Films on mother-son relationship are not new to Tamil audiences. From Bollywood’s Mother India to Kollywood’s Sivagamiyin Selvan , these films have captured the emotional battle to perfection. But Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Russian film The Mother , that kick started the four-day screening of films based on Russian literature differed from the usual.
The film portrays a woman’s struggle against the autocrats to free her son, who is sentenced to heavy labour in a prison camp, during the 1905 Russian revolution. She joins the revolutionaries. Finally both the mother and the son get killed in the conflict.
Based on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel The Mother , silent movie made in 1926 depicts in detail the working class uprising against the Czars.
“The 89-minute film underwent restoration in 1968 in the Mosfilm studio and a sound track was mixed with music by Tikhon Khrennikov,” says R.S. Rajan of Yadharthaa that has organised the festival in collaboration with the Russian Coordination Council, Thiruvananthapuram, Federation of Film Societies of India, Hyderabad and MUTA (Madurai Kamaraj, Manonmaniam Sundaranar, Mother Teresa and Alagappa University Teachers' Association). It tries to bring in the different aspects of screen adaptations of Russian literature from novels to fairy tales.
“This film assumes significance as it is one of the few films that did justice to the novel,” points out Tamil professor Periasamy Raja. As a reader, he feels he did not miss much in the movie. The director, he says, maintained the intensity without shifting his attention from the focal point in the novel. The episodes involving Pavel Vlasov, the son, and his lady love in the novel are, however, not elaborately dealt with in the movie, he adds.
“I read the Tamil translation, ‘Thaai’ long back. The image of Pavel turning back to have a look at his mother while being taken to prison is most disturbing,” says theatre expert Mu. Ramasamy.
Pudovkin is also known for his editing techniques. He is a pioneer in using montages to portray complex ideas. Especially, in the scenes where he shows a prison riot and intercuts it with shots of disintegrating ice on a river. “Apart from the aesthetics of film making, the movie also carries a social message. It talks about the individual’s responsibility,” says Rajan.
The festival also featured Love (1927), based on Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and directed by Edmund Golding. “It is an American version of the novel with significant changes. It had two different endings, a happy one for the American audience,” says Rajan.
Film adaptations of works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevksy, Nikloi Gogol, Maxim Gorky, Alexander Pushkin, Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Nabokov, Ivan Turgenev and Mikhail Bulgakov will be showcased during the next two days. Every screening will be followed by a discussion moderated by resource persons.
In all 27 films are being screened including 13 films by Russian directors. On the last day of the festival a seminar on ‘Nuances of film making from literature’ will be organised.
The film festival is on at MUTA Hall, Kakathope Street. >Films will be screened from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
