ADOOR GOPALAKRISHNAN

Bhaskaran Gautam

Description

Cinema is your experience; your vision of life. Adoor Gopalakrishnan A couple living in defiance of society; trying to make ends meet; a rootless; rustic simpleton unaware of his responsibilities; a selfish; middle-aged man clinging to old feudal ways; an ex-revolutionary wasting himself; sleeping and eating and drinking; much to the disgust of his old comrades; a writer who finds the true meaning of love and freedom in prison; and a prostitute discovering love only to be separated from her lover by the guardians of society. Adoor Gopalakrishnan s characters are drawn from real people; real lives. His cinema manages to frame details that often escape our everyday glance; turning the mundane into the magical; the commonplace into the startling. Yet; very little is known about the auteur. In Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life in Cinema; the first authorized biography of the Dada Saheb Phalke Award winner; Gautaman Bhaskaran traces the ebbs and flows of the life of this enigmatic director. From his birth during the Quit India Movement to his lonely childhood at his uncles house; from life at Gandhigram; where Adoor studied rural development; to his days and nights at the Pune Film Institute; and from his first film; Swayamvaram; to his latest; Oru Pennum Rantaanum; Bhaskaran s lucid narrative tracks the twists and turns of Gopalakrishnan s life; finding an uncommon man and a rare auteur.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• Lifestyle

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 08 juillet 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184752687
• Langue: English

Extrait

‘Cinema is your experience, your vision of life.’
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
A couple living in defiance of society, trying to make ends meet; a rootless, rustic simpleton unaware of his responsibilities; a selfish, middle-aged man clinging to old feudal ways; an ex-revolutionary wasting himself, sleeping and eating and drinking, much to the disgust of his old comrades; a writer who finds the true meaning of love and freedom in prison; and a prostitute discovering love only to be separated from her lover by the guardians of society.
Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s characters are drawn from real people, real lives. His cinema manages to frame details that often escape our everyday glance, turning the mundane into the magical, the commonplace into the starling. Yet, very little is known about the auteur.
In Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life in Cinema , the first authorized biography of the Dada Saheb Phalke Award winner, Gautaman Bhaskaran traces the ebbs and flows of the life of this enigmatic director. From his birth during the Quit India movement to his lonely childhood at his uncles’ house; from life at Gandhigram, where Adoor studied economics and politics, to his days and nights at the Pune Film Institute; and from his first film, Swayamvaram , to his latest, Oru Pennum Rantaanum , Bhaskaran’s lucid narrative tracks the twists and turns of Gopalakrishnan’s life, finding an uncommon man and a rare auteur.
Gautaman Bhaskaran is a journalist and writer, having worked in two of India’s best regarded daily newspapers, The Statesman and The Hindu , for thirty-five years. Now Editor South Asia for South Korea’s The Seoul Times , he also writes for a variety of other publications across the globe: Hindustan Times and The Week in India, Gulf Times and Gulf News in West Asia, The Japan Times in Japan, and Sight and Sound and Screen International in Britain. He covers major international film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Tokyo, Deauville, Marrakech, Dubai and several in India. He teaches cinema at Manipal University and English at Chennai’s Loyola College. He lives in Chennai with his wife, and has a son.
Cover image courtesy of Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Cover design by Puja Ahuja
A DOOR G OPALAKRISHNAN A LIFE IN CINEMA
Gautaman Bhaskaran
Foreword by Adoor Gopalakrishnan
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Viking by Penguin Books India 2010
Copyright © Gautaman Bhaskaran 2010
Foreword copyright © Adoor Gopalakrishnan 2010
Photographs courtesy of Adoor Gopalakrishnan
All rights reserved
The views and opinions expressed in this e-book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.
ISBN: 978-06-7008-171-4
This digital edition published in 2011.
e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-268-7
This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this e-book.
To my mother
Contents
Copyright
Foreword by Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Feet on the Earth
2. Panning Places
3. Picturing People
4. A Struggle Named School
5. Enter, Play
6. Spinning Wonders and Woes
7. Days and Nights in Pune
8. Missionary of Meaningful Movies
9. Beginnings and Beyond
10. Documenting the Dramatic
11. The Sound of Silence
12. The Other Actors
13. One’s Own Choice
14. The Ascent
15. The Rat-Trap
16. Face to Face
17. Monologue
18. The Walls
19. The Servile
20. The Man of the Story
21. Shadow Kill
22. Four Women
23. A Climate for Crime
Foreword
A journalist is turning a biographer with this book. Not an easy proposition, though many may think otherwise. In fact, there is nothing in common with the professional demands of a journalist’s pursuit here.
A newspaper ‘story’ is for quick and casual consumption. One’s skills are directed towards filling the allotted columns as a deadline hangs like a threat and a test. With the day’s newspaper on the stands, yesterday’s hot story is already old and cold.
A book, on the other hand, can make claims to a permanence of sorts. Once bought (even borrowed), it enjoys a special space on the reading table, as well as your travel bag, and before long it gets elevated to the shelf rubbing covers with others in seemingly safe preservation.
A book, no wonder, saddles the author with multiple responsibilities. Most importantly, its significance should survive the publication of another book on the same subject. In fact, a good biography should stand the scrutiny of authenticity, be rich in its material, and original in its observations, providing a firm ground for further study and analysis.
Even a detailed and painstakingly written book on an author or artist can fall short of being complete in every respect as there is always scope for further probe and understanding.
Articulation is not always the gift an artist has, as he or she reveals mostly through his or her art. While being a good listener, I must admit, I am a reluctant talker. In writing this book, Mr Gautaman Bhaskaran has mostly depended on my talk. Never before have I talked so much in my life, definitely not about myself.
The second part of this book deals with my films individually. It gives vital information about the making of each film along with some important details.
Gautaman has done well in not trying to be analytical about the films. It needs to be conceded that most of my films do not lend themselves to simple paraphrasing. Their ambition extends beyond mere storytelling. A wrong stress on any aspect of its thematic concerns can lead the reader astray. For instance, to approach Nizhalkkuthu (Shadow Kill) as a film against capital punishment would be too simplistic.
This book, I believe, will throw some light on my life and work. And I am happy it does as much.

8 April 2010 Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Thiruvananthapuram
Preface
I t was many years ago that I met Gopalakrishnan from Adoor. It was so long ago that I do not remember when. I do not even recollect my first meeting with this auteur-director. But it was not at Adoor, where he was born. No, certainly not.
There is one meeting I remember distinctly. On a cold winter morning at New Delhi’s Siri Fort, I ran into him. Literally. I was rushing in to catch the first movie of the day during the International Film Festival of India, which that year had returned to the capital, an alternate year stop for this gypsy event that has since then found a permanent home in Panaji.
Gopalakrishnan was beaming, his face lit up by the shy warmth of the early morning sun. As we exchanged greetings, he looked at me and asked, ‘Gautaman, how come you look younger every time I see you?’ I did not even pause to think before the words flew out of me. ‘The magic of cinema, sir,’ I said. And we laughed, both of us enslaved by the same overwhelming passion.
Years later, Gopalakrishnan has still not lost his sense of humour or the tinkle in his laughter. He can laugh like a child, oblivious of the world. In a Chennai hotel months ago, during one of my innumerable sessions with him for this biography, a telephone call from his wife interrupted our conversation. A few minutes later, I saw him burst out laughing, and he continued laughing for what seemed like a long time. He told me later that a prank by his grandson, Tashi—who is living with his police-officer parents in Maharashtra—had virtually tickled him out of shape. The two-year-old boy had jumped off a table and bruised his knee, and when the doctor came to take a look at him, Tashi was all set to re-enact his feat! The lad was already into his first movie takes!
Gopalakrishnan’s cinema is often filled with humour that is neither lurid nor loud. Narayanan in Naalu Pennungal (Four Women) is such a glutton that we cannot help laughing at his undivided attention to his food-filled banana leaf, and the wit is so subtle and British I would think. Above all, it can be an effective way of building a character. At France’s Deauville, where this film was screened in March 2008, I saw an essentially French audience enjoy Narayanan’s tryst with food even as they empathized with Kumari’s and Kamakshi’s plight in the same work.
His work draws universal appreciation. Whether it is his native Kerala, where he was born and where he grew up to make his first movies, or Europe or America, his work is loved. For it talks about you