Kathapurushan
India / Japan,
1995, 107 min
Shown in 1997
CREDITS
- dir
-
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
- prod
-
Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Tokuichi Ogawa
- scr
-
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
- cam
-
Ravi Varma
- editor
-
M. Mani
- cast
-
Viswanathan, Mini, Urmira Unni
- source
-
NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corp.), 2-2-1 Jinnan, Shibuya-Ku ,Tokyo 150-01, Japan. FAX: 81-3-3465-3438
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Adoor Gopalakrishnan in person.
OTHER
As the opening titles explain, this new film by Adoor Gopalakrishnan covers a politically tumultuous time (1937 to 1980) in the modern history of Kerala, a state in South India that was, incidentally, the first to democratically elect a Communist Government, in 1959. The beauty of the film, though, is that Kerala's political history is not the main focus; instead, the film follows the life from childhood to adulthood of Kunjunni, a petit bourgeois country boy turned leftist radical. As a child, Kunjunni lives with his mother, her landowner family and their loyal servants. He's emotionally hypersensitive—he has a nagging stutter and cries at the slightest provocation. Jumping ahead in time—as the film does in several places—we find a young adult Kunjunni who is studious and full of ideals. And like his uncle, he's fallen in with the Communist Party, which leads him to trouble with the law. But the human elements of the story are always in the foreground of this gently paced film. We watch the family as they gather to watch Kunjunni's uncle (who has shown up unexpectedly) eat his dinner—a touching, quiet moment of familial bonding. And Gopalakrishnan often stops to dwell on rituals such as bathing in the river, or walking to school through a lush, green landscape. It's a down-to-earth, humanitarian approach to understanding the region's complex history. Man of the Story was named Best Indian Film of the year at the National Film Awards.
—Kurt Wolff
FACTOID #65
The combined running time for all the films in the Festival is approximately 310,000 minutes. Or to put it another way, 5,167 hours. That’s about 215 days of viewing, 24 hours a day, with no breaks.
