Director: Adoor Gopalakrishnan; Writer: Adoor Gopalakrishnan; Producer: Ravi; Cinematographer: Ravi Varma; Cast: Mammootty, M.R. Gopakumar, Tanvi Azmi, Savita Anand, Babu Namboodiri, Ravi Vallathol, P.C. Soman, Aliyar, M.K. Gopalakrishnan, Krishnankutty Nair
Duration: 01:52:21; Aspect Ratio: 1.361:1; Hue: 26.822; Saturation: 0.075; Lightness: 0.144; Volume: 0.093; Cuts per Minute: 3.863
Summary: Gopalakrishnan’s exploration of the ‘Hegelian’
master-slave dialectic in a South Karnataka
setting. Bhaskar Pattelar (Mammootty) is the
aggressive, tyrannical, hard-drinking village
landlord whose will is law, while Thomma
(Gopakumar), a Christian migrant labourer
from Kerala, is his timid and fearful but always
loyal slave. Thomma resents the master’s
control, but is always there when required,
whether it is to help murder Bhaskar Pattelar’s
kindly wife, Saroja, or to make his own wife,
Omana, sexually available to the master or to
dynamite the sacred fish in the temple pond,
the temple being the only effective site of
resistance to the landlord’s tyranny. Thomma is
unwilling to join the other villagers’ plot to kill
the tyrant, but exults in freedom when Pattelar
is finally shot dead. The author of the original
story objected to the film’s interpretation of his
work, renewing an old controversy about filmic
adaptations of literary works.
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