Director: Adoor Gopalakrishnan; Writer: Adoor Gopalakrishnan; Producer: Adoor Gopalakrishnan; Cinematographer: Ravi Varma; Editor: M. Mani; Cast: Vishwanathan, Mini, Aranmula Ponnamma, Urmila Unni, Jagannatha Varma, Narendra Prasad, Babu Namboodiri, Lalitha, Ravi Vallathol, P.C. Soman, Mukesh (Malayali actor)
Duration: 01:42:25; Aspect Ratio: 1.375:1; Hue: 39.452; Saturation: 0.173; Lightness: 0.207; Volume: 0.141; Cuts per Minute: 5.575
Summary: A dramatisation of Kerala’s history since the
onset of the Independence struggle, this film
narrates the life of Kunjunni (Vishwanathan),
perennially pining for his absent father but
warmly looked after by the women in his
family, and especially close to a servant’s
daughter, Meenakshi (Minni). Uncle Vasu
(Prasad) is the activist in the family, first as a
Gandhian independence fighter, then as
member of the Kerala Communist Party. At
university, Kunjunni also turns towards the CP
and witnesses the first-ever democratic election
of a Communist government in 1959. However,
the government’s land reform measures
drastically impoverish his family. Turning to a
Maoist group and taking part in their naxalite
insurgent activities including terrorist attacks,
Kunjunni is eventually arrested and tortured by
the police until a court confirms his innocence
and orders his release. The disillusioned
Kunjunni then establishes a life of quiet
domesticity with Meenakshi until the wayward
uncle re-emerges, now dressed in saffron robes
and claiming to have espoused a life of
spiritual values, all of which does not prevent
him from making serious financial claims on
Kunjunni. The solution arrives when a rich
parvenu buys Kunjunni’s house. The film
depicts with finely judged, dramatic and
occasionally ironic tones the twists and turns in
Kerala’s recent history and its elaboration of a
democratic social system.
Kazhakam
1995 95’ col Malayalam
d/co-s M.P. Sukumaran Nair pc Rachana Films
p T.N. Sukumaran co-s M. Sukumaran
c Ashwini Kaul m Jerry Amaldev, Kaithapram
lp Urvashi, Nedumudi Venu, P.C. Soman,
Valsala Menon, Ravi Vallathol, Kukku
Parameshwaran, Mullanezhi, Mukundan,
Master Mohan
Nair, having worked with Gopalakrishnan,
returns to the mother-son relationship
adumbrated in his first feature Aparahnam
(1990), with this bitterly ironic tale of a
woman’s religious mania, a variation on the
theme of Radha and Krishna. The poor villager
Radha (Urvashi) becomes unbalanced with
grief when her husband and son die. Going to
live with her mother (Menon), the two women
derive some income from pilgrims visiting the
local temple, an institution representing a
complex knot of contradictory currents:
indolence and moral corruption in the shape of
its guardians (Venu, Mullanezhi) as well as
traditional ideologies while remaining an
important conduit for contact with outsiders.
When the teacher Nandini (Parameshwaran)
arrives to visit the temple with her young son
Kannan (Mohan), the distraught Radha latches
on to the son imagining him to be Krishna.
When Kannan falls ill and dies, Radha’s
delusional mania, the only source available to
her in an impossibly constricted and oppressed
situation, overwhelms her.
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