Adoor Unparalleled

The renowned filmmaker talks to Mukundanunni about his work culture.
(Published in The New Indian Express, Review, Saturday, February 23, 2002).

You are honoured for launching a parallel cinema movement in the early phase of the history of cinema in Kerala, What do you think about it now?

I have never tried to launch a ‘parallel cinema movement'. Nothing can be a parallel of something. It was also not an attempt for a different cinema because today's different cinema is tomorrow's ordinary cinema.

A kind of sameness can be perceived in all your films, no matter how different its themes are. Can we expect a new ‘self' in your next film ‘Nizhal koothu'?

My films are part and parcel of my individuality. Moreover, we can never abandon ourselves howsoever hard we try to do so. Slight attitudinal changes may come, not more than that. Like any other art, filmmaking also requires a spiritual involvement and moments of merging oneself with the work. Because of this, our signature is bound to repeat in whatever we do. We can expect only ‘variations on the same theme', as is said about music.

You seem to use music meaningfully in your film.

I use music as a part of the sound track, that is, like incidental sounds. But the music need not have any connection with the visuals. Music can recall some of our thoughts left unnoticed in our subconscious mind. For a filmmaker this seems to be the best utility of music. Contrarily, music is usually used for injecting emotion into situations of happiness and sorrow. But that is a very elementary level usability. Beyond that level music can be used as sort of a leitmotif.

What is your comment on the quality of films that have been celebrated as the best in Malayalam?

We give concessions to our cinemas and sympathie with lame excuses like ‘low budget', ‘hastily made', etc. This is not fair. What is brought before the viewer – the end product – is the cinema and not the stories about how it has been made or who made it. A viewer need not bother about it. Nowadays a slightly different film is judged as a great film.

Which are your recent documentary films?

One is a 42-minute long film on the life of Gopi, a great Kathakali artiste. The other one was a three-hour long documentary on Koodiyattam. I was commissioned to do this by UNESCO as part of their project to preserve age-old art forms of oral culture. It was the first time in history an entire Koodiyattam is being filmed. I shot eight hours continuously and later reduced it to three hours.

Milan Kundera had once said that his novels were attempts to rescue ‘writing' from the allencompassing embrace of visual media. Do you have any such ideals or claims on your art?

While Milan Kundera describes a person, at a certain moment he shift focus from the person to the hat he is wearing, and for a few pages the person is forgotten and the hat is immortalized. When a new art form comes, other art forms will have to redefine themselves. When cinema came, for instance, imitating the form of film script, anti-novels came into vogue, though faded away soon.

What is the status of cinema today?

The status of cinema has improved a lot. Earlier cinema was in the hands of untrained people. My own earlier experience indicates the low status enjoyed by cinema. That was before my first film. I needed fresh faces for Swayamvaram.

I sent letters inviting young talents to college principals to put on the college notice board but no one responded. At that time people considered cinema below their dignity. But today, there are so many youngsters, both male and female, who have set their goals either to get into cinema or to get into television serials. This is a token of improvement in the status of cinema. Swayamvaram was the first of its kind, because only by then persons who studied this medium, not only film directors but also other technical experts, entered into this field. This collective effort gave cinema a new character, a new life with a new soul.