Kathapurushan: The Story of a State

Conversations with the filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan tend to be rather intractable for those who follow his rich, extensively researched and formally unimpeachable oeuvre. If an interviewer treads too much over a routine fact check in an attempt to engage the Malayali auteur, they are often repelled with the most exquisite stonewalling. On a balmy December afternoon in 2019 in Bengaluru, a screening of Gopalakrishnan’s Kathapurushan (The Man of the Story, 1995) was bookended by precisely such an interview. However, in this case, the filmmaker seemed content to volunteer information on the film without being pushed. Kathapurushan rose out of a co-production offer made by Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK), the Japanese government-owned public broadcaster, despite Gopalakrishnan having no real story in order at the time. It signified a remarkable departure for someone who never felt compelled to be an “industrious” filmmaker, with only ten feature-length films in a career reaching its fifth decade. At the behest of the Japanese film critic Tadao Sato, Gopalakrishnan decided to go ahead with the project, retreating to—in his own words—his most “incisive” personal film. Yet, the film somehow does not manage to warrant the concomitant enraptured cineaste reaction that other classics like Kodiyettam (Ascent, 1978), Elippathayam (Rat Trap, 1982), Mathilukal (The Walls, 1990) and Vidheyan (The Servile, 1994) do.

Kathapurushan follows the life of Kunjunni, born at the nadir of feudal Kerala, replete with markers of a fading old order. A mahout of the estate listlessly wanders with a single elephant instead of the fleet of pachyderms he once commanded; the domestic labour of the tharavad (homestead) diminished to a smaller retinue of the subservient or the helpless. Kunjunni’s own education marks the shifts of an increasingly modern Kerala. His initial tutelage takes place under a Namboothiri Brahmin, whose capacities for opprobrium leave Kunjunni with a terminal stutter that only dissipates much later, in reaction to another act of censure. He goes to a public school, where a lower-caste teacher accuses him of being petit bourgeois. His time at university is marked by a gravitation towards Marxist thought, although his classmate is quick to point out that he still has a bit of a feudal streak in him. Through these adolescent years, Gopalakrishnan takes us through the transition period from the feudal era to the movement for independence. The film tracks Kunjunni’s Gandhian uncle being jailed and, later, the democratic election of the Communist Party in Kerala. The subsequent land reforms, culminating with the Naxalbari uprising, see Kunjunni operate a Maoist printing press. Gopalakrishnan took special care to film the movie across different seasons to bring out the radically different “greens” of Kerala. The transition between these eras come without much warning. Amidst a withering tharavad and radically changing social relations, the verdant backdrop of the state seems to be the only constant in the film. 

Kunjunni attempts to quietly transcend his circumstances throughout the movie. He speaks forcefully for the benefits of land redistribution to the tiller working for his now materially deprived family, who still scrupulously keep an eye on the distribution of the grain surplus. In another scene, Kunjunni seems thrilled to sell his ancestral property, as it is no longer suited for modernity. He limps out onto his threshold to meet a prospective, wealthy buyer, whose father once worked as a servant in his own house. However, Gopalakrishnan’s own views on the old order are complicated, to say the least. Another screening at the Bangalore International Centre the next day saw the director list out the merits of feudalism, arguing that it did not produce the  alienation that capitalism does. Gopalakrishnan also conveys an uneasy alliance between the products of colonial administration and the secular labour market that replaced a system premised on the inherited access, not ownership, to land and the profession of one’s forebears. The police force is at constant loggerheads with Kunjunni, breaking down his printing press in a stunning montage sequence and intentionally delaying his visit to his mother’s funeral. Gopalakrishnan’s politics, or liberalism, is not the garden variety, corporatised do-gooderism we have seen and grown accustomed to. It is truly made of sterner stuff and films like Kathapurushan leave one with more questions that the filmmaker will most likely never answer.

To know more about radical filmmakers and collectives, read Ankan Kazi’s essay on filmmaker collectives and their histories in India. 

All images are stills from Kathapurushan (1985) by Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Images courtesy of the director.