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If Adoor Gopalakrishnan had his way, India would celebrate the centenary of Indian cinema not this year, exactly 100 years after “Raja Harishchandra,” the first feature film made in India, but in 2055. For Mr. Gopalakrishnan, 72, one of India’s finest film directors, the birth of Indian cinema began in 1955 because it was the year that Satyajit Ray made “Pather Panchali” (“Song of the Little Road”).
“Pather Panchali” revealed a kind of freshness and originality from an Indian filmmaker that hadn’t been seen earlier, in India or abroad. Its camerawork, spontaneous and innocent acting, particularly of Apu and Durga, the siblings at the heart of the story, and lyrical pace made the world take notice of Indian cinema. “Pather Panchali” won a special prize as the best human documentary at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956.
“There were good films made before, but Satyajit Ray was the first one to matter because he was the first master, the most accomplished filmmaker,” said Mr. Gopalakrishan, who knows something about accomplishments – he has over the past four decades made 11 feature films and 22 documentaries, many of which have won awards.
The odd thing about Indian cinema’s centenary this year is that Bollywood, as popular Hindi cinema is known, has appropriated the celebrations, depriving films made in other Indian languages and award-winning films such as those made by Ray and Mr. Gopalakrishnan, much attention. (The first Indian feature, “Raja Harishchandra,” was a silent film, after all). But the centenary has become Bollywood’s party.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan was in London for the London Indian Film Festival, which concluded in late July, where more than half of the films shown were not in Hindi (including Mr Gopalakrishnan’s Malayalam film “Elippathayam” (“Rat Trap”, 1981), but on the night of its finale, much of the audience lined up to be photographed with the festival’s star attraction, Gulshan Grover, who has acted in nearly 400 Bollywood films. The film shown that night was Bollywood’s tribute to itself, “Bombay Talkies,” a collection of four short films by leading contemporary directors, which showcased Bollywood’s hold over Indian audiences. At the end of the four shorts, there is an extended song-and-dance sequence in which Bollywood stars of the past and present lip-sync a song that celebrated Hindi cinema.
To be sure, Bollywood, which is dominated by Hindi movies, is a major part of India’s film industry, but it is only one part. There is a bigger cinematic world outside Mumbai, and some of India’s aesthetically finest films have been made in other languages, including Malayalam, Mr. Gopalakrishnan’s mother tongue. Of the 1,255 films the Central Board of Film Certification registered in 2011, 206 were in Hindi, followed by Telugu at 192 and Tamil at 185. Ninety-five Malayalam films were made that year.
“I don’t like the term Bollywood,” Mr. Gopalakrishnan says. “A hundred years ago we had silent films, not Hindi films. The idea of Bollywood is to own…. the occasion as a selling point. But what you see is the language of a particular type of cinema from Bombay. Nobody would call Bimal Roy or Guru Dutt ‘Bollywood.’ This is a sleazy version – they call it Bollywood, and others, knowing not much more, echo it,” referring to popular Bombay cinema.
Mr. Roy made his films between 1940s and 1960s in Bengali and Hindi, which were acclaimed in India and known among movie buffs abroad; Mr. Dutt directed in the 1950s in Hindi and acted until his death in 1964. While their films targeted mass audiences, they were known for exceptional, restrained acting, lilting music and classic photography, and presented social ills like untouchability and landlessness, as well as personal angst and loneliness, with rare integrity and maturity.
Despite the boom in films from other languages, Hindi films continue to dominate Indian cinema. While Hindi is India’s most widely spoken language, with 41 percent of the population calling it their main language, its influence is concentrated in the heartland of northern and central India.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan started out as a government officer. After graduation from Gandhigram Rural Institute in Tamil Nadu with a degree in public administration, economics and politics, he joined public service, but found the bureaucratic job tedious. “After 18 months, I realized I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said. “My life can’t be spent like this, I thought. I had to escape,” he said in an interview in July in London.
“As a child, theater was my first love,” Mr. Gopalakrishnan said. “As a student I used to like to write plays.” He wanted to study theater at the National School of Drama in New Delhi, but the courses he was interested in were offered in Hindi, and he spoke and wrote in Malayalam. Then he saw an advertisement offering admissions at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune in western India, which was set up in 1960. “At that time, I didn’t even know that such an institution existed,” he said, smiling. The institute offered a course in screenplay writing, which was close to what he wanted to do.
At the institute, Mr. Gopalakrishnan had to rethink the way he approached the dramatic arts. His theatrical worldview was honed by his exposure to Kerala’s traditions, such as the ritual dance dramas of Koodiyattam and Krishnanattam, and Kathakali performers Kalamandalam Gopi and Kalamandalam Ramankutty Nair (he would make documentaries about each later in life). Cinema was different; it had a different language and grammar. “I had to wean myself away,” he recalled.
At FTII, he studied under Ritwik Ghatak, a gifted filmmaker who died early at 51 in 1976, after making eight remarkable films in Bengali. “Ghatak was a great teacher and scholar,” Mr. Gopalakrishnan said. “He had strong likes and dislikes. When he showed us his films, he told us why he did some things this way instead of the other way, and why he broke rules and how he connected with his actors.”
Mr. Ghatak too had come from a theatrical tradition – he had been part of the left-leaning, progressive group, Indian People’s Theatre Association, and he brought a lot of elements from theater to cinema. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, author of a scholarly work on Mr. Ghatak, calls him a unique narrator who brought back the epic form. But critics who preferred Mr. Ray’s humanism found Mr. Ghatak melodramatic.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan said Mr. Ghatak brought “a new look” to Indian cinema, through his unconventional, iconoclastic approach. Among the other directors Mr. Gopalakrishnan admires are Girish Kasaravalli, who makes films in Kannada, and Shyam Benegal, whose films are mainly in Hindi.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan learned from Mr. Ghatak, as well as from others, but did not imitate him. Mr. Gopalakrishnan has his own style, recognizable by the vivid use of colors, extended shots and close-ups, and a calm, unhurried pace, with striking imagery. His films deal with expansive themes – a young couple who defy society and marry across class barriers; a feudal family’s gradual decline; a Marxist activist’s disillusionment with ideology; the strength of women. But these grand themes are the effects, not the intent.
“I want to tell simple stories. I don’t necessarily want anyone to make generalizations,” he said. “India is too vast; you can’t make absolute statements about India. Different social systems are at work at the same time.”
Mr. Gopalakrishnan has chosen to set his films in Kerala, his home state, because it is what he understands best. His first feature, “Swayamvaram” (“One’s Own Choice,” 1972) was about a couple that decided to marry against their parental wishes and faced many setbacks as they tried to set up a home. After the husband’s death, the young widow refuses to return to her parents with her baby, suggesting a level of independence uncharacteristic in many parts of India.
While many men and women break the caste barrier to marry, in many instances they have faced violence. While “Swayamvaram” dealt with parental disapproval, its ending was open, in spite of the tragedy.
“I don’t understand other parts of India, where a panchayat decides if a girl can marry a boy or not,” he said, referring to a village council. “That they have to run away to save their lives is strange. It raises questions about our legal system.”
One of his more interesting films has been “Mukhamukham” (“Face to Face,” 1984), which was about a man’s disillusionment with the left. Independent India looked up to the left. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, admired the Soviet Union and believed in a centrally planned economy. In 1957, Kerala stunned the world when Communists came to power through the ballot. Over the years, the left and the Congress Party have changed hands in ruling the state.
Some critics have tried to see a deeper narrative in “Mukhamukham,” as if it represents Mr. Gopalakrishnan’s own politics and despair. Mr. Gopalakrishnan disagrees, shaking his head: “My film is not an indictment of the left. I probe into the period when the left was absent from the social scene, and ordinary people wondered what had happened to a movement that promised so much but didn’t deliver. Why did it happen? I want to understand, not to be the judge.”
The British critic Derek Malcolm, who has seen Mr. Gopalakrishnan’s films often, calls “Elippathayam” as among his finest. It won the British Film Institute’s award for “the most original and imaginative film” in 1982. While dealing with the large theme of decline of feudalism, at heart it is a simple story, about the underlying stress and unarticulated tension in a joint family as it gradually disintegrates, with sisters going their separate ways (the eldest sister marries, the younger one stays, the youngest runs away).
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