An Unkind Cut
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AMRITH LAL on Shaji Karun’s moan over the Malayali intellect

A director whose film has won the national award for the best film and the best actor should naturally be happy. But Shaji N. Karun isn’t.Vanaprastham, his third feature film, was adjudged the best film by the national jury recently and the hero of the film, Malayalam superstar Mohanlal, who happens to be the producer of the film won the award for the best actor.

Shaji’s complaint is that Kerala, his home state, was lukewarm to the film. He felt there was a ‘‘criminal conspiracy’’ against Vanaprastham. Last week, his ire expanded. He told a news agency that the Malayali’s intellectual honesty is suspect. ‘‘Are Malayali sensibilities only skin deep?’’ he wondered. All this because the Malayali intelligentsia refused to tail his view that the film is a masterpiece. And that the Kerala state film awards jury did not find it the best film of the year though it did give Shaji the best director’s award.

Shaji’s opinion about the intellectual honesty of the Malayali viewer merits a discussion. Is the response to his films a criterion for commenting on the sensibility of a community? Are they honest enough to allow him the moral highground to judge the honesty of his audience?

Vanaprastham is, as all the former cameraman’s films are, visually delightful. The play of light and shadow, arcing shots of greenery, the rich architecture... The many layers of meaning as Shaji puts it—the relation between the artist and his art, the trouble when the artistic persona is confused with the artist’s persona, the father-son-daughter relationship, the suggested element of incest when the father plays Arjuna to the daughter’s Subhadra—are all suggested. Perhaps therein lies the problem. The film is too fraught with suggestion. But it doesn’t progress beyond. Gradually the film sags under them or it proves more than a handful for Shaji.

Added to this, some of the themes the director tries to raise in the film are not novel. One of the fascinating tales in Kathakali lore is the story of how Kuriyetathu Tatri, a Namboodiri woman fell in love with the role of Keechaka essayed by the dancer Kavunkal Shankara Panikker. After watching his performance she sent him a note inviting him to come to her, dressed as Keechaka. Later the Brahmin orthodoxy ensured that Panikker and his lover were ostracised. Few years ago, M.T. Vasudevan Nair wrote Parinayam, an award winning film, based on the Tatri story.

The renowned filmmaker Aravindan went a step further in Marattam, when as in the Mahabharata story of Bheema, Keechaka and Draupadi, the Kathakali Bheema went on to kill Keechaka. Bheema would tell the police that it was Keechaka he had murdered and not the man who played the role! Cinema could never have been more surreal.

Does Mohanlal’s Kunjukkuttan and Suhasini’s Subhadra say anything more than the characters in these two films. Yes, they do.

His Kunjukkuttan does the cliched Benares trip, where on the steps of the ghats (where else), the spiritual discourse is carried out. If someone at this moment doubted that the scene was intended for a non-Indian audience, can his intellectual honesty be doubted? Mind you, Shaji does not fail to mention the applause the film received at Cannes, the full halls it ran to in France. Kerala, and its rich classical traditions maybe lovable exotica for a foreign audience. But they are not for Malayalis.

Kunjukkuttan’s life and art is too complicated to be reduced to some Kathakali sequels, sentimental and spiritual mumbo-jumbo. The Kathakali artist makes good oriental art, but the orient has different ideas about art. Vanaprastham fails to evade the trap.

Vanaprastham is not even a Piravi, Shaji’s debut film which received rave reviews in Kerala and elsewhere. The father-son bonding in Piravi was so well etched out—and the father’s role brilliantly played by the legendary theatre personality and social reformer Premji — that at least some sections of the Malayali intelligentsia were willing to forgive the attempt which tended to depoliticise a painful chapter from Kerala’s contemporary political history.

Despite Premji and the rich hues of monsoon, that Piravi’s director shunned the politics of state repression while narrating the story of a victim of state repression, is inescapable. Intellectual honesty is the ability to tackle truth in all its myriad forms, the ability not to blink at its distasteful forms. Shaji did not qualify the test.

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