Interview: Adoor Gopalakrishnan

MUKHAMUKHAM

This stomachache continues in MUKHAMUKHAM also.
There the context is different and it owes to his way of life. In fact, Sreedharan's stomachache helps shine a torch into his past- a past about which his acquaintances as well as the audience have little knowledge. As a matter of fact, many party workers of that period had stomach problems, for they had a tough life underground-with all those wanderings, and irregular food habits. And many of them resorted to alcohol for alleviation-as a painkiller-it was the only way out for them particularly when they could not 'surface' and get proper medical care.

But it should be noted that the Sreedharan who comes back is only a possible extension of what we have known about him in the first half.

MUKHAMUKHAM is a very poignant film about the degeneration of the left. Why do you think the critics and the audience in Kerala did not take kindly to it?
Even before it was released there were rumours that it was an anti-communist film. When it was released, it was criticized as anti-communist. I think it has something to do with film literacy. We are not able to react to a film naturally. Instead we are aghast that a communist drinks alcohol and we pick on that. That is not the way to approach a work of art.

I think Thoppil Bhasi was the only person who saw it in proper perspective. I was flattered. He said in a public meeting in which the top ranking communist leaders participated that it was a film that prompted the communist to be self-critical. I told in my reply that neither a communist party cardholder, nor an enemy of the communists could make a film like that.

Everything, including ideology, has an organic beginning, growth and decay. If one believes otherwise, that is a problem. The film in fact refers to it. There is a quote from Lenin, saying that in the course of progress of the movement, some stagger and stop and are unable to continue the struggle, but the real challenge is to confront changing situations, renew the approach and march ahead.

In the film, everything revolutionary, and vibrant is in the past. In the present, the communist leader is in a stupor. Everyone is eagerly looking up to him for guidance, inspiration...But he is passive and never reacts, which frustrates everyone. So the past becomes a virtual burden now.
Why should I make a film to run down or to praise something or someone? I make a film because I feel about it. Maybe they didn't understand the language of the film or its complexity. It is as complex as ANANTARAM. Here it is as if we are wishing someone back to life. Derek Malcolm made an interesting comment about the film. He said that the film was about the failure of the leadership to live upto the expectations of the people. There are a number of scenes in which different people look up to him with great expectations-his son, wife, Sudhakaran, comrades, villagers... The great expectations and its failure constitutes its basic conflict.

A deep rupture is central to the film. A rupture between ideals and real politick, hopes and reality, past and present, what ought to be and what is, and so on. Actually the character himself is presented as emerging out of public memory, newspaper reports, photographs etc. so, he re-presents an utopia the people imagine or yearn for.
Communism is one such grand utopia, isn't it? We are almost convinced that it can't be realized in actuality. The fall of Soviet Union and the reforms in China confirm that. Everything, including ideology, has an organic beginning, growth and decay. If one believes otherwise, that is a problem. The film in fact refers to it. There is a quote from Lenin, saying that in the course of progress of the movement, some stagger and stop and are unable to continue the struggle, but the real challenge is to confront changing situations, renew the approach and march ahead.

Evidently in this journey, there are many who drop out tired. They have made their contributions, but can't continue. In the film, Sreedharan has already delivered his message. In fact, the real culprits are the people. He is not the culprit, we are. We want the revolution to be conducted by somebody else. Hence this hope, 'If only he were here...' We expect somebody else to do our job. He in fact was only a messenger who brought a message and had delivered it. In the second half, significantly, he doesn't say anything, neither denies nor affirms. In fact there is a faint and uncertain appreciation on his face only when the young man (Sudhakaran) revolts.

So his is a silence that can be interpreted in various ways, differently by different people according to their perceptions. And it is his very presence that confuses the people. He is always sleeping, he is silent and he drinks. They can't take this. Now he has to listen to his own words from the mouth of his disciple, sitting in the new Party office that is built and dedicated to his revolutionary memory... The party, not the movement, has always been comfortable with the martyrs, a living and unaligned hero of the past can be a cause of bother and embarrassment.

It is true. For martyrs never come back to correct you.
Not just the party, even the public is like that. We never say ill of the dead. Instead we use superlatives about them.

His relationship with women is also a bit muted and repressed- his overtures to his future wife and his hesitant, shy liking for the party comrade etc.
It was actually part of their Party discipline. While living underground, they take shelter in houses of sympathisers, but they have to behave as exemplary gentlemen. The conduct should be such as to win the admiration of the people. So he has to mercilessly suppress his desires and passions, in other words he has to wear a mask... There is always this secrecy about them. We never know their real names. And they should leave no traces. So, we find Sreedharan burning his letters. It may be Party letters in the first half. But in the second half, his wife suspects that it is from some other woman. But it may also indicate the end of a relationship. That letter can be from a woman or from an organization. So the letter also has this dual possibility, like the character whose identity is attributed.

It was not uncommon amongst many communist leaders of that time who spent a long time underground to have such affairs. The letters I received subsequent to the release of the film and the mild controversies that followed, from various people including old comrades confirmed the truthfulness of the situation presented in the film. They said (many of them didn't want their names to be disclosed) that it was similar to their own experience. While writing the script, I had taken efforts to study their lives as closely as possible. I read many autobiographies and interviewed many involved, because I wanted it to be truthful to history and the movement itself.

In ELIPPATHAYAM we examine all the experiences, even fantasies, of Unni as if under a microscope. We know everything about him, like about an insect. In the case of Sreedharan in MUKHAMUKHAM, we don't even know his real name. Even after seeing the film, we don't know much about him.

In the film, he comes from somewhere and also disappears one fine day.
During the period when the Communist Party was banned, the grass root leaders used to do that. They lived under different names and identities. For example Thoppil Bhasi's play- Ningalettne Kammunistakki (you made me a communist)-was published under the pseudonym, Soman. They had different names in different places. The treatment of the film is such that the enigma of the main character is not resolved, but gets even more complex after we see the film.

In the film, there is a lengthy shot of Kaviyur Ponnamma, just before her version of Sreedharan begins. It is a medium close-up of her face. In the beginning she is pleasant, almost beaming, but it gradually transforms into sadness and pain, to finally end in uncontrollable sobs. In such shots I find the influences of art forms like Kathakali, where 'bhava pakarcha' (the gradual transformation of moods) is important.
The whole story of her relationship with him passes through her face-his transformation from being a hero to being discredited, from a leader to a drunkard.

I think MUKHAMUKHAM is one film which when I watch it even now, is compact and precise. There is not even a frame in it that I would like to have removed from it.

In the case of some films, there is always this feeling that one could have reduced the length of a particular shot etc. (which I feel is a wrong feeling, for that comes out of watching it the nth time. A fresh viewer may not feel so at all) But in the case of MUKHAMUKHAM I have never felt it. After seeing the film, Ray said, "I admire your guts to make a film centred around a character who always sleeps".

The characters that recollect the memory of Sreedharan are dramatically placed in concentric circles, one within the other. The teashop owner is the least related to him while the son is the closest. We start with the farthest-the tea shop owner, and pass through other characters to end up with the son. These are not flashbacks. They are blocks of memories built forward or upward. He is constructed out of memories of people, but they are not flashbacks in the conventional sense. This movement, from the outer to the inner, is also a movement in the intensity of relationships. And it is from the closest relationship, between the father and the son, that he is finally recalled as in sorcery.

This return could also be a dream dreamt by his wife.
Yes, actually the whole sequence is within quotes. You find the child sleeping in the foreground while his mother is dozing. She is awake and asleep, conscious and unconscious. You have the same sequence repeated at the end when her father comes and informs that Sreedharan has been killed. So the whole story of the return is a visual quote between these shots. It can be real but it can also be a dream.

So the film could be about any utopian idea, not necessarily communism?
Yes. Also that everything, be it an idea or a movement itself, has an organic growth, development; everything has its youth, growth, zenith and decay and downfall. There are no exceptions.

It is also one film of yours that teems with the presence of people of all kinds, labourers, union activists, villagers, school children.
Yes. He is in fact the revolutionary spirit of the people.

I think that is evident in the sequence where only his associates go inside the factory to hold discussions with the management while he stays outside at the gate as a satyagrahi. So looks like the spirit of the struggle, not part of the real politic.
Yes.

This was made much before the fall of the Soviet Union. So it was prophetic in a sense.
Yes, in 1984. Ironically, it was well received there in the Soviet Union.

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