A class apart

Ervell E. Menezes catches up with director Adoor Gopalakrishnan on his latest film

Adoor Gopalakrishnan is here with his new film Naalu Pennungal (Four Women) and has doubled Alberto Moravia’s quota but he insists on that number because they represent the different strata of society. From down up, it is the prostitute, the virgin (field worker), the housewife (lower middle-class) and finally the spinster (middle-class). On why he chose women for his subject for the first time, the flowing white-haired Malayalam filmmaker coughs, brushes his brow, smiles and says when Doordarshan asked him to make a programme on the works of Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, famous author from Kerala, and gave him the freedom to expand and interpret him, he found that six of the nine stories he chose were woman-oriented.

But after 50, don’t you think you empathise more with women?

The trademark kurta-clad filmmaker smiles even more broadly, a shade impishly before saying, "Yes, after 50 one is more sympathetic to women. We become more assimilative, understanding and gain a certain maturity" but quickly adds "not everybody."

You tell him that Nandita Das was the best and even looks like a Mallu, he again smiles broadly "yes, that’s right, she’s from Orissa" and like most of his films Adoor is the master of detail. One sees beads of perspiration on her upper lip in the last shot. That’s typically Adoor as are some of the cameos in the film. His last film was Shadow Kill (2002) and he generally makes a film after every five years. Only in the 1990s he stepped up the output to one every three years.

Since Kerala is a matri-linear society one wonders why women should suffer so much. Adoor has his own take on that. "In India, no statement is absolute, it has to be qualified. Among the Nairs, women had the right to the house and the husband stayed in the wife’s house. If he left his wife, he had to leave the house." They lived in their mother’s house. But that system was dying because modernism was taking over. In any case in any community, it was the women who called the shots, he went on candidly.

Did you not overdo the food part in the film and Adoor promptly refutes the charge. In the case of the virgin anecdote, he says, "food was a substitute for sex for the husband" And whenever he was at home, it was either at breakfast time, lunch or dinner. He then went on to elucidate that it was only at dinnertime that the family came together. "They may watch TV but they are eating all the same," he goes on explanatorily.

We still recalled the scene in Elippathyam (Rat-trap) in which the landlord going to a wedding and being obstructed by a large puddle of water, turns and returns home and Adoor flashes that familiar smile once more.

Ask him about reception to his new film at foreign festivals and he said, immediately after the film buyers would come to him and say they wanted to buy it. There was no need for marketing. Even in Goa, the response was considerable. The Kala Academy auditorium was full and that does not happen too often.

About IFFI 07, he said. "It is much improved, the atmosphere is great, you won’t get it in New Delhi or Mumbai." There was a need to improve the programming, he thought but gave full marks to the director Neelam Kapur and coming from a perfectionist like Adoor it means a lot.

HOME