Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life In Cinema: A Review

By John Cheeran
There is cinema in India outside of Bollywood and Adoor Gopalakrishnan, a classicist in the mould of Satyajit Ray, has made significant contributions to sustain such alternative ways of light and shade. Adoor, an auteur celebrated internationally, but in India and, especially in his native Kerala, is regarded as an aloof man and, as happens mostly, is branded arrogant.
Film critic Gautaman Bhaskaran’s authorised biography of the director, Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life In Cinema, disappointingly does not offer enough insights and inputs that will help one understand the auteur better.
Adoor who has made films such as Swayamvaram, Kodiyettam, Elipathayam, Mukhamukham and Vidheyan deserves a biography that should read more than the reviews of his eleven features he has made in a long career.
Adoor is not an easy man or a film-maker to understand. As Shyam Benegal reminds us Adoor’s movies are meditations on the human condition. Bhaskaran, who has closely watched Adoor’s career from the vantage point of a journalist, has a written biography largely based on conversations that he had with the filmmaker. It’s challenge for any biographer to make Adoor confess about his life and movies. Bhaskaran, however, is unpretentious and writes lucidly and has succeeded to a great extent to give the reader an overall view about Adoor’s world. Adoor says: “Cinema is actually one’s experience. One’s vision of life. The filmmaker’s. That is his cinema.”
Adoor’s first movie (Swayamvaram) was released in 1972. Except for Nalu Pennungal and Oru Pennum Randaanum, the interval between his movies has been an excruciating four years, most of the times. The interval only reflects the time and thought that Adoor puts into his movies. He is a careful filmmaker. There is not a single frame in his oeuvre that is inessential. And he is a careful and cagey talker too which rules out a brutal self-portrait.
Adoor is not a stranger to controversies and, in Kerala, fellow filmmakers in art film circuit has had many bones to pick with him. It’s quite disappointing that Bhaskaran could not persuade Adoor to explain why he did not work with Kodiyettam Gopi after the successful 1977 effort (Kodiyettam) that gave the actor the national award. The lack of critical observations on the filmmaker from his contemporaries will, of course, invite the charge of the biography being a hagiography. Had Bhaskaran talked to Adoor’s heroes (Mammooty, Madhu, MR Gopakumar) and heroines (Sobhana, Mini Nair) the portrait would have been fuller.
And if you want to understand Adoor as a friend, lover, husband and father, you will have to wait longer.

Title: Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life In Cinema
Author: Gautaman Bhaskaran
Publisher: Penguin Viking

Satyajit Ray vs Raj Kapoor

Bollywood: A History mentions the spat between Satyajit Ray and Raj Kapoor.

Film director Shyam Benegal tells author Mihir Bose

“The Bombay film industry always thought Ray (Satyajit) was not doing right by India. Raj Kapoor and he had a big spat once. Raj Kapoor’s film Jagte Raho, directed by Shambu Mitra, a famous Bengali theatre director who had the same stature as Ray in cinema. Shambu made the film and it won Raj Kapoor an ward in the 1964 Karlovy Vary film festival, the same year that Aparajito won the Golden Lion in Venice. They met up at some meeting where both were being felicitated.

So Ray said it was a great recognition for Bengali cinema.

Raj Kapoor said, “ Why Bengali, are you not an Indian? Why do you say you are a Bengali film maker?

Ray said, “I am a Bengali film maker.

Raj Kapoor said, “ Why can’t you say you are an Indian film maker? For god’s sake.”

Review: Bollywood, A History by Mihir Bose

By John Cheeran
The best thing about Bollywood: A History by Mihir Bose is the cover photograph of a beautiful Rekha. Bose is a prolific, award winning author and journalist but his take on Bollywood comes across a lazy effort with no insights coming through.
Now Bose has written many books, I haven’t any, but that should not stop me from pointing out that his attempt was amateurish and his book has come about only by extensive research, in other words, lifting copiously from others who had done original work.
It is amazing that Bose wrote Bollywood with just one interview, (or it a series of interviews) he had with director Shyam Benegal. Throughout the book, Bose takes refuge in Benegal to hold his book together. Then he quotes all and sundry including Shobha De (Selective Memories), Bunny Reuben, Raju Bharatan et al.
Given this is a work of history and the fact that Bose has mostly relied on others’ work to write it, it is a pity that writer has not bothered to provide footnotes. So Bose has camouflaged his lack of effort. He did not speak to Raj Singh Dungarpur, but he quotes extensively him regarding Lata Mangeshkar’s role in Bollywood during the chapter “The Explosion of the Bombay Film Song.”
May be that’s the way seasoned journalists work.
And then there is the atrocious editing that irritates one to the core. If not for paying Rs 495, I would not have read this at all.
I have with me Bose’s History of Indian Cricket, and again, by claiming to be comprehensive, Bose has fed others works and produced a book that won an award.
And going by the number of books he has written on a number of varied subjects, one wonders whether all of them suffer from the similar shoddy practice?

Bharath Gopi, 71, Passes Away

By John Cheeran
Celebrated Indian actor Bharath Gopi passed away today, Tuesday, in Thiruvananthapuram. He was 71.
He was ailing and had undergone an angioplasty at the KIMS Hospital.
Gopi won the Bharath award, the highest honour for an Indian movie actor, for his role as Sankaran Kutty in Kodiyettam in 1975.
His other remarkable roles were in Yavanika, Swayamvaram, Kallan Pavithran, Palangal, Ormakayi, Marmaram, Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback, Patheyam, Kattethe Kilikoodu, Aadaminte Variyellu, Panchavadi Palam, Sandhya Mayangum Neram, Appunni and Rachana.
Gopi directed four films -- Njattadi, Yamanam, Utsavapittennu and Ente Hridyathinte Udama.
Gopi was born in 1937 in Chirayankizhu. He was awarded Padma Shri in 1991. Gopi was noted for his involvement in theatre group “Arangu” along with Kavalam Narayanapaniker before he entered the world of films.
Twenty years ago (in 1986) Gopi had suffered hemorrhage and that had curtailed his movements and involvement in films.
Still he had won his many skirmishes to come back to act and react.

Sivaji the boss: Nayanthara emerges as pan Indian eyecandy

By John Cheeran
Everyone is talking about Rajnikanth in the wake of Sivaji: the Boss.
I’m not qualified to discuss Rajni. Tamizhan loves his Black heroes – Kamalahasan and Karthick are exceptions – but he prefers to cavort with fair skinned girls in his fantasies.
Tamizhan’s colour complex never goes off. Even in Sivaji: the Boss, Rajni asks his mother why did she give birth to him as black. (En amma enne karuppa pette?)
For me what’s important is Rajni’s choice of women. Shreya Reddy has given a romp.
But the piece de resistance of the movie is the item number by Nayanthara, the one-time Malayalam actress. Nayanthara had a similar role in Rajni’s last movie Chandramukhi too.
For Malayalis it is a defining moment when one of their sisters wins accolades as a skin-show stealer.
Nayanthara has come a long way since her debut in Sathyan Anthikadu's Manasinakkare. And you will not recognise the Nayanthara in Raapakal, after watching her Sivaji role.
Gone are the days of coy roles. Look at Aishawrya Rai’s role in Dhoom. Look at Kangana Raut or Bipasha Basu. To be accepted as a fantasy woman is the highest honour an Indian girl can aspire for. With Sivaji getting screen space all over India, and globally wherever the diaspora is, Nayanthara is winning her place as the male eyecandy.
For a girl from Thiruvalla nothing seems impossible. What I admire in Nayanthara (christened as Diana) is her total lack of hypocrisy.
Shedding clothes is no moral choice. It is a question of attitude. Nayanthara has loads of it.
Much as Tinu Yohannan and S Sreesanth claimed their fair share of national consciousness by playing for Indian cricket team, Nayanthara is stoking the fires of passion on a pan-Indian scale.
Let’s us toast the Made-In-Thiruvalla Vamp. Let’s have an eyeful of Nayanthara.