Adoor Gopalakrishnan to begin shooting Pinneyum from May 11 - Hindustan Times
close_game
close_game

Adoor Gopalakrishnan to begin shooting Pinneyum from May 11

Hindustan Times | ByGautaman Bhaskaran
Apr 05, 2016 03:37 PM IST

The ace Indian filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan will begin working on his new film Pinneyum from May 11. The film will be shot in Thiruvananthapuram and Quilon.

Come May 11, the legendary director Adoor Gopalakrishnan will step behind the camera to freeze his 12th film in a long career which began with his 1972 Swayamvaram (One’s Own Choice). In fact, he was one of the earliest pioneers of the Indian New Wave, which began in 1969 with movies like Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome (Mr Shome), Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti (Daily Bread) and Basu Chatterjee’s Sara Akash (The Whole Sky).

An ardent admired of Satyajit Ray, Gopalakrishnan’s upcoming work in Malayalam will be titled Pinneyum (Once Again).(Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
An ardent admired of Satyajit Ray, Gopalakrishnan’s upcoming work in Malayalam will be titled Pinneyum (Once Again).(Adoor Gopalakrishnan)

An ardent admired of Satyajit Ray, Gopalakrishnan’s upcoming work in Malayalam will be titled Pinneyum (Once Again) with Kavya Madhavan and Dileep playing the lead pair. And how apt is the title, given the auteur’s eight-year hiatus. His last film was Oru Pennum Randaanum (A Climate for Crime) -- opened in 2008, a year after his Naalu Pennungal (Four Women) came.

Hindustan Times - your fastest source for breaking news! Read now.

His fans had been wondering - and even worrying - that he might not wield the megaphone any more, the loss of his wife some months ago adding to what some perceived as his professional disinterest.

Read: Adoor Gopalakrishnan working on a documentary on Girish Kasaravalli

Nandita Das and Kavya Madhavan in a still from Naalu Pennungal (Four Women). (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
Nandita Das and Kavya Madhavan in a still from Naalu Pennungal (Four Women). (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)

In the history of cinema, we know a Shammi Kapoor, who refused to come out of his bedroom for three months after his young wife, Geeta Bali, died of smallpox. Kapoor was then in the midst of shooting for Vijay Ananda’s Teesri Manzil, and producer Nasir Hussain understood the star’s pain and waited. When Kapoor re-emerged and completed Teesri Manzil, it turned out to be one of his best-ever performances as Rocky, a star singer in a Mussoorie hotel who gets entangled in a murder.

Read: At 73, Adoor Gopalakrishnan prepares for his next film

Personal losses sometimes help bring out the best in us, and Pinneyum may well turn out be yet another masterpiece of the man who gave us gems like Swayamvaram, Elippathayam, Kodiyettam, Vidheyan, Mukhamukham, Anantaram and so on. But the intervals between these movies have been never as long as eight years; they have usually been four or five years or less.

Vidheyan (The Servile) stars Mammootty and Tanvi Azmi. (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
Vidheyan (The Servile) stars Mammootty and Tanvi Azmi. (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)

Gopalakrishnan told this writer that he liked to reflect for a long time after completing a film before getting down to the next. “I take my own time to write a story or pick one and then to pen the screenplay,” he said, despite men like Ray urging Adoor to make at least one movie a year.

Book Review: Adoor Gopalakrishnan | A Life in Cinema

One does know much about Pinneyum except that it will have Kavya Madhavan (who was seen in Gopalakrishnan’s earlier Naalu Pennungal) and Dileep, with whom he has wanted to work for a long time. Normally, Gopalakrishnan does not work with stars. There have been exceptions though like Madhu (Swayamvaram) , Mammootty (Vidheyan, Mathilukal) and Sarada (Swayamvaram). Now, Dileep is a star all right.

The plot of Pinneyum is being kept under wraps, but all that Gopalakrishnan would reveal now is that it “will be an intense love story”. Knowing him, his latest outing is not going to be hot stuff (on the lines of explicit French cinema, which he is quite fond of). But it may be subtle and subdued, but provocative, as far as the content goes. Adoor is known for this.

Read: Filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan to be honoured by US universities

A scene from Oru Pennum Randaanum (A Climate for Crime). (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
A scene from Oru Pennum Randaanum (A Climate for Crime). (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)

Take Swayamvaram (One’s Own Choice). It stormed Kerala’s conservative citadels of celluloid. Its story was radical, certainly so in the early 1970s. Synchronised sound and outdoor locales were unheard of, or almost, then in Kerala. Gopalakrishnan used his Nagra recorder, carried his camera beyond the studio walls to film the story of Viswanathan and Sita, who, defying their parental wish, run away to a city to live together. A man and a woman living together outside wedlock was enough to spark sensation. Gopalakrishnan’s first work that opened in 1972 did that and more.

Adoor’s Mathilukal in 1989 (with Mammootty playing Vaikom Muhammad Basheer) is also a uniquely strange love story, which is set in prison during the British Raj. When the political prisoners leave - Basheer’s name is strangely missing from the list - he is lonely and even hatches a plot to escape. But suddenly the voice of a woman prisoner that wafts across the high wall separating the men’s wing from the women’s lifts his sagging spirit.

Adoor’s Mathilukal (The Walls) starring Mammootty. (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
Adoor’s Mathilukal (The Walls) starring Mammootty. (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)

She is Narayani, the youngest there, the most beautiful, as she claims in the beginning. She has committed murder. Gopalakrishnan uses sheer eroticism to describe their meetings. There is tenderness, there is love and there is also the comic, but all kept at more than an arm’s length by cold concrete. When Narayani throws a dead branch in the air to tell Basheer that she is there next to the wall, he gently caresses it, his yearning for affectionate touch perhaps shared by her as well. We are never taken to the other side. We never meet Narayani.

Pinneyum has been written by Gopalakrishnan. Of the 11 works of his, there have been only four occasions when he has adapted someone else’s story: Mathilukal (The Walls) by Vaikom Mohammad Basheer, Vidheyan (The Servile) by Paul Zacharia, Naalu Pennungal (Four Women) by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai and Oru Pennum Randaanum (A Climate for Crime) also by Pillai.

Pinneyum will be shot in Thiruvananthapuram and Quilon in about 40 days, and hopefully one would get to watch it soon after. Will it premiere at Venice at the end of August?

(Clockwise) Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Adoor with actors Nandita Das and Kavya Madhavan and Adoor with wife Sunanda in Venice. (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
(Clockwise) Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Adoor with actors Nandita Das and Kavya Madhavan and Adoor with wife Sunanda in Venice. (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)

(Gautaman Bhaskaran has written a biography of Adoor Gopalakrishnan.)

Oscars 2024: From Nominees to Red Carpet Glam! Get Exclusive Coverage on HT. Click Here

Get more updates from Bollywood, Hollywood, Music and Web Series along with Latest Entertainment News at Hindustan Times.
SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Share this article
SHARE
Story Saved
Live Score
OPEN APP
Saved Articles
Following
My Reads
Sign out
New Delhi 0C
Friday, March 29, 2024
Start 14 Days Free Trial Subscribe Now
Follow Us On