Interview: Adoor Gopalakrishnan

VIDHEYAN

Your next film, VIDHEYAN, was also based on a literary work, this time by Paul Zachariah. What prompted you to choose it?
One advantage in working with others' stories is that we get an opportunity to respond to approaches and worldviews that are entirely different from ours.

I had read this story when it appeared in a magazine nearly a decade ago. There was something very attractive about it, but it was also very raw and violent. I talked to K G George about it as he was on the look out for a good story and he had already done films like IRAKAL. Though George took interest initially, things didn't work out. About a couple of years later when I found that George's interest had waned, I went back to it again and found it still interesting in many respects, the violence had to be tamed and brought under reasonable control, this was the first task.

Then I wrote the script connecting loose ends and finding reason and justification for actions, tracing characters to their origins etc. What emerged was my own text of the author's writing. It had toed the same line as the author's in most part but had per se deviated from it too as my perceptions of it were not the same as the original. I believe the author also liked my version initially but then he changed his stand for reasons known only to him...

It is interesting to observe how the power of domination is resisted and detested in silence without any of it being articulated. Then it is slowly accepted and one learns to live with it. Before long it is absorbed as a fact of life. It becomes pathetic when one finds it difficult to carryon without it.

How did you historicize it?
I was basically dealing with the phenomenon of power, its psychology and structure, in this film. To make it valid and authentic, I had to examine it in a historical context. Thus the treatment started growing beyond the mere story line. I brought in historical references. The system of 'Patelars' had existed from the British period. They were like local chieftains who were responsible to collect taxes. But along with it came other auxiliary powers -judicial and social, which they abrogated. That is how Patelars became authorities. Interestingly, this system continued even after Independence, until up to the sixties when regular revenue officials took over. All the same, by sheer force of convention the head of a Patelar family enjoyed respect and evoked fear in their village fiefdoms. Not all, but some abused these powers to a great extent.

How is the dynamics of power dealt with in the film?
The exercise of power anticipates two sides, that of the one who wields it and the one who is subjected to it. Here Patelar assumes that he has the power. The taker on whom it is exercised is the settler Thommi who thinks he has something to lose in resisting the violence. Coming to think of it, he, in fact has nothing to lose. One thinks he has some powers to exercise, the other submits in fear of losing. The film begins with the encounter of these two forces. A degenerate Patelar seated in front of a toddy shop and a submissive Thommi who stumbles into his net. This is how the power play begins.

To exercise absolute power one also needs the subservient. In the film, Thommi never says 'no' to the abuse of power that is unleashed on him. He simply submits and accepts it as something natural. He fears it, and accommodates it alternately. As a settler he has no roots or rights there. He is totally alienated whether it is the unfamiliar language spoken or in the lack of a sense of belonging there. The soil under his feet is not his, he is an outsider there, he is at the mercy of the one who wields and exercises power.

Sexual abuse and domination is another mechanism of power operation. That forms a sub theme to the film.
It is interesting to observe how the power of domination is resisted and detested in silence without any of it being articulated. Then it is slowly accepted and one learns to live with it. Before long it is absorbed as a fact of life. It becomes pathetic when one finds it difficult to carryon without it. In the film, Thommi goes through all these. He could have pushed Patelar into that well and walked off free of the burden. But he can't bring himself to do it. He is worried how he would live without Patelar. He asks, "Who would be there for me then?"

Another revealing situation is when he tries to console his wife who starts sobbing inconsolably at the prospect of his leaving her to accompany Patelar in his run from the law. Thommi tries to cheer her up, "Don't cry. I am there for the Patelar". She is actually crying for him but he doesn't want to admit it before his master, an instance of total negation of oneself.

To pick on the theme of the incomplete family in your films, in VIDHEYAN also both the families are incomplete in many ways.
Actually Patelar had loved his wife but probably he himself did not know it, and it is after he kills her that he begins to doubt himself. He had no doubts till then. He firmly believed that he had a natural right over others' lives, including his wife's. And with her murder, there is a change in him, for she was someone who really loved him and wished him good. That loss makes him a criminal and he feels guilty and finally succumbs to it. In the case of Omana, though she loves Thommi, circumstances force her to submit to Patelar sexually.

Actually she is an offering from Thommi, after he has offered himself to Patelar totally.
Yes, his is a total surrender and a negation of his very self. So both the marital relationships are complex.

While Thommi denies himself totally and is 'selfless', for Patelar there is nothing else in the world but himself. So in a way, they are two poles. In the end there is a move towards self-awareness. Patelar finds that he is also an ordinary mortal.
There is a change in him owing to his guilt and sense of defeat. Divested of all the powers that he thought he had, he is in the end dispossessed. From the moment they enter the forest, they turn into two ordinary human beings. All social connections and disparities severed, we find them eating from the same food packet.

It is this betrayal of social conventions that Patelar meets with at his nephew's house, where the latter refuses to give him refuge. Thommi is contemptuous of the nephew who does not even allow Patelar inside the house. It is only then that Patelar realises the deep trouble he is in, and the fact that he is a fugitive from the law. All relationships are broken there.

The depiction of violence in the film is very interesting. Usually violence in films is depicted in such a way that the, viewer also becomes part of the act. In the film, the focus is more upon evoking disgust about violence. There is an effort to look at violence from the point of the view of the prey.
Yes. There is this meaninglessness about it. The oppressor has no idea or he does not care about the feeling of pain. He doesn't know what it is to be on the other side, and the film is about that. It is trying to examine what would happen when the roles are reversed. Here it should be noted that Thommi is not a participant, he is only a witness to all the cruel deeds of the Patelar.

He doesn't appear to be an agent at any point of time. He only follows.
There is also this element of goodness in him. That is why he is not able to bring himself to kill Patelar even when he gets the opportunity. He considers him as his benefactor and is grateful to him.

In many ways Sankarankutty (KODIYETTAM) is similar to Thommi. Both of them are manipulated and used by others. Maybe it is the social situation of Sankarankutty that could be characterised as pre-modern or idyllic that makes his innocence charming. In the case of Thommi, he is a dependent in many ways.
Sankarankutty is different, he is much more free. He doesn't let people use him. For the politician who recruits him for the procession, he may just be another number in a crowd. All the same, Sankarankutty owes no allegiance to him. KODIYETTAM is about Sankarankutty gaining individuality, whereas Thommi is alienated, helpless and totally dependent.

Thommi would find another Patelar, even after he loses this one?
The possibility can't be ruled out. Yes, even the freedom he gains at the end maybe for the time being. For someone who knows Thommi, his final run may not be one of liberation. He is not running out of joy. There is also an element of sadness in it. His cry also resembles a wail. There is a relief of the burden and also sadness in him. He also realises in an elemental way about the misuse of power!, which is evident in the act of throwing away the gun into the river. We can call Sankarankutty child-like or innocent. But Thommi is not like that. He is terribly attached to his possessions, whether it is his wife or the land. Maybe it is this attachment that leads him to slavery.

Finally, when he is running away after the end of the Patelar chapter in his life, is there a sort of self-understanding in him?
Maybe, that was just a bad patch, a cloud from under which he comes out. Maybe that marks the end of his miseries. But he may also end up with another master. What we see is that power and its exercise is contextual, it waxes and wanes, appears and disappears according to contexts.

Or, it is not vested in the individuals.
Exactly. Patelar is powerful only with his cronies around him. When he is alone he is much more contemplative and talks about his plans and confesses. In the company of his cronies we see him engage in more and more vicious exercise of power. And, in that foiled plot to kill Patelar, it is these cronies who flee first upon hearing the gunshots.

Rural violence was a common theme of many 'new wave' films. But all those films had to end up with a sign of resistance. VIDHEYAN on the other hand, doesn't bother to do so, and is instead an analysis of violence or power itself. It doesn't take the easy way out by culminating in a clenched fist.
It is not just the portrayal of a particular incident. It tries to get into the core of that experience.

It is not a coincidence that VIDHEYAN was much appreciated in two countries-Japan and Germany. And I think it owes to the historical experiences of those nations. One critic even wrote that the character of Patelar resembled Hitler.

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