Director: Adoor Gopalakrishnan; Writer: Adoor Gopalakrishnan; Producer: K. Ravindranathan Nair; Cinematographer: Ravi Varma; Editor: M.S. Mani; Cast: Ashokan, Mammootty, Shobhana, Balan K. Nair, Bahadur, Vempayan, Sooraj, Sudheesh, Kaviyoor Ponnamma, Chandran Nair, Krishnan Kutty Nair, Adoor Pankajam, Kukku Parameshwaram
Duration: 01:59:59; Aspect Ratio: 1.408:1; Hue: 26.851; Saturation: 0.162; Lightness: 0.287; Volume: 0.205; Cuts per Minute: 10.467; Words per Minute: 23.093
Summary: Gopalakrishnan’s experiment with subjective
storytelling. The film centres on a young man
Ajayan (Ashokan) who narrates two stories
about himself in the first person. He was
abandoned by his mother, raised by a doctor,
and proved himself a consistent misfit. Much of
his fantasy, into which the ‘reality’ of his
second story merges, revolves around the
figure of his foster-brother’s (Mammootty) wife
(Shobhana). The film marks a major shift from
the director’s previous Mukha Mukham
(1984) which, despite its critical depiction of
politics, retained Gopalakrishnan’s
commitment to developing a tradition of Kerala
melodrama. Anantaram is much more cynical,
descending into a subjectivity bordering on the
paranoid. Gopalakrishnan says that the film
attempts to ‘relate an experience’, nothing
more, of a ‘state of intense despair and angst’.
Indiancine.ma requires JavaScript.
