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Photo: V.V.Krishnan

The veteran Adoor Gopalakrishnan.

For his movies made only in his mother tongue Malayalam, he won the highest cinematic honour, the Dada Saheb Phalke Award, in 2004. His most recent movie Naalu Pennungal (Four Women) is part of the Indian Panorama. Adapted from the short stories of Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, it tells of a prostitute, a virgin, a housewife and a spinster.

While he does not particularly enjoy adapting literature to cinema, this is his third moviebased on a text. He was originally approached by Doordarshan to make a movie on Thakazhi’s work. Out of his 400 short stories, he chose nine. Six of these were on women and that is how Naalu Pennungal was born. He says he is partial to short stories as, “there is no beating around the bush”. His film Vidheyan (Servile), based on Paul Zacharia’s novel is being shown in the Master Class series. This movie scathingly deals with the violence of a feudal tradition. He says of Zacharia’s work, “I was attracted to the wild, untamed energy. But I did mellow down the cruelties.” In typical Adoor-style, violence becomes more frightening in its understatement, rather that in its depiction.

Two of his lead actors, Manju Pillai and Geetu Mohan Das from Naalu Pennungal were also present for the screening of the movies.

This ace director and producer seems to believe in minimalism in his instructions, craft and output. In a career spanning nearly 30 years, he has made only around 10 movies. The reason for this sparseness? “It is so difficult to make the movies you want in a country like this.” With the end of the Indian Panorama section on DD, he feels, “In effect, they said don’t make meaningful cinema, any longer.” While, initially, the nation was watching these films, he feels that now government support has been withdrawn. “Culture now gets a lower place than sport,” he laments.

Gopalakrishnan himself was born into a family of culture. His family was a patron of Kathakali. But his days at FTII in Pune in 1962, itself, taught him, “Cinema had very little to do with theatre. Except that they both have conflict at the centre.” He still fondly remembers his days at FTII, where the greats like Ritwik Ghatak, “showed us how to see and interpret India.” He adds, “What you are saying will decide how you say it.”

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