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The world of Adoor

Renowned filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, recipient of the Dada Saheb Phalke award for 2004, speaks to ANJANA RAJAN about his work and views

MASTER STROKE Adoor says it's the director's responsibility to give the audience a different experience every time. PHOTO: R.V. MOORTHY.

Elements in the life of Adoor Gopalakrishnan, who won the recently announced Dada Saheb Phalke award for 2004 for his contribution to Indian cinema, remind one curiously of the story of Phalke himself. Phalke, trained in architecture and block making, portrait photography and stage make-up among other things, discovered the magic of cinema in Germany in middle age. He went on to become the father of Indian cinema, acknowledged as the largest commercial film industry in the world. Adoor Gopalakrishnan was an employee of the National Sample Survey besides being a playwright and director, before he too succumbed to the draw of cinema and eventually became known as the man who changed the way his compatriots, at least in the Kerala commercial film industry, looked at the art of filmmaking. In his case though, it was more "naivety" than purpose that transported him to the world of the screen.

Rare scholarship

"After my graduation from Madurai Gandhi Gram, I was employed as an investigator in the National Sample Survey," Adoor reminisces. "By that time I had established myself as a playwright and as an actor. I wanted to establish myself in play production. Of course I wanted to quit my job, though it was well paid," he adds with that characteristic warm chuckle that belies the seriousness of his films. "I very foolishly thought screenplay writing would be similar to play writing. And I went to Pune for the test (at the Indian Institute of Film and Television). I still remember Khwaja Ahmad Abbas was on the interview board. He asked me about his friends, like Thagazhi (Siva Sankara Pillai) and others. I was given the only scholarship available, so I was confident!"

Earlier, in Adoor, Kerala, a hometown that has become famous for being prefixed to his illustrious name, he had not seen many films.

"It was in Pune I picked up all my Hindi films. I also saw world cinema. In those days I used to marvel at the spectacle, the magic - the concept of cinema. As a schoolboy I had been fascinated by all this but never thought I would be making films. But at the Film Institute I discovered cinema from the very first flicks to the most complex and demanding works."

Despite his fascination for the marvels possible on screen, the films of Adoor - in the Capital for Open Frame, the festival of documentaries of the Public Service Broadcasting Trust of which he is the Chairman - are known for being deceptively simple.

Their protagonists are not heroes endowed with super powers, nor are their villains sharp fanged monsters. Young men and women trying to fulfil their dreams; an old hangman coping with guilt; a system of governance ostensibly for the good of the people but one that actually brooks no resistance; traditional families breaking up under the strain of changing times.

They could perhaps be described as ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances. So what is it that turns an interesting idea into a good film?

Creative process

"It's a whole long process of creativity. There is an idea you want to convey to the audience. First of all you have to have an interesting treatment. That's why you have a story, which evolves, with characters, incidents, and conflicts. It's taken to a climax and then resolved. This is something common to all theatrical forms. It's the device to keep audiences in the cinema halls," he says, teacher-like. Then comes the concept that makes his films unique.

"But that is only one function of cinema. Another function of cinema is to experience life. There are some things you see but don't always realise. So cinema becomes a very deeply experienced thing you keep for the rest of your life."

As with a poem, Adoor expects a good film to grow with the perceiver. "It should have many layers, stand many interpretations. As you recollect it, more allusions should become clear. For that you need to have good craft, to convey the idea effectively."

Even that's not enough. It is the director's responsibility to give the audience a new experience each time, says the man known for experimenting with narrative technique.

His own pace

Despite being a much feted and awarded director, Adoor has not increased the pace at which his films come out. "In the very beginning of my career I used to worry about money. And later maybe because of that I got used to a very slow rhythm." Habit apart, though, he has preoccupations other than filmmaking. Author of three books on cinema, he also enjoys reading - "everything" in Malayalam and selectively in English. Besides, he adds, "I am a social being." For the time being we can expect a documentary in a couple of months on Mohiniattam he is making with French dancer Brigitte Chataigner, but he says he will work on a feature film only later. Some young producers wish to make his films, but, he says, "I ask them whether they can afford to lose their money. So they quietly disappear." Extraordinary man, ordinary circumstances?

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