Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Chidambaram

Timestamp:

Jul 17, 2012, 5:49:35 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

Chidambaram

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+'''Chidambaram'''
+
+
+1985 102’ col Malayalam
+d/sc Govindan Aravindan pc Suryakanthi
+Film Makers st C.V. Shriraman c Shaji N.
+Karun m P. Devarajan
+lp Gopi, Smita Patil, Srinivas, Mohan Das,
+Murali, Chandran Nair
+
+
+Unfolding in exquisitely photographed poetic
+rhythms and coloured landscapes, this is the
+simple but cynical tale of Muniyandi (Srinivas),
+a labourer on the Indo-Swiss Mooraru farm in
+Kerala. He brings a wife, Shivagami (Patil),
+from the temple town of Chidambaram. She
+befriends Shankaran (Gopi), the estate
+manager and amateur photographer with a
+shady past. Their friendship transgresses the
+hypocritical but deeply felt behavioural codes
+the local men inherited from previous social
+formations: i.e. that women are to be denied
+what men are allowed to enjoy. The tragedy
+that ensues (Muniyandi’s suicide, Shankaran’s
+descent into alcoholism and Shivagami’s
+withering into a worn-out old woman)
+condenses the tensions between socioeconomic
+change (as tractors and machinery
+invade the landscape) and people’s refusal to
+confront the corresponding need to change
+their mentality. The tension is, however, most
+graphically felt in the way Shivagami’s life-force
+is extended into the naturescape, which is shot
+around her with garish colour (e.g. purple
+flower-beds) suggesting that the very nature of
+Kerala’s beauty and fertility, as she represents
+it, has been irredeemably corrupted from
+within. The film then shifts to the equally
+oppressive cloisters of the Chidambaram
+temple, as Shankaran and Shivagami meet once
+more: he is there to purify himself through
+religious ritual while she is now employed to
+look after the footwear of devotees and
+tourists. The nihilist film ends with a rising
+crane shot as the camera can only avert its gaze
+and escape, tilting up along a temple wall
+towards an open sky.
+
+[[Film]]