Adoor Gopalakrishnan is an exceptional film-maker. Not only is his oeuvre holds the colours of the rainbow, but more importantly when the social world tries to teach us to run and ruin – ourselves and the life round us, he is a graceful exception to this ‘accepted’ norm. Hence, a book on Adoor – his films and the creative mind behind this palette was due for many years. Starting a career in 1972 (feature film consideration) in the last 40 years Adoor made 11 feature films. There are probably few books and many essays on him in Malyali language – the official language of Kerala, where Adoor lives and centres his cinema. There is however an extreme dearth of material on Adoor in English – which also goes on to show the state of regional cinema and its acceptance and expanse. Gautam Bhaskaran’s Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life in Cinema which came out this year and a soon-to-be-published one by Suranjan Ganguly are the only two I know of. Whereas, no comment can be made of Suranjan’s book since its yet to be published, its more or less safe to comment on Bhaskaran’s one (though I never read it) that it was more towards the man and how he relates to cinema (Since it claims to be an ‘official’ biography of the man!).
South Asian Cinema Foundation’s A Door to Adoor (2006) creates interest since it is a monograph on Adoor’s creativity which attempts to quench the thirst of any serious movie-goer. The book however takes into account the 9 films made till its publication i.e. from Swayamvaram(1972) to Nizhalkkuthu(2002). The sleek, production-perfect book is stylish and starts of with a very engaging piece of Suranjan Ganguly’s – bringing in the concept of the Outsider in Adoor’s films (though there are heaps of acknowledged praises from Syam Benegal, Mrinal Sen and Girish Kasaravalli in the Foreword and the special mentions which precede this piece). Suranjan deftly flows his concept of the outsider in the social-scape (as in Swayamvaram) to a more mental one (in Nizhalkkuthu) drawing his logic from the base roots of Adoor’s works. It can be expected that his complete book on the maestro will probably expand the seed that he sowed here and thereby raises expectations. Two other writings deserve special mention – the one by Adoor himself titled Image, Imagination and Creativity. This is rather intricate as Adoor structures his creative process onto the pillars of experience in life, imaging the experiences, associating memory factor in the recalled images to form imageries and then layering them brick by brick based on the artist’s interpretation of life and his aesthetic sensibilities. This in conjunction with a superb interview of his by C S Venkiteswaram tries to throw some light on the creative mind that works and churns out films that are so varied. That creative process is inimitable. What can be imitated probably is the operational process of film making. However, it’s always interesting to try to fathom the mental map of geniuses – their methods and the sparks that they turn into flames. The interviewer interestingly ‘discussed’ things, giving appropriate cues for the shy individual to speak on his unspoken self, rather than getting engaged in tight-lipped ‘questioning’. Probably a more focus on Chitralekha –the film society and the cooperative movement would have deserved. I have read an otherwise haphazard long interview of Adoor taken by Bangladesh’s Mohammed Khusroo in the latter’s Dhrupad magazine in the 80s where Adoor spoke in detail of his Chitralekha days. Since Chitralekha was such an important phase in Adoor’s life, the history of parallel cinema movement in Kerala and extending that to the same of India in general, we as readers could only hope if there were article(s) on that – a cooperative philosophy which is extremely valid even in today’s world of multiplexes and micro-target audience.
However, the memoir by Shampa Banerjee which is a personal note seemed out-of-place in an otherwise non-personal collection. Noted critic Maithili Rao’s and P. K. Nair’s pieces lacked the depth found in Suranjan Ganguly’s critique. Both the pieces were less structured and at times incomplete in the reasoning paradigm that they set out to explore. It could have been a worthy try if there were separate articles on each of Adoor’s films instead of multiple critics trying to shed their light on few films of him.
Satyajit Ray had always showered his liking for Adoor and Adoor himself reciprocated time and again for his fondness of Ray and his works. Critics alike have henceforth accepted it as granted and stopped at looking deeper into the two geniuses. Like Girish Kasaravalli mentioned in his opening notes –“Though he greatly admires Satyajit Ray, the path he treads is quite different from what Indian cinema has witnessed so far”. This is indeed ironical, coming from a contemporary Indian film-maker. Adoor could have been measured against none other than his compatriot G Aravindan, or Buddhadeb Dasgupta or even Ritwik Ghatak. He had similarities germinating from a collective Indian fabric but distinctly holding on to traditional indigenous values of his people and soil. This also sheds light on the nature of such ‘collections’ – that they are almost always only respectful and rarely analytical leave alone challenging.
Be it sound design where he repeatedly proclaims that ‘no-sound’ is itself a component of sound design or with his stupendous economy of shots (something which he undoubtedly inherited from the towering Ray), Adoor is a great proponent and example of minimalism in art. In the final count, A door to Adoor succeeded to hold on to that spirit of the master film-maker. Like any ideal critique, the collection will aspire the reader to reach out to viewing his films again (even if they are difficult to get hold of, at-least quite a few of them), to debate and discuss and to get mesmerized by his art of narration that focuses on the minutest details of human life with a disdain towards anything that betrays life. Like any humanist, artist or otherwise, Adoor is successful to preserve that rare quality of profound love for life and for his fellow human beings. Lalit Mohan Joshi deserves big thanks to bring out this collection which conserves that essence and makes the reading a thoroughly enjoyable experience
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