Kathapurushan , produced by Adoor himself in collaboration with the Japanese broadcasting corporation NHK, bears the unmistakable stamp of a consummate artiste at the very apogee of his creative prowess. Of a filmmaker not afraid of confronting a range of complex, universal and often unanswerable questions about virtually every aspect of human existence: life and death, love and hate, men and ideas, connections and ruptures, freedom and captivity, power and exploitation.
But is Kathapurushan merely the director's ruminations on Kerala's recent history, reflected in all its hues in the life of a political activist who finds succour in the creative act of writing? It's not. More than anything else, it is a powerful yet touching testament to the invincibility of the human spirit, a document that explicates Adoor's humanist credo: no matter how destructive the ravages of time and the depredations of oppressive political systems are, the free will of the individual is bound to assert itself in ways that are as impressive as they are surprising.
As it does in the case of the protagonist of Kathapurushan . He is Kunjunni (played by Viswanathan), a character born with a stammer but endowed with an inner strength that helps him turn every experience of life—both triumphs and defeats—into an intellectual propellant. Every flashpoint becomes a new beginning—his love for the maid's daughter, his forced separation from her as political changes rob the family of its wealth, the deaths of his mother and grandmother, his disillusionment with party politics, his involvement in the Naxalite movement, his arrest and subsequent torture by the police, besides much else.
Kunjunni's evolution from a meek, stuttering boy to a militant political ideologue to a writer who completely immerses himself in the ethereal joys and pains of creativity and thereby exorcises his weaknesses is full of deep resonances, both historical and artistic. The individual's search for the ability to express himself and reach a level of intellectual stability, the film suggests, may be fraught with pitfalls but it is always worth every bit of the effort.
In Kathapurushan , based on a story and script by the filmmaker himself, history is omnipresent, and it is Kunjunni's greatest tutor as well as tormentor: it teaches even as it tears him apart. At times, it leads him gently by the hand from innocence to maturity, from impulsiveness to serenity, from uncertainty to a final resolution of all contradictions. At others, it grabs him by the scruff of his neck and drags him into situations that become the stimulus for an intellectual rebirth.
As Kunjunni's tale unfolds, the film moves back and forth between the particular and the universal, the general and the specific, the macrocosm and the microcosm. The freedom struggle, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the advent of the world's first democratically-elected Communist government in Kerala, the Naxalite uprising, the declaration of Emergency and the Left's return to popular favour provide the backdrop for the essentially inward drama. As the home and the world and individual vision and societal dogma clash, it generates a crackling kinetic energy.
The film begins and closes with a wizened, old man narrating the myth of a demon in pursuit of a prince and his wife. Who really is this demon? Is it the ideological claptrap that intolerant political establishments seek to subject individuals to or is it simply the march of time, the flow of history, that forever threatens to upset mankind's applecart? Or is it just the fear and darkness that so often dwell in and gnaw into the vitals of the human heart? It could well be all of them.
The rich texture of Kathapurushan is aided by first-rate craftsmanship: the elliptical editing is near-perfect, no shot is held a split-second longer than is absolutely essential, the outdoor sequences are visually lush, the indoor ones are skillfully lit by cinematographer Ravi Varma to convey the illusion of depth and the characterisa-tions are informed with a rhythm that stays with the viewer well after the film has run its course.
In short, Kathapurushan is a cinematic creation of the highest order. Coming two years after Vidheyan which, in turn, followed Mathilukal after a three-year break, Adoor's latest film suggests a sharp increase in his output rate. And that for his admirers is a happy augury. Especially because Adoor's work is clearly on the upswing even as its frequency—in the past he would spend five years between two ventures—shows encouraging signs of acceleration.
