NSD he had expressed his wish to act in my film when I made one. By the time I was back from the Institute, he was already a star. So, he had no hesitation in agreeing to it. Then in order to match the cast of the central characters, we included Thikkurissi etc.

In contrast, KODIYETTAM was done entirely differently. I didn't use any stars in it. As for the other films, ELIPPATHAYAM featured Karamana Janardhanan Nair, and MUKHAMUKHAM had Gangadharan Nair as lead actors. None of them were stars.

As a novice, did you have any problems in directing the 'stars'?
Many people had asked me at that time, 'will a senior actor like Thikurissi obey you?' But actually I faced no such problem. First of all as professionals they know what is required of them. And then they cannot refuse to do what I instruct them to do. They are acting to me and not to an audience. Moreover, from my experience in theatre I already knew how to deal with actors. I would tell them what to do. If they are not able to follow, I will show them how to do it. Once they are convinced that you know what you are saying, they will follow your instructions.

Did the star presence help the film to run in the theatres?
No, it was not the stars that helped it to succeed, but the national awards. It didn't run well initially. But once it got several awards at the national level, people wanted to see it and it ran well. Today it is the other way round. If a film receives a national award, people decide not to see it. That is the change that has come about in the attitude of the Malayalees during the last decades. When CHEMMEEN got the national award, people rushed to see it. SWAYAMVARAM was the second film to get a national award. But now things have changed. Now, we take such recognition to mark a film out. It is a depressing trend.

Looking back, what do you feel about it now?
SWAYAMVARAM is a first film in more than one sense. I think it has something to do with my oeuvre too. SWAYAMVARAM was all about choices. The protagonist in it had so many choices before her. It seems, as a beginner, I also had different choices then. I also could have made the obvious choice of going to Bombay or Madras and work as someone's assistant in the industry. Or, you can choose to stand on your own and fight. It was about an individual who, like me at that time, was facing life without any support from society. I have also grown after that; I have become more rigorous in my work. I have become more refined, I think...

After SWAYAMVARAM bagging several national awards, did any producer approach you?
No. The only producer who ever asked me to make a film was Ravindranathan Nair. That was after I made KODIYETTAM.

In the intervening years between SWAYAMVARAM and KODIYETTAM, what did you do?
I made several documentaries.


KODIYETTAM



What made KODIYETTAM possible?
Without that money from the documentary on Idukki Project, we couldn't have completed KODIYETTAM. Actually we had shot the whole film in 1975. We had our own camera and recording instrument, so we could shoot it with little money. Some sequences, for example, the festival scenes, were shot by me, as we had no money to get Ravi Varma down from Madras. Then we sent the negatives to A V M for processing. After that, we didn't go there for another year. We couldn't have shown our faces there without settling the bill. And it was after receiving the money for the film on Idukki Project, that we went there. When we checked the negatives, one whole sequence was missing. It was lost. We had to re-shoot it. So we could complete the film only in 1977, though we had it shot two years before.

I also recorded the entire sound for the film on my own, mainly out of financial compulsions. These are some of the advantages of being poor. You are forced to learn a lot of practical things, by doing them yourself. The time when we made a lot of documentaries was virtually also a learning period for me. Very often I had to handle the camera, sound equipments etc on my own. This has helped me a lot in my work later. When I wanted a shot to be taken in a particular fashion, I also knew I was not proposing something impossible to the cameraman. It helps one to get what one wants from the technicians. Usually I note down such things in detail at the scripting stage itself.

Its structure is that of a festival in a village temple. I wanted to create an intimate experience of everyday rural life. It is structured in such a way as to look natural, as if there are no outside interventions. During the course of the film, the festival comes full circle, parallel to it is the inner development of the characters as well.

I think KODIYETTAM stands out from the rest of your films by virtue of its simplicity and lyrical quality. The structure is not complex and the narrative is a straightforward one.
No other kind of treatment was possible for the film. A more sophisticated approach would have evoked an attitude of condescension, of looking down upon him. Or, if you make him a hero, you will have to look up towards him. Both were not possible. You had to have an eye-level treatment.

Actually its structure is that of a festival in a village temple. I wanted to create an intimate experience of everyday rural life. It is structured in such a way as to look natural, as if there are no outside interventions. During the course of the film, the festival comes full circle, parallel to it is the inner development of the characters as well. The film starts with the ritual 'katina vedi' (ritual fire works) marking the beginning of the annual festival. A peculiar feature of our region Central Travancore, is the presence of hill-gods. There are no regular idols atop, but each hill is dedicated to a Kaurava, like Duryodhana, Karna etc. My family hill-deity is Karna. The film was shot at a hill near my family house in Adoor that is dedicated to Duryodhana. Till recently the devotees used to offer arrack and cock, something that retained old tribal characteristics. The film begins with the oorali's (representative of the deity, a sort of oracle) arrival, and the announcement of the annual festival, which commences with the procession of the spectacular 'horses'. The film ends with the fireworks, like a festival. Throughout the film, only very innate sounds and images are used. Sankarankutty is presented as part of nature/landscape.

The film is about the process of his individuation; his forays into the world around him. And there is a certain sense of ascendance in his endless journeys first on foot, then on a bullock cart and finally on a truck. Physically, his travels take him gradually from the plains to the high ranges. And he is always interested in movement, speed... So, though he may look slow and sluggish, deep within him, he has a yearning for speed.

The idea of the family, which is a mark of identity and individuality, runs through the film. As life progresses, experiences of different kind-deceit, tragedies etc. are faced with. Finally he arrives. And the film ends with him giving a 'pudava' (apparel) to his wife (a marriage ritual).

Is Sankarankutty a remnant of the feudal system like Unni in ELIPPATHAYAM?
Sankarankutty has no feudal background. His family does not hold land or wealth. He is an ordinary man who is gullible and can be easily manipulated. There is goodness in him that is exploited by all, even by children. And whoever gives him love, suffer tragedies and it pains him.


How was it received?
It was received well everywhere. It is the favourite film of many people. Actually different people like different films of mine, not the same one. While some like SWAYAMVARAM, others like ELIPPATHAYAM or MUKHAMUKHAM. There is no one film liked by all.

It was the first film of mine that Ray saw. And while watching the film, he was laughing aloud throughout. He liked the film immensely and during the discussions after the screening, he asked, "do you want to do away with music and background score altogether?" I said "No". Then he said, "you should not do away with it. When used sparingly, music can become very powerful".

Music is always used very sparingly in your films, isn't it?
Yes. Most of the viewers didn't feel that KODIYETTAM didn't have a background score. Only when they are told about it do they realise it.

The ambience sounds are so rich that one doesn't notice the absence of background score.
Actually the recording of sounds for the film took longer than the shooting schedule. I travelled all over Central Travancore with a Nagra sound recorder.

After KODIYETTAM you parted ways with Chitralekha Film Cooperative. Looking back what do you think of the Chitralekha experience?
I learned a good lesson from it. I feel convinced that artists should never get embroiled in institutions. You tend to get drowned in its petty problems. During the 14 year period from 1965 to 1979 when I was with Chitralekha, I could only do two films. I did all the rest during the next 15 years. It may have done a lot of good to the Society, but not to me.

ELIPPATHAYAM



The Unni of ELIPPATHAYAM is the exact opposite of Sankarankutty. While the latter's is a constant movement into the outer, the other is constantly moving inward, withdrawing. While one plunges into the world and its experiences, the other is intimidated by it. Sankarankutty floats around in the world without exerting a will of his own.

ELIPPATHAYAM is also your first colour film. Is the use of colour thematically significant?
I have used the primary colours, green, red and blue for the three sisters. They are all of one family, and so if you mix them all you get colour white. The youngest was given red to signify vitality, freedom and revolt. It is shades of green for the eldest sister, which signifies earthiness, practicality etc. Rajamma is given blue, for generosity, nobility and doom. Vertical lines suggest unrest. So I gave Unni white shirts with vertical stripes.

The end of the film is enigmatic. It looks almost as if Unni is seeking our sympathy with folded hands.
Actually it is the typical posture of a rat-wet and shivering. It is a posture common to all rodents. He is not begging for our mercy as many think.

People who threw him in the water wanted him to drown. And the end is a coming out of an experience. You should not succumb to an experience, in which case you won't be able to benefit from the experience. If you succumb to an experience, that is a dead end and nothing comes out of it. It is like capital punishment, where the victim is denied the chance of learning from experience and to change. Till that moment none of the tragedies, of those near and dear to him, has affected him. He was so engrossed in himself. So he needed a sort of physical punishment, a strong jolt, to come out of it. He was a man who refused to take his bath if the water was below a particular temperature. Now he is thrown into the pond in the dead of the night. That is the crowning experience of his life. That might work. He is rising from the pond with a possibility of change writ all over him.

The film is trying to explore the question, what is being? It is an incisive examination of what constitutes an individual. In close scrutiny, a person is made out of his actions and interactions. It is always a give and take. For Unni, it is always takes and no gives, while for his sister Rajamma it is always giving and no taking. There is no individual sans the society, which is what ultimately gets clear.

In the film most of the representatives of the outside world are aggressive. For example, the eldest sister, the man who he meets in the darkness, the woman labourer etc. Is he a character who is trying to avoid the harsh reality of the world with which he can't cope?
The house is actually an island anchored in the past and he is trying to hold on to its ground in vain as it shakes and shivers in mild to harsh tremors unleashed by the unkind world outside.

But the world outside is not that harsh or cruel to everyone. It does take kindly to Rajamma when she is sick and neglected. They are full of concern and kindness.

When I saw ELIPPATHAYAM some years back, I felt that Unni was a pathetic character, when I saw it now I felt he was actually cruel, totally insensitive to the pains of others.
He is scared of everything outside. He is afraid of love, because that means sharing, stepping out of oneself. The film is structured as a constant closing in. The successive movements of the film are from the outside to the inside. In the initial sequences, he is found going out, in the garden etc. Later he is seen on the veranda, and then he moves inside and lastly into the chamber. The world and the people are all outside the frame. They only appear in the end to catch him.

Basically he doesn't want to be bothered. He doesn't want to take the pains of finding a groom for his sister, which he knows will invite trouble about division of property etc. He is a man who is totally engrossed in himself. Throughout the film you see him preening himself; manicuring his fingers, trimming his moustache; oiling his body. He doesn't share his fears, dreams or thoughts with anyone. He is obsessed with himself. That is why he gets upset when his torchlight breaks. He is not able to contain even that. The past weighs on him. Though he has nothing to lose, he believes that he has much to lose.

When it was screened in Calcutta, Mrinal Sen came and told me ''You must have gone through intense trauma to make a film like that". He was right. I wrote the script of ELIPPATHAYAM when I was going through a very painful period. I had to leave Chitralekha, which I had founded and built up over a long period of my youth. There were a lot of misunderstandings between friends and parting of ways. It was in 1979. I made ELIPPATHAYAM in 1981, the intervening period was a tormenting one in my life. It prompted me to look at myself incisively.

It was also a script that I wrote fast: it took only two weeks to complete the first draft. MUKHAMUKHAM took the longest period to complete-a couple of years.


ELIPPATHAYAM is also one of the most finely structured of your films.
Actually the film consists of six departures; first three are rats, and then three human beings. The first departure is that of the youngest daughter. We don't see it, it is only reported. The second is that of his devoted sister, whom the people carry away to safety / death with affection and compassion. As for him, who refuses to change, he is hunted around, caught and forced out. So what each one gets from the outside world is what one has given. It all depends on how you look at the world. If you are afraid of it, they will scare you. If you want to accept it, they will receive you, and so on. There is always something abstract about the 'world'; it is what we make of it. Unni is someone who has cut himself off from the world. So the world has also forsaken him, which is signified by the shot of a child being pulled away from crossing the entrance to the house. It is only then that he realizes that he is totally alienated from the world. Then there is the ameen from the court who comes to serve a notice on him.

The economic base of that family is also very clear in the film. They have some paddy, coconut trees, pepper etc. If there is a short fall in any of these, the family won't be able to make two ends meet. So Unni can't afford to divide the property. And the sloth is his legacy.

The use of music in ELIPPATHAYAM is striking. You usually use music to underline something or to emphasise, like in ELIPPATHAYAM.
I would say, as a counterpoint or as a leitmotif. M B Srinivasan and myself discussed a lot, rehearsed even more and then recorded a theme music for this film. Actually it is a musical piece that can't be hummed. It suggests disintegration, a feeling of constant falling like half finished sentences. Only in the end, when he rises from the pond, is the full score used.

Then there is the musical sub-theme that evokes the mood of a sacrificial ritual. And it is not the normal reproduction of any musical instruments. We recorded it using musical instruments like 'tambura' and 'ghungru'. Then the tape was run at a slower speed to create the eerie effect we wanted. This music is used for the rat drowning sequences.

Among your protagonists, Unni is one character that doesn't have any redeeming features.
That is what he is. The film is trying to explore the question, what is being? It is an incisive examination of what constitutes an individual. In close scrutiny, a person is made out of his actions and interactions. It is always a give and take. For Unni, it is always takes and no gives, while for his sister Rajamma it is always giving and no taking. There is no individual sans the society, which is what ultimately gets clear. That is why there is nothing redeeming about him. There is a pathetic / pathological inevitability about his being. But there is also something comical about him.

We are also like Unni on many occasions; many a time we also get stuck in the comforts of a particular situation and wish the world away; any disturbance would upset us. You gradually become pathetically dependant like Unni who can't even think of living without his sister.

We are also like Unni on many occasions; many a time we also get stuck in the comforts of a particular situation and wish the world away; any disturbance would upset us. You gradually become pathetically dependant like Unni who can't even think of living without his sister.

Their relationship borders on the incestuous.
He is over dependent on her. And she is caught in the bondage of familial duties and relationships. But she also has hopes of getting out of it all, which is evident from the keen interest she shows in the marriage proposal. It is actually one's relationship with the immediate world around and the nature of its intensity that determine his/her character. Rajamma wants to protest but doesn't. What is suppressed gets expressed as her illness.

MUKHAMUKHAM



This stomachache continues in MUKHAMUKHAM also.
There the context is different and it owes to his way of life. In fact, Sreedharan's stomachache helps shine a torch into his past- a past about which his acquaintances as well as the audience have little knowledge. As a matter of fact, many party workers of that period had stomach problems, for they had a tough life underground-with all those wanderings, and irregular food habits. And many of them resorted to alcohol for alleviation-as a painkiller-it was the only way out for them particularly when they could not 'surface' and get proper medical care.

But it should be noted that the Sreedharan who comes back is only a possible extension of what we have known about him in the first half.

MUKHAMUKHAM is a very poignant film about the degeneration of the left. Why do you think the critics and the audience in Kerala did not take kindly to it?
Even before it was released there were rumours that it was an anti-communist film. When it was released, it was criticized as anti-communist. I think it has something to do with film literacy. We are not able to react to a film naturally. Instead we are aghast that a communist drinks alcohol and we pick on that. That is not the way to approach a work of art.

I think Thoppil Bhasi was the only person who saw it in proper perspective. I was flattered. He said in a public meeting in which the top ranking communist leaders participated that it was a film that prompted the communist to be self-critical. I told in my reply that neither a communist party cardholder, nor an enemy of the communists could make a film like that.

Everything, including ideology, has an organic beginning, growth and decay. If one believes otherwise, that is a problem. The film in fact refers to it. There is a quote from Lenin, saying that in the course of progress of the movement, some stagger and stop and are unable to continue the struggle, but the real challenge is to confront changing situations, renew the approach and march ahead.

In the film, everything revolutionary, and vibrant is in the past. In the present, the communist leader is in a stupor. Everyone is eagerly looking up to him for guidance, inspiration...But he is passive and never reacts, which frustrates everyone. So the past becomes a virtual burden now.
Why should I make a film to run down or to praise something or someone? I make a film because I feel about it. Maybe they didn't understand the language of the film or its complexity. It is as complex as ANANTARAM. Here it is as if we are wishing someone back to life. Derek Malcolm made an interesting comment about the film. He said that the film was about the failure of the leadership to live upto the expectations of the people. There are a number of scenes in which different people look up to him with great expectations-his son, wife, Sudhakaran, comrades, villagers... The great expectations and its failure constitutes its basic conflict.

A deep rupture is central to the film. A rupture between ideals and real politick, hopes and reality, past and present, what ought to be and what is, and so on. Actually the character himself is presented as emerging out of public memory, newspaper reports, photographs etc. so, he re-presents an utopia the people imagine or yearn for.
Communism is one such grand utopia, isn't it? We are almost convinced that it can't be realized in actuality. The fall of Soviet Union and the reforms in China confirm that. Everything, including ideology, has an organic beginning, growth and decay. If one believes otherwise, that is a problem. The film in fact refers to it. There is a quote from Lenin, saying that in the course of progress of the movement, some stagger and stop and are unable to continue the struggle, but the real challenge is to confront changing situations, renew the approach and march ahead.

Evidently in this journey, there are many who drop out tired. They have made their contributions, but can't continue. In the film, Sreedharan has already delivered his message. In fact, the real culprits are the people. He is not the culprit, we are. We want the revolution to be conducted by somebody else. Hence this hope, 'If only he were here...' We expect somebody else to do our job. He in fact was only a messenger who brought a message and had delivered it. In the second half, significantly, he doesn't say anything, neither denies nor affirms. In fact there is a faint and uncertain appreciation on his face only when the young man (Sudhakaran) revolts.

So his is a silence that can be interpreted in various ways, differently by different people according to their perceptions. And it is his very presence that confuses the people. He is always sleeping, he is silent and he drinks. They can't take this. Now he has to listen to his own words from the mouth of his disciple, sitting in the new Party office that is built and dedicated to his revolutionary memory... The party, not the movement, has always been comfortable with the martyrs, a living and unaligned hero of the past can be a cause of bother and embarrassment.

It is true. For martyrs never come back to correct you.
Not just the party, even the public is like that. We never say ill of the dead. Instead we use superlatives about them.


His relationship with women is also a bit muted and repressed- his overtures to his future wife and his hesitant, shy liking for the party comrade etc.
It was actually part of their Party discipline. While living underground, they take shelter in houses of sympathisers, but they have to behave as exemplary gentlemen. The conduct should be such as to win the admiration of the people. So he has to mercilessly suppress his desires and passions, in other words he has to wear a mask... There is always this secrecy about them. We never know their real names. And they should leave no traces. So, we find Sreedharan burning his letters. It may be Party letters in the first half. But in the second half, his wife suspects that it is from some other woman. But it may also indicate the end of a relationship. That letter can be from a woman or from an organization. So the letter also has this dual possibility, like the character whose identity is attributed.

It was not uncommon amongst many communist leaders of that time who spent a long time underground to have such affairs. The letters I received subsequent to the release of the film and the mild controversies that followed, from various people including old comrades confirmed the truthfulness of the situation presented in the film. They said (many of them didn't want their names to be disclosed) that it was similar to their own experience. While writing the script, I had taken efforts to study their lives as closely as possible. I read many autobiographies and interviewed many involved, because I wanted it to be truthful to history and the movement itself.

In ELIPPATHAYAM we examine all the experiences, even fantasies, of Unni as if under a microscope. We know everything about him, like about an insect. In the case of Sreedharan in MUKHAMUKHAM, we don't even know his real name. Even after seeing the film, we don't know much about him.

In the film, he comes from somewhere and also disappears one fine day.
During the period when the Communist Party was banned, the grass root leaders used to do that. They lived under different names and identities. For example Thoppil Bhasi's play- Ningalettne Kammunistakki (you made me a communist)-was published under the pseudonym, Soman. They had different names in different places. The treatment of the film is such that the enigma of the main character is not resolved, but gets even more complex after we see the film.


In the film, there is a lengthy shot of Kaviyur Ponnamma, just before her version of Sreedharan begins. It is a medium close-up of her face. In the beginning she is pleasant, almost beaming, but it gradually transforms into sadness and pain, to finally end in uncontrollable sobs. In such shots I find the influences of art forms like Kathakali, where 'bhava pakarcha' (the gradual transformation of moods) is important.
The whole story of her relationship with him passes through her face-his transformation from being a hero to being discredited, from a leader to a drunkard.

I think MUKHAMUKHAM is one film which when I watch it even now, is compact and precise. There is not even a frame in it that I would like to have removed from it.

In the case of some films, there is always this feeling that one could have reduced the length of a particular shot etc. (which I feel is a wrong feeling, for that comes out of watching it the nth time. A fresh viewer may not feel so at all) But in the case of MUKHAMUKHAM I have never felt it. After seeing the film, Ray said, "I admire your guts to make a film centred around a character who always sleeps".

The characters that recollect the memory of Sreedharan are dramatically placed in concentric circles, one within the other. The teashop owner is the least related to him while the son is the closest. We start with the farthest-the tea shop owner, and pass through other characters to end up with the son. These are not flashbacks. They are blocks of memories built forward or upward. He is constructed out of memories of people, but they are not flashbacks in the conventional sense. This movement, from the outer to the inner, is also a movement in the intensity of relationships. And it is from the closest relationship, between the father and the son, that he is finally recalled as in sorcery.

This return could also be a dream dreamt by his wife.
Yes, actually the whole sequence is within quotes. You find the child sleeping in the foreground while his mother is dozing. She is awake and asleep, conscious and unconscious. You have the same sequence repeated at the end when her father comes and informs that Sreedharan has been killed. So the whole story of the return is a visual quote between these shots. It can be real but it can also be a dream.

So the film could be about any utopian idea, not necessarily communism?
Yes. Also that everything, be it an idea or a movement itself, has an organic growth, development; everything has its youth, growth, zenith and decay and downfall. There are no exceptions.

It is also one film of yours that teems with the presence of people of all kinds, labourers, union activists, villagers, school children.
Yes. He is in fact the revolutionary spirit of the people.

I think that is evident in the sequence where only his associates go inside the factory to hold discussions with the management while he stays outside at the gate as a satyagrahi. So looks like the spirit of the struggle, not part of the real politic.
Yes.

This was made much before the fall of the Soviet Union. So it was prophetic in a sense.
Yes, in 1984. Ironically, it was well received there in the Soviet Union.

ANANTARAM



There are many aged people in all your films. They seem to be a permanent feature remaining in the background of the protagonists life?
Yes, I have a very special relationship with them. I am particularly sympathetic to old people who have fallen into bad days. I am concerned. Old people carry a whole life's experience all over their face and body. They have a very special character and look. Actors like B K Nair have acted only in my films. Vembayam has done some small roles in other films also. I have written about them under the caption, 'Two little big actors'. Both are no more now. When I was a child, we had one old man like Veluchar in KATHAPURUSHAN at home who was great company for me. He managed the house and looked after the estate.

In ANANTARAM, the presence of the three old men is striking. In a sense the film is about the impossibility of youth. The impossibility of the youth in comprehending a world that is too old for him. He is in constant awe of their world that looks magical to him, and over which he gradually loses grip.
Such a reading is possible.

No one really knows for sure what causes mental illness, and why it happens or what is its cure. Similarly no one knows why one becomes a writer or artist. The reasons are mysterious. Is it genetic, social, circumstantial, sheer grit or something else? No one really knows. A madman has no method with his materials. When there is a method to madness, it becomes creation.

And I have always thought that cinema is a medium that is ideal for such probing. Cinema is after all a series of frames and the reality within them. But then there is a reality outside it as well. Which one is real, the one within the frame or outside of it? When the camera changes angles, lenses, or alters positions, the frame also changes. So here the reality is altered, qualified or even negated.

Maybe a madman is not able to extricate himself from the quagmire of his experience, whereas the artist is able to come out and make creative use of it.
Exactly. Ajayan in ANANTARAM has all the makings of a writer but he is not a writer. The film is about ambivalence, about the nature of reality. What is experienced in a dream ceases to be so when you wake up. Which of it is real? Maybe both. Maybe one negates the other.

And I have always thought that cinema is a medium that is ideal for such probing. Cinema is after all a series of frames and the reality within them. But then there is a reality outside it as well. Which one is real, the one within the frame or outside of it? When the camera changes angles, lenses, or alters positions, the frame also changes. So here the reality is altered, qualified or even negated.

Because cinema has a dream quality to it as a medium.
Yes, for the very fact that it eliminates non-essentials; that it concentrates on the impact. And it floats free of any moorings of time and space. All this gives a dream quality to film. After seeing a worthwhile film, it is not the visual details that we carry with us, but its inexplicable impact. The film, in fact is a more organized dream made up by the conscious mind.

ANANTARAM is actually about the multiplicity of selves within us. Ajayan has various talents that seeks expression but are snubbed by the society. He is a lover, a loner, a dreamer, and also an over-smart boy during schooldays.
There is an introvert and an extrovert in every one of us. We see the extrovert in him in the first part, in the first story. He is over-smart. And he is recounting his life. It is only natural that when one speaks about one's talents, one tends to exaggerate. So it is an exaggerated self that is presented before us.

The film is structured like a monologue. I actually titled the film Monologue in English. The sequences of events are arranged in a manner following the logic of a monologue. It is in fact a visual monologue. Ajayan, the main character is a young person in an irrational state of mind. He is trying to find the rationale to his irrationality. His attempt is to narrate how he became what he is now. There are two versions in the film, each supplementing the other and not contradicting. There can be many more stories though.

The creative process takes place in three stages: one is that of the actual experience of the author. The second is the recalling of this experience, the third its arrangement. How one arranges it would depend on the theme, what one wants to convey. On that basis he picks and chooses those high points of his experience to make up a story in faithful pursuance of the theme. The first story he narrates says that he was too smart and too bright for a society that was mediocre. It always tried to stifle him. So he withdrew into himself. In the second story, he goes further back in time and states that his childhood was confusion striven and it was impossible to tell real from the fake and the imaginary.

Everything is ambivalent about his upbringing. The doctor whom he calls his father is not his real father, but is like a father for him. His brother is not his real brother, but like one. There is a certain duality about his perceptions.

Remember those sequences with the three old men at home. There is an element of magic to these sequences. It is night and it is raining outside. But the old man is thirsty and is drawing water from the well even as he is getting drenched in the torrential pouring, When he gets back to the verandah, there is no trace of rain drops on his person. His clothes are dry and he gulps in the water collected in the vessel that came out of another vessel of the same shape and look.


On another rainy night, a woman walks across the verandah and vanishes into the rain outside. The old men make the child believe it was a 'yakshi' (an enchanting spirit).

The three old men there are essentially contradicting what they are there for. One is a driver but we never find him driving the car. The car is stationed inside the shed and it stays there immobile. The second is a pharmacist in the dispensary who shoos his patient clients away preferring his cosy afternoon nap. The third one is the cook who eats most of what he cooks. And they are always weaving a web of lies around him. He doesn't have anyone else to refer to. So may be he gradually loses the faculty to discern the real from the false.

There is another scene in which the three old men appear before him as apparitions. He wakes up screaming, and when they open the window, it is already noon. They had come to say goodbye to him. The change in lighting changes the whole perception of reality. Similar is the case with the car, which we first find moving, the driver at the steering wheel. We have no reason to suspect how the car moves. But then, with a slight panning of the camera, we are led to see that the car is being towed away by a tractor.

So, as soon as we start making sense of reality, it turns into something else, which is what is happening in Ajayan's case as well. The reality outside the frame is continuously correcting the reality within it.

It has a very complex structure. That film should be seen in theatre, sitting in the dark. Then only will its magic work.

But my experience is that it was not properly appreciated outside India. May be, they do not expect any complex treatments from us. Or rather, they are not prepared for it. Either it has to be erotic or at least exotic to find a wider audience in the west.

At home, it was popular with people who are literate. The more sophisticated, the better was the appreciation. Many young people liked it too. It has happened in the case of two films of mine. In the case of case of ANANTARAM, it was the youth who were deeply touched by it. MUKHAMUKHAM moved people of a certain age. Both invited very intense responses. Many people came and told me of their own lives, many personal problems that they normally would divulge only to a doctor, a psychiatrist. Both films are of course very genuine and authentic.

There is a universality that comes out of minute details.
Many people have told me that my films are about strange persons. I tell them it is not so. They get such an impression because they have never gone close enough to a character. The moment you care to study a character closely, the complexity of the person becomes quite overwhelming. Many people think that Sankarankutty is a mentally retarded person. Far from it. He is just an ordinary person like anyone of us. We tend to forget that we ourselves behave like him in many situations.

MATHILUKAL



MATHILUKAL was the first film that was based on a story written by someone else. Why did you choose Basheer?
It was a time when I was trying to write a script based on one of my own ideas but it did not quite work. Then I thought of Mathilukal. I had read the story when it was published first in the Kaumudi annual number in the year 1967, as I can recall. Many people thought of making it into a film but the fact that the heroine never appears discouraged them. Basheer told me that some filmmakers even thought of six different heroines to play the character. Every time the hero talks to her over the wall, a different actress was to be shown! Ultimately the project was dropped.

I read the story again and still found it stimulating. There was a real challenge in filming it, basically that of creating a character without showing her. Secondly it is about the working of a writer's mind, it is a journey through his mindscape. So it was an opportunity to recreate Basheer the writer and the man proper. I read all his works, and then sat down to write the script. When I met Basheer to acquire the rights etc., he readily agreed and asked at the end, ''You will show me the final script, won't you?" I didn't say yes or no; but on the way back I told Dr. M M Basheer (well known literary critic and a friend of the writer) that it would be difficult, and asked him to convey it to Basheer gently. Because every writer has certain favourite things which he wouldn't want to forego; but as far as a film is concerned, the story is only a starting point. We bring a lot many new things to it and that is how a script is developed.

After completing the film, I was particular that Basheer should be the first to see it. I screened the film at Kozhikode for Basheer. After seeing the film, everyone got up, but Basheer was still sitting. I went near him and he said, "not a dull moment". At the press meeting after the screening, Basheer was the one who answered most of the questions about the film. It was a good experience, associating with a great writer. He wanted me to make films based on some of his other stories also like Entuppappakkoranendarnnu and Pathummayude Aadu. But I told him it was difficult to do justice to them, to make a film that is as good as or better than the story.

While on the way to watch the movie, he was eager to know whether the film had retained the same ending as the book. The story ends with the protagonist standing outside the jail gate, a rose in his hand. But the film has a different ending. It ends with a dry twig being thrown up on the other side of the wall. I thought the shot of the dry branch rising and falling against the vast blue sky summed up the spirit of the film. After seeing the film, Basheer liked the way I ended the film.

After completing the film, I was particular that Basheer should be the first to see it. I screened the film at Kozhikode for Basheer. After seeing the film, everyone got up, but Basheer was still sitting. I went near him and he said, "not a dull moment".

Why did you choose MATHILUKAL of all his stories?
Actually I thought of Entuppuppakkoranendarnnu. But when I read the story again, I felt that the kind of innocence Basheer was talking about in that story no longer existed. It also happens to be a great literary work that is difficult to equal in a film version. 'Pranayappani' (love fever) of the heroine as depicted in the novel works like magic on the reader. I can't think of anything that I have read that matches it in its intensity and feel. It is simply the gift of a writer's craft at its best.

I found MATHILUKAL, at least initially quite a challenging subject to make a film on. To have an unseen woman as the heroine of a romantic tale was fine as reading material. But how would one translate it into a visual narrative? And when I delved deeper into it, I could read more complexities into it.

In MATHILUKAL, one could look at the space that the protagonist is occupying in the film as that imagined by him, from the way it is cut off from the rest of the world, the way an array of characters present themselves before him.
I have built up a rationale in the film. He starts writing only when he becomes lonely after everyone of his prison mates has been released. Earlier in the film, he tries to write also but he is not able to. There is another sequence where he is shown pacing up and down the jail veranda on one afternoon, the inner turmoil writ large on his face. When others are asleep in their open cells, here is Basheer awake and alone slowly drifting into his private world. The background score evokes solitude and the restlessness symptomatic of a writer's mind. I am also subtly suggesting the schizophrenic traits that occasionally surfaced in Basheer's life.

In the film, Basheer treats all the characters, right from the Jail Superintendent to the murder convicts, with equal concern and camaraderie.

Basheer has confided that there really was a woman on the other side of the wall. But she was convicted of murdering her husband with a 'chiravatthadi' (the kitchen utensil used for scraping coconut). These details have been held back in the story, as it would go against the romance that was to be built around the character.

Many critics felt that the jail life depicted in the film was too cosy.
What is shown in the film is in keeping with what Basheer wrote. He is a free soul whether inside the prison or outside of it. He plants and nurtures roses, cratons and even buds plants in the jail compound. It is the creative mind of a writer that transforms an inhospitable place into a beautiful world.

To start with, he was imprisoned along with other politicians. There are indications in the film itself that the struggle was about to end. Everyone is expecting independence. The British will leave, and these very political prisoners will be the rulers of tomorrow. So the jail administration is not very harsh on them. They actually help them in exchanging letters etc. Moreover, Travancore had never been under direct British rule. Naturally the Travancore prisons were not very harsh with such prisoners. Basheer was imprisoned for being critical about the Maharaja. He was not imprisoned for theft or murder. And he enjoyed all the liberties of a political prisoner.


It was also made at a time when 'wall' was a predominant image with the fall of the Berlin wall. How was it received outside India?
While it was screened at the Rotterdam festival, a woman director wondered how I could get the film through the Indian censors! And more interestingly, she thought that the man-woman relationship depicted in the film was extremely sensuous, and it was in sharp contrast to what the west could produce with all its permissiveness.

What were the other challenges in translating Basheer into film?
A major challenge was the lengthy dialogue sequences between Basheer and the unseen woman across the wall. All that you had at your disposal was a bare wall and the hero on this side of it. I had to meticulously work out a mise-en-scene that would make my audience forget the bareness and be carried along by the wordy exchanges.

When you adapt a story, it is very important that the filmmaker sifts out of the original and extract a text which is all his own to follow. For instance, in the story there is a sentence: "I have kept watch over death". This single sentence has become a long sequence quite central to the film beginning with the head warder waking up Basheer in the early morning. The convict to be hanged before daybreak had asked for tea. The viewer is made to be with Basheer until the last bell rings for the convict. The whole sequence is built up through little movements, exchanges of looks, dialogues in monosyllables etc. to get the viewer involved.

I think the use of KPAC Lalitha's voice for the woman on the other side of the wall to some extent takes the magic out of it, for Malayalees are very familiar with her voice, and will identify it immediately with her image. Don't you think so?
This was a complaint many Malayalees had. But they did not seem to realise that if it was the familiar voice of Lalitha they heard from the other side, it was Mammootty standing on this side playing Basheer. Don't you find it a little strange? At the time of release of MAHILUKAL, Lalita was seen practically in every film and everyone could immediately identify her voice. But then my film has a life even after its time of release, I believe. The film will be appreciated for whatever it is worth once these prejudices are gone or when the audiences of today pass over.

Not that I did not anticipate this problem. I had made every effort to use a new voice. But I could not find one that was as sensuous and expressive as Lalita's. I had auditioned a bout sixty people from different parts of Kerala. And then finally I decided that a familiar, yet good voice was better than an unfamiliar bad voice.

How do you decide upon the casting of actors?
Physiognomy is the most important thing. The question is whether the person looks like the character. But while writing the script I never think about the actors. It is after finishing the script that I look for the right actors to play the roles. If established actors are not suitable I start looking for new faces, maybe from theatre or through enquiries. If I don't know the actor at all, I would give him/her a small role and see for myself whether that person has the potential to do a major role.

I have always felt that non-stars have done splendidly in your films when compared to the stars. For example Gopi in KODIYETTAM and Karamana in ELIPPATHAYAM appear as made for the role. Whereas I don't feel the same about Mammootty in MATHILUKAL.
In VIDHEYAN I thought his physique suited the role well. The role needed someone of his physique and appearance. Then I also changed his appearance thoroughly to suit the villain's role. But as distinct from the story, I gave him some redeeming features in the film. There was no element of remorse in the story. He is like a serial killer in it -killing, raping and running amuck. In the film he actually kills only one person-that is his wife. With this murder there is a change in his character -he has doubts. Actually I redefined the character to make him more credible, so that the viewers are able to relate to him. And there is a total reversal of roles in the film.

In the beginning we find Thommi squatting in front of the toddy shop; in the end, we find Patelar in the same position near the waterfalls. He is squatting meekly watching over the rice boiling in the pot while Thommi is bathing in the river naked and in pure abandon. He has grown dependent on Thommi. He has found a comrade in him and manages with him a certain degree of exchange as well. Patelar is also a victim here.

It is Thommi who makes him possible, for you need a slave to create a master. So you needed an imposing figure in the role of Patelar. And Mammootty perfectly suited it. Body and appearance are very important physiognomy in general. Here the propensity to violence is also a major factor.

It was the case with MATHILUKAL also. My effort was to cast someone who suits the self-image of Basheer during that period of his life. In his writings, Basheer always talks about his appearance as handsome, well built and strong. But the popular image we have of him is that of an old man. In the film, he is in his youth, so I thought Mammootty suited it eminently. I couldn't be happy with a lesser actor in that role. It was my intention to capture the image Basheer had of himself.

When he saw the film, Basheer joked to his wife, "Mammootty is not as handsome as I was but he approximates!"

And the two characters Mammootty did in MATHILUKAL and VIDHEYAN are opposites. While one is a self reflective, creative person, the other is a ruffian, devoid of any sense of sophistication or finer feelings.

VIDHEYAN



Your next film, VIDHEYAN, was also based on a literary work, this time by Paul Zachariah. What prompted you to choose it?
One advantage in working with others' stories is that we get an opportunity to respond to approaches and worldviews that are entirely different from ours.

I had read this story when it appeared in a magazine nearly a decade ago. There was something very attractive about it, but it was also very raw and violent. I talked to K G George about it as he was on the look out for a good story and he had already done films like IRAKAL. Though George took interest initially, things didn't work out. About a couple of years later when I found that George's interest had waned, I went back to it again and found it still interesting in many respects, the violence had to be tamed and brought under reasonable control, this was the first task.

Then I wrote the script connecting loose ends and finding reason and justification for actions, tracing characters to their origins etc. What emerged was my own text of the author's writing. It had toed the same line as the author's in most part but had per se deviated from it too as my perceptions of it were not the same as the original. I believe the author also liked my version initially but then he changed his stand for reasons known only to him...

It is interesting to observe how the power of domination is resisted and detested in silence without any of it being articulated. Then it is slowly accepted and one learns to live with it. Before long it is absorbed as a fact of life. It becomes pathetic when one finds it difficult to carryon without it.

How did you historicize it?
I was basically dealing with the phenomenon of power, its psychology and structure, in this film. To make it valid and authentic, I had to examine it in a historical context. Thus the treatment started growing beyond the mere story line. I brought in historical references. The system of 'Patelars' had existed from the British period. They were like local chieftains who were responsible to collect taxes. But along with it came other auxiliary powers -judicial and social, which they abrogated. That is how Patelars became authorities. Interestingly, this system continued even after Independence, until up to the sixties when regular revenue officials took over. All the same, by sheer force of convention the head of a Patelar family enjoyed respect and evoked fear in their village fiefdoms. Not all, but some abused these powers to a great extent.

How is the dynamics of power dealt with in the film?
The exercise of power anticipates two sides, that of the one who wields it and the one who is subjected to it. Here Patelar assumes that he has the power. The taker on whom it is exercised is the settler Thommi who thinks he has something to lose in resisting the violence. Coming to think of it, he, in fact has nothing to lose. One thinks he has some powers to exercise, the other submits in fear of losing. The film begins with the encounter of these two forces. A degenerate Patelar seated in front of a toddy shop and a submissive Thommi who stumbles into his net. This is how the power play begins.

To exercise absolute power one also needs the subservient. In the film, Thommi never says 'no' to the abuse of power that is unleashed on him. He simply submits and accepts it as something natural. He fears it, and accommodates it alternately. As a settler he has no roots or rights there. He is totally alienated whether it is the unfamiliar language spoken or in the lack of a sense of belonging there. The soil under his feet is not his, he is an outsider there, he is at the mercy of the one who wields and exercises power.

Sexual abuse and domination is another mechanism of power operation. That forms a sub theme to the film.
It is interesting to observe how the power of domination is resisted and detested in silence without any of it being articulated. Then it is slowly accepted and one learns to live with it. Before long it is absorbed as a fact of life. It becomes pathetic when one finds it difficult to carryon without it. In the film, Thommi goes through all these. He could have pushed Patelar into that well and walked off free of the burden. But he can't bring himself to do it. He is worried how he would live without Patelar. He asks, "Who would be there for me then?"

Another revealing situation is when he tries to console his wife who starts sobbing inconsolably at the prospect of his leaving her to accompany Patelar in his run from the law. Thommi tries to cheer her up, "Don't cry. I am there for the Patelar". She is actually crying for him but he doesn't want to admit it before his master, an instance of total negation of oneself.


To pick on the theme of the incomplete family in your films, in VIDHEYAN also both the families are incomplete in many ways.
Actually Patelar had loved his wife but probably he himself did not know it, and it is after he kills her that he begins to doubt himself. He had no doubts till then. He firmly believed that he had a natural right over others' lives, including his wife's. And with her murder, there is a change in him, for she was someone who really loved him and wished him good. That loss makes him a criminal and he feels guilty and finally succumbs to it. In the case of Omana, though she loves Thommi, circumstances force her to submit to Patelar sexually.

Actually she is an offering from Thommi, after he has offered himself to Patelar totally.
Yes, his is a total surrender and a negation of his very self. So both the marital relationships are complex.

While Thommi denies himself totally and is 'selfless', for Patelar there is nothing else in the world but himself. So in a way, they are two poles. In the end there is a move towards self-awareness. Patelar finds that he is also an ordinary mortal.
There is a change in him owing to his guilt and sense of defeat. Divested of all the powers that he thought he had, he is in the end dispossessed. From the moment they enter the forest, they turn into two ordinary human beings. All social connections and disparities severed, we find them eating from the same food packet.

It is this betrayal of social conventions that Patelar meets with at his nephew's house, where the latter refuses to give him refuge. Thommi is contemptuous of the nephew who does not even allow Patelar inside the house. It is only then that Patelar realises the deep trouble he is in, and the fact that he is a fugitive from the law. All relationships are broken there.

The depiction of violence in the film is very interesting. Usually violence in films is depicted in such a way that the, viewer also becomes part of the act. In the film, the focus is more upon evoking disgust about violence. There is an effort to look at violence from the point of the view of the prey.
Yes. There is this meaninglessness about it. The oppressor has no idea or he does not care about the feeling of pain. He doesn't know what it is to be on the other side, and the film is about that. It is trying to examine what would happen when the roles are reversed. Here it should be noted that Thommi is not a participant, he is only a witness to all the cruel deeds of the Patelar.

He doesn't appear to be an agent at any point of time. He only follows.
There is also this element of goodness in him. That is why he is not able to bring himself to kill Patelar even when he gets the opportunity. He considers him as his benefactor and is grateful to him.

In many ways Sankarankutty (KODIYETTAM) is similar to Thommi. Both of them are manipulated and used by others. Maybe it is the social situation of Sankarankutty that could be characterised as pre-modern or idyllic that makes his innocence charming. In the case of Thommi, he is a dependent in many ways.
Sankarankutty is different, he is much more free. He doesn't let people use him. For the politician who recruits him for the procession, he may just be another number in a crowd. All the same, Sankarankutty owes no allegiance to him. KODIYETTAM is about Sankarankutty gaining individuality, whereas Thommi is alienated, helpless and totally dependent.

Thommi would find another Patelar, even after he loses this one?
The possibility can't be ruled out. Yes, even the freedom he gains at the end maybe for the time being. For someone who knows Thommi, his final run may not be one of liberation. He is not running out of joy. There is also an element of sadness in it. His cry also resembles a wail. There is a relief of the burden and also sadness in him. He also realises in an elemental way about the misuse of power!, which is evident in the act of throwing away the gun into the river. We can call Sankarankutty child-like or innocent. But Thommi is not like that. He is terribly attached to his possessions, whether it is his wife or the land. Maybe it is this attachment that leads him to slavery.

Finally, when he is running away after the end of the Patelar chapter in his life, is there a sort of self-understanding in him?
Maybe, that was just a bad patch, a cloud from under which he comes out. Maybe that marks the end of his miseries. But he may also end up with another master. What we see is that power and its exercise is contextual, it waxes and wanes, appears and disappears according to contexts.

Or, it is not vested in the individuals.
Exactly. Patelar is powerful only with his cronies around him. When he is alone he is much more contemplative and talks about his plans and confesses. In the company of his cronies we see him engage in more and more vicious exercise of power. And, in that foiled plot to kill Patelar, it is these cronies who flee first upon hearing the gunshots.

Rural violence was a common theme of many 'new wave' films. But all those films had to end up with a sign of resistance. VIDHEYAN on the other hand, doesn't bother to do so, and is instead an analysis of violence or power itself. It doesn't take the easy way out by culminating in a clenched fist.
It is not just the portrayal of a particular incident. It tries to get into the core of that experience.

It is not a coincidence that VIDHEYAN was much appreciated in two countries-Japan and Germany. And I think it owes to the historical experiences of those nations. One critic even wrote that the character of Patelar resembled Hitler.

KATHAPURUSHAN



Coming to KATHAPURUSHAN, it also deals with childhood like ANANTARAM. But structurally it follows a chronological order, with a series of historical events that also mark the life of Kunjunni. The film follows the life of Kunjunni at several historical junctures. All films are autobiographical in a way, yet to what extent is KATHAPURUSHAN autobiographical?
There are no definite parallels, though there are many resemblances. The film was shot in the house (built by my grandfather) where I was born and had spent most of my childhood. Kunjunni's father was like my father, not entirely though. In the film he appears only once, but my father and mother were periodically separated. I am not the only son like Kunjunni. We also had an old man as house manager very much like Veluchhar. But he had a family of his own. He loved me very much and I was also very attached to him. I was never a member of any political party or an activist.

At home I was not alone. I was the sixth among seven children. In that house I lived with my mother (There was no grandmother as in the film) and my brothers. Those parts dealing with the childhood are very much built out of my own childhood memories and experiences. And memory is always selective. It doesn't reproduce all that happened in exact conformity. It picks and chooses.

For example I remember one blind old man, his name not known we used to call him 'Uvvera' (a usage repeated in his songs) who used to come home during my childhood. When he came it was great fun. He would tell stories, enact them etc. But years later when I enquired with my brothers and sisters about him, only my elder brother remembered him. So memory is an interesting phenomenon. In memory, only 'we' are there. Only those events and people who affected us directly and deeply are retained. It is also a question of our being sensitive to certain things.

When movements motivated by even the most idealistic approaches become victorious they tend to become establishments, and spend most of its energies to retain and maintain the status quo. And it creates intolerance. Even a little doubt is not tolerated. Hence we need to fight the demons all along. That is what the storyteller's tale is about.

In the film, most of 'history' or what is happening outside is in fact coming into his space in various ways, as newspaper reports, processions, rumours etc. Any autobiography is also only a possibility. There is the individual's life and also history. In those terms, is KATHAPURUSHAN an autobiography of your attitudes or orientations to historical events of your time?
Yes. There is one thing that is common to our lives. The 40 odd years that Kunjunni witnesses are also the ones I passed through in my life. So it is an emotional journey through personal experience, and through recent history. Various landmark events during the last four decades like the Independence, assassination of Gandhi, Communist Rule, land reforms, emergency, the Naxalite movement etc, till the 80's when Nayanar comes to power in Kerala, is there in the film. Actually it is not narrated through flashbacks that look back upon history, but it is depicted as happening in the continuous present. The viewer is not taken into the midst of the happenings but is made to experience their impact on the lives of the people involved.

The assassination of Gandhiji is a major event in the film. Was it so in your life?
Yes. I wept for a whole day upon hearing that news. I had great respect and admiration for the man about whom I had heard from my parents and elders. So it was a tragedy of unimaginable proportions.

As the film progresses, there is a gradual shrinking of space that Kunjunni inhabits, from the vast expanses of the paddy fields and the taravad, he descends to a small house and a little piece of land in the end.
He finds his own little space. There he also overcomes his inhibition, his stammering, maybe temporarily. But even that is a significant development in living.

Has this lack, this shortcoming something to do with his self-expression / creativity?
There is some sort of a vague incompleteness in him from the very beginning. There is a longing for absences, like his father. As he grows up he understands that he was part of a feudal past that survived on the sweat of others. At the same time, he is open. There is this maternal uncle of his who goes abroad to study and becomes a follower of Gandhi, later an extremist and in the end moving to the other extreme, that of spirituality. So there is such a strain in that family. And it is through his own experiences, his brush with reality and ideals, that he attains his commitment in life. He has to make his own discoveries from all these. From the beginning he is open and is never stubborn. He looks forward to goodness in society and fights for it his own way and in the process evolves as a person of integrity and confidence.


Kunjunni in fact welcomes the land reforms despite personal loss.
Yes. His mind is a highly impressionable one, hence his efforts to become a writer etc. Initially he wrote romantic pieces, something his comrade friend teases him about. But when he begins to move towards reality, his work is unwelcome to his comrades, it embarrasses them and it gets duly banned. He has come past the romantic period in his life and work.

I thought that narrating the personal experience of an individual was as important as narrating grand events like the world wars. It is particularly so when there is a certain universality to it.

When movements motivated by even the most idealistic approaches become victorious they tend to become establishments, and spend most of its energies to retain and maintain the status quo. And it creates intolerance. Even a little doubt is not tolerated. Hence we need to fight the demons all along. That is what the storyteller's tale is about. The defeated prince who takes refuge in the forest fights the demon knowing fully well that he may lose the battle. But even then he is not ready to compromise.

It is a universal story about the indomitable human spirit of resistance against evil even at the face of certain defeat. That is why the Prince asks the demon "How can you be so sure that you will always win?" The demon represents the establishment that gets encrusted from time to time.



Of Life...On Films : Adoor Interview

How come all your films are centred on men? None of your films have a woman as the central character.
There are strong female presences like that of the grandmother in KATHAPURUSHAN.

Their presence always a benign, loving one-as mother, lover etc. exuding support and warmth. These characters do not have any conflict within them, or their inner conflicts are never a major narrative concern in your films.
What often happens is that the film germinates as the story of a man. And in our society, women in fact do not have an equal position. What we are trying to make ourselves believe is the opposite, which is not fair. You take a film event or a serious discussion on a subject of public concern. Where are all the women? Why are they all sitting in front of television watching those sob stories? I am specifically talking about the women in Kerala, where the level of female literacy is the highest in the country. I think the self-image of women in our society is weak, and everything-the serials and the films perpetrate that further. In our society they can't even walk freely on the road after sunset. So what kind of freedom are we talking about? It will be false to portray a fighting woman in our condition now. There may be exceptions though in the urban context. Maybe in the future, I may make a film with a woman at the centre. But is that a solution?

A film that starts from the point where SWAYAMVARAM ends...
Yes. SWAYAMVARAM ends with a heroine of the future. Actually in the film, she is stronger than Viswam, her man. Even in KODIYETTAM, Sankarankutty's mother-in-law as a single parent and his wife Santhamma are characters who are stronger willed than him.

The filmmaker can make films only by placing himself as the audience. You can't make films for an imaginary audience whose tastes you do not know. Neither is it possible to make films for different sections of audience having different tastes. We don't have all the answers, nor do we know their preferences. So you can only make films that you enjoy making and watching.

There is this deep fault lines that run through the families in your films, has it something to do with your own childhood or perceptions about family?
May be. The relationship between my father and mother was a strained one. Most of their life they lived separately. This must have left some scars in my psyche. For my friends had normal families. Secondly, one is not dealing with normal people in films. It is only when there is something out of the ordinary that it becomes dramatically potential.

In MUKHAMUKHAM, the failure of the father to live up to his son is more painful. It is the son who eagerly awaits his arrival. And his father is coming after almost a decade. But his father's return disappoints him. For, a father is always a hero to his child, even if he is an ordinary person. So, his failure is all the more heart rending. This prompts him to disown his father, at least in secrecy. In the school sequence, where his schoolmates are making fun of his father, he is ashamed and hides himself behind a tree. He is passive and does not venture to come forward and defend his father.

It is also a metaphor for the failure of the left movement, its failure to live upto people's expectations.
In the case of his son, it is even pre-ideological, for his expectations are not of the ideologically motivated, but of a period of hopes that goes beyond that.

Similar is the case with man-woman relationship and love in your films. It is something rare, always in the past and adolescence, something to be tenderly remembered, but rarely lived.
A closely knit, loving and caring nuclear family is there only in KATHAPURUSHAN. Even that is arrived at only at the end. Love is also a strong presence in it. Secondly in most of the films, my protagonist is middle aged. He is not an adolescent or a youth. In KODIYETTAM, when Sankarankutty marries, he is referred to as already past his marriageable age. In MATHILUKAL protagonist is in his forties. So are Unni in ELIPPATHAYAM and Sreedharan in MUKHAMUKHAM. Only in KATHAPURUSHAN and ANANTARAM is the protagonist a youth and in both the films, man-woman relationship is very much warm and cordial.

My films are more about the relationship between the individual and the society than about love and family relationships. They are valid as social documents, I think. They should serve as faithful documents of the history of a particular period, the time in which it is set. Hence I always make sure of the authenticity of the facts and materials I use. When I did MATHILUKAL, archival information about the period was difficult to get-I was able to find a Jail Administration Manual of the period, which I studied carefully to recreate the right ambience in the jail sequences.

How do you rate Indian films in the contemporary international film scene? Have we been able to carve a niche for ourselves like Iran or Korea? If not, why?
Basically India as a country does not interest other countries. There is no curiosity about India or Indian art. People hear only about disasters here. Even a country like Malaysia is better placed. Moreover, there is no promotion of any kind. For a country that produces such a huge number of films, shamefully there is no concerted effort to promote our better kind of products internationally. Very small countries like Iran which produce not even a small fraction of what we do, promote their cinema aggressively. They have the full machinery in operation -publications, retrospectives, promotional campaigns, festival focuses -what have you. We are a country that doesn't take pride in our culture or arts. The politicians even think that they would get more mileage by going along those crass commercial enterprises. That is the bane of our great nation.

If at all there is any reference about Indian cinema, it is invariably about commercial Hindi cinema, which unfortunately is taken for the Indian cinema. The case of regional films -which are marginalized within the country -is much worse. Sometime back they even decided to shove away those award winners in regional languages from the national network of Doordarshan as they did not garner as much advertisements as those Hindi commercial films did.

You have made a number of documentaries, many of which have received awards and acclaim. What does documentaries mean to you?
Most of my documentaries are about performing arts (Kathakali, Koodiyattam, Yakshagana, Krishnanattam). And I have thoroughly enjoyed doing them. They provided a great opportunity to learn about such arts. It is an enriching experience.

Some time back I did a film with my friend Viswanathan, who is a painter, about the river Ganges. Shooting it, we travelled from Gangasagar where the river joins the sea to the Himalayan heights from where it takes its source. I myself shot the film and also scored its sound track. It was a great experience. Nothing was pre-planned, so we had to shoot as we travelled. It was shot in 1985, but still the experience of the travel remains fresh. The film went on to win several major international awards and it became a precursor to several films on the Ganges.

It is interesting and indeed intriguing that you have never worked in the video format or for television. Even Satyajit Ray has made television productions. Why is it so?
Basically I am not into television. I give my films to television channels only for the monetary returns it brings in. Moreover, there is no other way to reach the non-malayalee audience. Through TV it becomes possible to take my films to them at least in the video format.

The TV audience is not a serious one. Basically it is a casual and lazy, drawing room audience whose expectations are different from that of a film audience inside a darkened auditorium. I think the people who come to watch my movies have already taken some pains-to decide on it, travel, buy tickets etc. In my works I give them a lot of respect, and I also expect it to be reciprocated.

I also don't fancy working for television during the intervals between films. Even when I am not doing films, I am thinking of it, worrying about it. Some corners of my mind are always at work, I believe. Instead of spending time cooking up stories, I find making documentaries much more exciting and rewarding. It is always an exercise of replenishment, as it opens new areas of knowledge and experience before me. For instance, when I do a documentary on koodiyattam, I do a lot of research on the art form. And that gives me new insights.

Also, at least for quite some time now I make documentaries only on subjects that interest me deeply, not always for the financial returns.

Which filmmakers influenced you the most?
As a student of cinema, all filmmakers, good and bad have influenced me. There is no single filmmaker that I like the most, for there are good films and bad films made by the same filmmaker. For example I like Tarkovsky, his films like STALKER and ANDREY RUBLEV but I did not like his SACRIFICE. I didn't enjoy it. Likewise, though I like filmmakers like Bergman and Kieslowsky, there are also some films of theirs that I did not enjoy much. Basically as a filmmaker, what one is trying to do is to show and say things in one's own way. But one has to be necessarily aware of what is happening in one's medium.

And it is not what we learned that we create. We should also learn to forget what we learned. Maybe what we learned would enrich the vocabulary but it can also be restrictive. What one says has to be necessarily in a language and idiom that is home grown. I prefer the European and Japanese films to the American.

How does a film take shape? What sparks it off an image, an incident, a character or a situation?
It could be anything. Sometimes a character, an incident, a newspaper report, but it is only a starting point.

And it is not what we learned that we create. We should also learn to forget what we learned. Maybe what we learned would enrich the vocabulary but it can also be restrictive. What one says has to be necessarily in a language and idiom that is home grown. I prefer the European and Japanese films to the American.


For example ANANTARAM is based on a real life story I happened to learn about -about a doctor who adopted a child from the hospital. A friend told me about it. The story developed from this little information. It touches some chords inside you and then it grows from this spark. I started thinking about the child, about what would happen to him when he grows up etc.

In the case of KODIYETTAM, it started from a person in my village whom I knew from childhood. He is not as innocent as Sankarankutty, but there are certain similarities. In those days it was not uncommon to see many villagers like him, lazy, innocent and pure. Someone observed after watching KATHAPURUSHAN that everyone in the film cries at one time or the other. It is true. In those days people were capable of such natural outbursts like laughing and crying. My village some fifty years ago was like that. They were unspoilt and courteous to the core. So when tragedy strikes they cry out making no effort to hide anything. No matter if an outsider is present or not. Now we are not able to comprehend that. We have learned as part of our so-called sophistication that we should not show to the outside world whatever is happening to us inside. This is something we imbibed from the modern civilization, I think.

ELIPPATHAYAM started from a simple thought. Why is it that we do not react naturally to things around us? Because it causes inconveniences however minor or inconsequential that be. We rather try to wish inconvenient situations away. Take the familiar experience of eating out. Though we see people starving outside, we tend to forget that. This is a common experience. And we take the easiest way out try to ignore the existence of it. ELIPPATHAYAM is about it. It is an examination of the question why we don't react to what is happening around us, why we choose to wish them away. Actually it is not because we are cruel or unconcerned but we think we simply can't afford to take cognisance of it.

What is the process of writing a script?
After having finalized the theme, subject and a story, I go about writing a treatment. The treatment would outline the various incidents through which the plot progresses to the point of resolution. If that is satisfactory, I begin writing the script in a detailed manner. By the time of shooting, when the location etc. are fixed, I prepare a detailed shooting script, with all the details about shots, lenses to be used etc. But at the shooting location, I am still open to improvisations. You can improvise on it only if you have done your groundwork thoroughly. In my experience, what you finally shoot is invariably superior to what you had written earlier. It doesn't even end there, for you may not follow the same order while editing the film. There again you may have opportunities to make new associations. For example in ELIPPATHAYAM, there is a scene in which the rat is drowned in the pond. After that, the algae over the water close in, the ripples subside, and the surface becomes calm again. What we see is a reflective surface. This shot is cut to the mirror into which Unni is peering. Such connections may occur to us at the editing table while we try different juxtapositions.

Similarly there is this motif of counting throughout ANANTARAM. In the beginning we have a counting when Ajayan outwits everyone in staying under water. Then there is the instrument measuring blood pressure. In the end we again have it, the boy running up and down the steps counting odd and even numbers. It is all about perceptions and the infinite possibilities it opens up.

Do you improvise at the location?
When you go to the location, there are various factors like the time of the day, the lighting pattern, the trees, buildings etc. which may suggest changes in your shooting plan. You can never be rigid in these matters. Rigidity would mean a certain lack of life. But normally what remains practically unaltered is the dialogue. Usually it remains so till the end.

What do you do in between films? If there were finance, would you have done more films?
It is not the question of finance being available. May be such a situation was there in the beginning. Not nowadays.

Actually I don't get enough time to do my work. I have diverse interests. I like to read, write, travel around. Attend to social duties. There are a lot of things to do. One cant live from film to film. A film takes a long time -from the germination of the idea to its realization. And I can't think of another film before I forget the one I am involved in. By the time a film is finished, it is as if I have grown older by ten years.

And my job doesn't end with the making of the film. I have a lot to do afterwards, its promotion, marketing, distribution etc. For two to three years after a film, one is constantly busy screening it around; you are called upon to talk about it etc. So, it takes quiet some time to get the film out of your system.

Then my garden keeps me busy. And above all I like to just sit back and watch the birds and insects and the animals and also the humans apart from those drifting clouds and the plants in rain and in sun shine. And during the intervening period, I don't like to behave like a busy filmmaker. I like to go about like anyone else. Strangely, the general perception about a filmmaker when he is not doing a film is that he is idling and doing nothing.

Maybe that is the case with directors in the film industry, where they make films for the producers and don't have to bother about it afterwards.
Yes. They work in factory style. Once you know the technique, you can churn out any number of films. Even while they are shooting somebody else is editing their films. Because everything is predictable -the story, the editing pattern. It is a job anyone can do. It doesn't demand your personal presence.

But in my style of work, I make myself do practically everything about my film and it is exhausting. I am involved with apparently external concerns like poster designing and publicity. Then you have to handle the correspondence. None else can do it for you. This is also why my producers have never lost money. Not a single film of mine has failed to bring back the investment, with some marginal gains.

I think it is also the reason why so many filmmakers are not able make it. For, they often lack such stamina and are disheartened by casual criticism.
Yes. The success of the film depends on so many factors. Quality alone can't carry it through. You have to time the theatrical release of your film well and also get good support from the distribution and exhibition networks.

Nowadays there is such a resistance to good cinema that I am surprised that youngsters still manage to make their first films. The media is neither inclined nor supportive, and a decent release is also out of the question. Whatever meagre support it had earlier, is dwindling now. The blame has to be shared by the filmmakers as well. In the seventies, when film was cheap, many were emboldened to make films. Most of them were not worthwhile. Many simply lacked in technique and even content. And some of the critics who wrote about these films, when they went on to make films produced atrocious results. They made even greater compromises than the professionals who at least had their excuses. All this has contributed to the downward trend.

There has been a virtual revolution in the field of imaging technology. The very integrity of the image is under siege. Satellite television and imaging techniques have changed our visual experience in a radical manner. Under these circumstances, do you think cinema has become outdated?
Cinema itself was born into the midst of a technological revolution. As a medium of the modern age, it has been responding to the changes and itself has been undergoing transformations more frequently than any other art form.

During the last one hundred years, we have seen cinema changing its form and feel so rapidly as even the ardent followers have found it difficult to cope with. From silence to sound, Black and white to colour, it kept growing at a fast pace. Then came the television. To counter that, cinema developed wide screen, 70 mm, vistarama and so on. Meanwhile sound recording became more and more exacting. Cinema then made use of such technological possibilities to embellish and enrich the use of sound, and you had stereophonic and surround sound etc. At the moment film as a medium is itself on the verge of great changes. Until the early 60's film was shot using two cameras, one to record visuals and the other sound. Later the optical sound recorder was replaced by magnetic tape recorders. Now the sound recording equipments have become more sophisticated and lighter and they can reproduce sounds with greater fidelity and accuracy. What was happening in audio was also having its effect upon video. With the digitalisation of sound, image also became digital. Now the possibilities of converting video images into film images are being explored and perfected. Such a breakthrough is a blessing in a way; it frees you from cumbersome processes and saves a lot of time and anxiety. But there is also the problem of a technology that is becoming commonplace being used in a careless manner. The casual and careless use of video images is an instance of this sort.

I think digital imaging, the possibilities of special effects, graphics etc, in a way, liberates the filmmaker by allowing him to recreate dream like images. Liberated from the shackles of reality and its recording, filmmaking for the first time would be able to create virtual dreams.
This fascination with special effects was always there in the history of cinema. Even in the initial period, George Melies made films like 'Trip to the Moon' that used a lot of optical effects to produce fantastic images. Special effects are nothing new to cinema.

As a filmmaker, do these changes in technology and its effect upon the media and audience pose challenges before you? Do you find them threatening or liberating?
Both. There may be films made available online through the Internet, which people can download into their PCs. Even when there are such technological developments, ultimately, how many can afford to make use of them? A film theatre is entirely different. It is like going to the temple to pray even when you have God's images at home. It is like saying everything has its place. Everything has a place where it really belongs and cinema cannot be transplanted to the living room, the ambience there is different from a regular cinema hall.

But technology can bring the cost of production down, make things faster and take away a lot of uncertainties. It is in a way liberating. But it also creates its own problems. When you do things at such pace, you may not have enough time to think. You are called upon to act so quickly that you don't have the leisure to ruminate over it. The normal editing time of a film for me is three to four months. This allows the chance to grow and change in the process. There is enough time for the film to work on me. This is not available in the case of a film that I have to finish editing in a week. On the other hand, if I want to do things fast while my energies are high, a fast technology should be helpful.

Apart from production, another major area that has experienced revolutionary changes is that of distribution. With the advent and spread of satellite television, images and narratives travel faster and to all corners of the earth. And it has not been a two way process. This flooding of images and narratives also influence the tastes and expectations of the viewers. Does it affect a serious filmmaker like you?
First of all, it lowers the expectations of the viewers. That is the biggest problem. I would like to see it as a transitional problem. Only in our country do people watch television in this manner. In advanced countries where television has been there for long, only certain sections of people, like the aged, or children etc. watch it all the time. In our country, maybe because it is a new experience, all people watch it, and sometimes all the time. I am sure that they will outgrow it and come out of the bonsai experience of life that Television provides. While Television is smaller than life, movies are always larger than life. TV viewing has definitely affected the tastes of the viewers. For, television serials thrive on high drama; they have to produce tear-jerking scenes every eighteen minutes or so. But such melodrama is alien to life. In cinema, this happens over a period of one and a half hours. Even when films are shown on TV it is broken up into bits and pieces. You have ads in between. So, as an experience it doesn't compare with cinema. TV should in fact pep up one's appetite for cinema.

Television has also affected the composition of the film audience. Nowadays only certain sections of people go to the theatre to watch movies; family audiences are gradually withdrawing. This is quite a bad turn affecting the quality of films. And in keeping with the quality of the audience, Cinema has become a dingy place.

This changed nature of audience and their ever-changing tastes; does it affect you as a filmmaker?
The filmmaker can make films only by placing himself as the audience. You can't make films for an imaginary audience whose tastes you do not know. Neither is it possible to make films for different sections of audience having different tastes. We don't have all the answers, nor do we know their preferences. So you can only make films that you enjoy making and watching.