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'''Anantaram'''


aka Monologue
1987 125’ col Malayalam
d/s Adoor Gopalakrishnan
p K. Ravindranathan Nair pc General Pics c Ravi
Varma m M.B. Srinivasan
lp Ashokan, Mammootty, Shobhana, Balan K.
Nair, Bahadur, Vempayan, Sooraj, Sudheesh,
Kaviyoor Ponnamma, Chandran Nair


Gopalakrishnan’s experiment with subjective
storytelling. The film centres on a young man
Ajayan (Ashokan) who narrates two stories
about himself in the first person. He was
abandoned by his mother, raised by a doctor,
and proved himself a consistent misfit. Much of
his fantasy, into which the ‘reality’ of his
second story merges, revolves around the
figure of his foster-brother’s (Mammootty) wife
(Shobhana). The film marks a major shift from
the director’s previous Mukha Mukham
(1984) which, despite its critical depiction of
politics, retained Gopalakrishnan’s
commitment to developing a tradition of Kerala
melodrama. Anantaram is much more cynical,
descending into a subjectivity bordering on the
paranoid. Gopalakrishnan says that the film
attempts to ‘relate an experience’, nothing
more, of a ‘state of intense despair and angst’.

[[Film]]