Word: gopalakrishnan
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Dates: during 2003-2003
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...objective." Adoor is a cinematic throwback, an auteur who controls every major aspect of his films: writing, directing, producing, editing. Before filming he shares his scripts only with his longtime cinematographer, Ravi Varma, the sole person aside from Adoor to provide genuine creative input in an Adoor Gopalakrishnan movie. "The actors should be free," he says, "but not so free as to go against my interpretation of the role...
When he's shooting a film, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, 62, doesn't listen to his actors, critics or the government, nor does he pander to his audience. He does, however, listen to the wind. While shooting his latest film, Shadow Kill, the story of an anguished hangman in 1940s India, Adoor was struck by the thumping sound of nighttime gusts playing on the leaves of a palmyra tree near his set in a rural Kerala village. "It sounded exactly like a heartbeat," he says. It was the rhythm he hadn't been aware he was seeking - a steady drumming...
...probably never heard of Adoor Gopalakrishnan, and for a long time that was fine with him. He's an art-film director in Bollywood-besotted India, and he makes movies not in Hindi but in Malayalam, the language of his native Kerala - two strikes against widespread recognition. A temperamental auteur whose cinematic talents - and ego - are in inverse proportion to his low-key fame, Adoor's intense, demanding films have been worshiped by Indian and foreign critics and celebrated in self-consciously sophisticated Kerala, yet they've barely been released in much of India. But with the visually generous Shadow...
...audience are stupid (he prefers the term "uninitiated"); again and again he tells me that he wants more exposure in India. It's just that he refuses to take the audience, or anyone else, into consideration when making a film. If that means the ideal audience for an Adoor Gopalakrishnan film is ultimately Adoor Gopalakrishnan, so be it, and let no one question...