Phalanx Spacer Phalanx Logo Phalanx Slogan Phalanx Spacer
Contact | Subscribe | Site Map
  Phalanx Logo Phalanx Logo Phalanx Spacer
HOME | CONTENTS | CONTRIBUTE | ARCHIVE
 
         
Phalanx Spacer
Phalanx SpacerCurrent Editorial
Democracy, the economy and corruption:

attempts to trace corruption back to its origins in the newly independent Indian nation, asking some of the more obvious questions which are not being asked today.
Phalanx Spacer
Phalanx Read
Phalanx Spacer
Phalanx SpacerReview
Film:

Dabangg (Dir: Abinav Kashyap)
Phalanx Spacer
Phalanx Read
Phalanx Spacer
Phalanx SpacerOpen Page
Global Warming: A Cause for Alarm?

In this persuasive piece the author shows us why global warming is not the ogre it is made to seem.
Phalanx Spacer
Phalanx Read
Phalanx Spacer
Phalanx SpacerArticles list of Issue
 
Home > Contents > Article: Meena T Pillai
Phalanx Spacer
Nirmalyam
Resurrecting the 'Word’ and the 'World'
Phalanx Spacer
Meena T Pillai

In any endeavour to look into the literature/film interface in Malayalam cinema, Nirmalyam (1973), a strikingly novel debut film based on the short story 'Pallivaallum Kalchilambum" (Sacred Sword and Anklet), makes a fascinating topic for study, making It still a socially and psychologically valid document in the history of our cinema. It is also interesting that for the first time a noted writer dons the cap of a director to attempt an adaptation of his own short story into film.

The minimum qualification for reading a short story is literacy, When the same story gets translated into filmic language and is repre­sented on the celluloid screen, it ceases to demand the same kind of literacy from the viewer. Nirmalyam is a powerful illustration of the intersemiotic nature of film and the scope and potency of such a trait. The translation from "Pallivaallum Kalchilambum" to Nirmalyam in­volves a colossal appropriation of histories and milieus, of peoples, lan­guages and cultures. In fact this translation is a subversion of the very notion of literacy and literatures, of conventions and canons as estab­lished by class hierarchies.

"Pallivaallum Kalchilambum" is a 'cinematic' story in the dexter­ity with which it alternates description and dialogue, in its superb narra­tive control and felicitous handling of time and psyche. Though the adaptation of his own story might not have been a difficult task for a versatile artist like M.T. Vasudevan Nair, he has created a fine piece of filmic art that is yet clearly linked to its literary source. M.T offers a story to the reader of' Pallivaallum Kalchilambum" and prompts him/ her to create a world from it. But in Nirmalyam he presents the spectator with a world and leaves it to his/her imagination to weave a story from out of this world. Thus, while "Pallivaallum Kalchilambum" at­tempts to create an effect first on the level of signification and then perception, Nirmalyam moves from perception to signification. The technical awareness of form and style that runs through "Pallivaallum Kalchilambum" bears upon M.T's cinematic style and also his use of the film language. In the short story one can feel the strength of a writer who has a keen sense of the throbbing pulse of the written word. In Nirmalyam one meets a director who has grappled with and almost mastered the power of technologized visual image to communicate beyond any written language. Though in M.T.s later scripts one comes across a celebration of the word as dialogue, Nirmalyam is an example par excellence of artistic restraint of the verbal language. There are no extraneous scenes or conversations and the director's economy is as striking as his craftsmanship. The restraint of the spoken word concentrates the spectator's attention more closely on the visual aspect of the medium and enhances its effect. In fact, a person familiar with M.T's works can perceive in the film the exhilaration of a writer who has discovered a new language, which expands even beyond the hori­zon of his writerly expectations.

Between the short story and the film is a time span of more than a decade. This period (the sixties and the early seventies) is marked by seething changes in the socio-economic history of Kerala. The changes in the interplay of institutions, expressions and repressions, all taking place in the complex and varying fields of power, can be seen by read­ing both texts. The short story ends with the oracle trying to sell the sacred sword and the anklet. But in the cinema it is the vagrant son who attempts the sacrilegious act. M.T. adds to the cinema the existential dilemma and ennui of the youth of the post-sixties era, the image of the angry young man who vents his anger on all tradition and also prob­ably the Naxalite movement's infusion of a mood of radical rebellion in the youth. The temple priest of the short story is yet a thriving man, who lives off the money from the temple earnings. But in the film the priest is as much a pauper as the oracle. He manages to eke out a better living by becoming a tea shop owner. This again points to the ebb of the tide of faith and the more rational, skeptic outlook of the society of the seventies. The new priest is constantly studying in order to get a government job. Thus priesthood has become just another form of earning a livelihood and has lost its piety and sanctity. At one time it was believed that the ‘pallivaal' could scatter the seeds of the Goddess' wrath in the form of small pox eruptions. But even a devotion rising from fear is scarcely prevalent in 1973. With the growth of medical science small pox is no more an imminent threat in the society. Even when the Varrier’s wife is infected, it is not regarded with as much consternation as in the short story. The Velichappadu thus has lost his power among his Mother's children. But in spite of it he attempts a last pathetic effort at reorganizing the scattered devotees.

In a brilliant piece of social satire M.T. depicts the landlord of the temple as the landlord of a new order. Culture is his capital and he does a lucrative job of selling temple arts, which have shifted venue from the temple premises to the landlord's villa. The audiences are no longer devout masses but foreign tourists.

The Velichappadu's father is symbolic of the past that is sick and paralyzed. Unable to react to the stimuli and needs of the present, he yet hangs on to the family and to life — an extra mouth to feed, a conscience bed-ridden but not buried. The selling of her own body by the Velichappadu's wife is again a powerful critique of the woman of the times. The wife in the short story is a pale shadow of a character. But in the cinema she becomes a potent image of subversion. The wife's prostitution is tantamount to the Velichappadu's attempt to sell the holy ornaments in the final section of the short story. Thus the short story becomes a starting point for the script and the script takes off from a point where the short story ends.

As far as the 'spirit' of the short story is concerned, fidelity of adaptation is maintained by the film. The basic narratorial aspects, the main characters and their interpersonal communications, the geographi­cal, sociological and cultural information providing the story's context — are all the same. The parallel love story of the Velichappadu's daugh­ter and the new priest adds a strain of melodrama. But as a whole the perceptual, referential and symbolic codes in the film are very much akin to those in the story. The very title Nirmalyam carries on the imag­ery of decadence, which seeps through the short story.

Controversial and yet pathbreaking in its own day, Nirmalyam continues to be recalcitrant even today, because it poignantly and truth­fully recreates the spiritual and material realities of a crucial era in the history of Kerala. In the backdrop of a shift from an agrarian to a capi­talistic, consumerist society, the film attempts to portray the fragmented character of social and cultural 'realities' and 'identities'. M.T.s narra­tive realism does not attempt to delineate social realities only in psycho­logical or individual terms but seeks to probe the more fundamental social and economic structures. The narrative incorporates an agitational aesthetic where the gloom of an epoch, which is neither 'post'- feudal nor industrial, is highlighted. The film is modernist in its formal self-consciousness and thematic preoccupation with social and emotional dislocation and the portrayal of a break away from tradition.

Both the film and the short story attempt a social examination that centers on a historical development. There is a broadly construed realism in representation and narration. M.T, the short story writer as a director, has understood the ideological nature of both apparatus and this understanding equips him with a strong theoretical framework to examine the meaning of a film as created through an interaction be­tween text and spectator. Thus here is a director who has not only understood the medium but also the spectator, who he realizes is not an 'ahistorical' subject but a person situated in history and with social attributes of religions, class, caste and gender. The interaction between the film text and the spectator can be greatly influenced by the fore-knowledge and anticipation of the star. The play of this intertextuality is significant in Nirmalyam owing to the almost conscious absence of star image in it. P. J. Anthony was not much of a celebrity while Sukumaran was a debutant.

Within its dominant linear causality the film pulsates with a certain apocalyptic intensity. The circumstantial and psychological real­ism in the film coupled with its maintenance of continuity has resulted in creating a coherent narrative structure. And yet it is not the revealing of the story but the story's revelations, enhanced by the medium that attracts the spectator. The whole set of images in the film or the ar­rangement of signifiers on the screen constitute the narrative discourse of the film. It is from this narrative discourse that the spectator weaves a story.

Both the short story and the film follow the same basic narra­tive pattern, but the film enjoys the singular narrative privilege con­ferred on it by the medium—it is iconic and mimetic, hence it shows before it tells. The Velichappadu's postures, gestures, costume, gait and mannerisms, all automatically become visual reality on the screen, while the verbal description of the same would have probably cluttered and choked the short story. The filmic narration also goes beyond the short story's narrative discourse. M.T's emphasis in the film seems to be on a more dynamic interaction between the narrative discourse and the spec­tator. His task as filmmaker appears to be the creation of a new kind of an active spectator who would contribute to the construction of the narrative. The climax of the cinema thus becomes a way of provoking the spectator, of addressing him/her in a new way, so that he/she may be able to create a different kind of a film experience. The psychological effects are all there on the screen. It becomes the task of the spectator to search for the causes of these effects. Nirmalyam thus shows a con­cern for reaction rather than action. From the psychologically sensitive protagonist one is forced to track back to the social forces and eco­nomic institutions, which compel him to be what he is. As the very title connotes, Nirmalyam is an attempt to shed the "remains' of a past that is ideologically compromised. And yet the future appears to be more fearsome than the past or the bleak present. M.T.’s protagonist struggles to navigate his way through a difficult moment in history and bears witness to an era of morbid transition. An existential angst, a sense of limbo, haunts even the title. The word 'Nirmalyam' denotes the re­mains of an offering, especially of flowers offered on an idol during pooja, which are then removed in the morning. Significantly the movie begins with the morning ritual of casting away the nirmalyam and clean­ing the idol. The director thus attempts to portray cinematically a social situation where the last remains of the selfless devotion of the past is wiped away from an idol which will remain a stone  sans decoration, sans devotion and sans divinity.

 That M.T. in 1973 chose to select "Pallivaallum Kalchilambum" as the source of adaptation for his first film speaks volumes about cinema's sense of its role in the seventies. It is in response to the need of an era, a social, cultural and historical necessity, that an adaptation becomes possible. Negotiating the mixture of castes and classes, customs and traditions, the film deconstructs the post-agrarian society of the times. One has to look beyond the film text for social meanings of not only cinematic practices bur also of the actual practice of produc­tion of the cinema. It is extremely interesting that in 1973 P.J. An­thony, a non-Hindu, entered the sanctum sanctorum of a temple for the actual shooting of a film. It represents a powerful subversion of casteism, which also allows the star to be claimed by different audi­ences, thus shaping anew many reception contexts over time.

The production of a cinema involves the complex dialectics of technique and technology. A 'realist' cinema does not evoke 'reality' but only a semblance of it. The process of production is vital to the understanding of a film and the amount of realism in a film is to a large extent governed by the socio-economic conditions under which it is produced as much as to the aesthetic or ideological effect it produces in the spectator. As spectators / readers of the film text who inhabit a different set of conditions, our response to Nirmalyam would be very different today. M.T. himself has remarked that given the current social conditions no producer would be willing to produce a film like Nirmalyam and no distributing agency would be willing to shell out money for such a project (Kala Kaumudi : 1216 ). Thus Nirmalyam would be historically impossible today.

Part of the thematic charm of Nirmalyam owes itself to the Oedipal trajectory traced in the cinema. It is to be noted that after the Velichappadu's discovery of his wife's sexual betrayal, her face is seen framed in the curve of the pallivall, which often strikes one as a fetishistic symbol. Thus it is implied that the Velichappadu's holy love is the cause of the unholy liaison. In the next shot the wife's words confirm this as she directly implicates the Velichappadu and says that when he was wrapped up in the affairs of the goddess, he never ever thought of her and the children. He neglected their hunger. From this point there is a marked change in the Velichappadu—he slips into an almost trance-like state.

The film's final spectacle has contributed greatly to its success. One is forced to watch spellbound the spectacle of a human body caught in the throes of an intense emotion and the final orgasmic release—the spitting on the idol and the masochistic orgy with the pallivall, hitting it on the head and spilling blood on the screen. The Velichappadu spits on the face of the Goddess. But it is his own blood which oozes into his mouth that he spits out. Thus the act of spitting becomes a sacrificial offering of blood. A rare combination of extreme devotion and defi­ance, it is the final resolution of an Oedipal desire. A sensational por­trayal of the body spectacle — the intense love of the oracle for the Goddess reaches its emotional, physical and visual climax in the final scene. There is no speech and yet the rising crescendo of drums in the backdrop articulates the language of the orgy. The Velichappadu's body becomes the embodiment of an agony and ecstasy engendering a simi­lar feeling in the spectator and thus leading to visual and narrative plea­sure. Through an excess of sensation and emotion there is a manipula­tion of the spectatorial pleasure, which however serves a nobler cause than 'tear-jerking' melodramas or 'fear-jerking' horror movies.

Nirmalyam is an exceptional movie — for the excellence of its screenplay, the tautness of its construction and its thematic complexity. But what fascinates one even today is the boldness and integrity of its approach, and the coherence of its aesthetic experience. It cinematically epitomizes a moment in history and in the process becomes historical.

Epilogue: I have never read a review of a film of mine, which did not read false meanings into it.
— Akira Kurosawa Phalanx Spacer

Phalanx Spacer
Phalanx Spacer
Dr. Meena T Pillai is Reader at the Institute of English, and Director, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Kerala. She has also edited a book Women in Malayalam Cinema: Naturalising Gender Hierarchies (Orient BlackSwan, 2010)


Phalanx Spacer

Courtesy: indulekha.com


Phalanx Spacer
Top
Phalanx Spacer
Phalanx Spacer
Home | Editor's Desk | Open Page | Content | Contribute | Archive | Manifesto | People | Contact | Subscribe | Site Map | Privacy policy | Legal
Phalanx Spacer
© 2016 PHALANX. All rights reserved | it's an El Remo Creation
Phalanx Spacer
Phalanx Spacer