WHO is he?
Malayalam film director, producer, scenarist and film critic who has directed over 30 feature and short-length films since the mid-sixties. Gopalakrishnan has been active in documentary filmmaking as in fictional cinema and was a key pioneer in the film society movement in the country during the 60s. Apart from winning the National Award numerous times, he won the FIPRESCI prize for Mathilukal in 1990 at the Venice Film Festival.
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Gopalakrishnan is perhaps the most academically oriented filmmaker of the country, with his scripts gravitating towards themes well-established in social, political and legal theory. While his films have dealt with ideas as diverse as the infiltration of political consciousness in the life of common folk, the persisting legacy of feudal structures and the fallibility of the system of capital punishment, his pictures have most frequently been associated with the exploration of the status and agency of women in various societal setups.
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Gopalakrishnan has a quasi-classicist aesthetic in the way his filmmaking relies on the inherent value of a single shot over the value imparted by the splicing together of multiple shots. The camera is always mounted, even when it is moving. Close-ups and deep-space compositions are characteristic of these films, as are their unsettling musical score, use of architecture and stylised performances. Symmetry is preferred and actors are directed in a way that handles space judiciously. Costumes and colour are important parameters that reflect character traits as much as the character-driven scenarios of Gopalakrishnan’s films.
WHY is he of interest?
Gopalakrishnan is among the most important artists of the Parallel Cinema movement in India, which set itself apart from the commercially oriented mainstream films with their serious-minded and socially oriented quality. His fictional work has come to represent for many viewers the face of Indian arthouse filmmaking, and his influence on later day
“middle-path” Malayalam cinema can not be understated.
WHERE to discover him?
Vidheyan (1993) is arguably Gopalakrishnan’s finest and most rewarding film. Centring on the oppressive relationship between a despotic landowner (Mammooty) and his cowardly serf (Gopakumar), the film examines the Hegelian dialectic between master and slave, in which the two are able to identify themselves only through their rapport with the other. The film is also a reflection on the similar dialectic between the ideas of home and exile.