Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Mukha Mukham

Timestamp:

Jul 16, 2012, 7:34:13 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

Mukha Mukham

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+'''Mukha Mukham'''
+
+
+aka Face to Face
+1984 106’ col Malayalam
+d/s Adoor Gopalakrishnan
+p K. Ravindranathan Nair pc General Pics c Ravi
+Varma m M.B. Srinivasan
+lp P. Ganga, Balan K. Nair, Kaviyoor
+Ponnamma, Krishna Kumar, Karamana
+Janardanan Nair, Thilakan, Vishwanathan,
+Ashokan, Lalitha, Vembayam, Krishnankutty
+Nair, John Samuel, Shanmugham Pillan, Thambi
+
+
+Gopalakrishnan’s melodrama that opened up a
+new direction in the genre in Malayalam film
+while looking at the unpalatable aspects of
+radical populism in Kerala. The first part is set
+in the 1945-55 period just prior to the shortlived
+1957 CPI electoral victory in the State. The
+2nd part is ten years later, after 1964, when the
+CPI split in two, later fragmenting even further.
+The central character is Sridharan (Ganga), a
+trade union leader who plays a key role in
+winning a strike against mechanisation. He is
+mercilessly beaten by thugs and has to go
+underground. This episode is told from the
+point of view of an idealist radical, Sudhakaran
+(Vishwanathan as a boy, Ashokan as a man).
+Years later, the old radicals have made their
+compromises and Sridharan has become a
+legendary emblem of integrity on whom the
+defeated survivors have projected their
+erstwhile radicalism. When he returns, there
+follows bitter disappointment at the discovery
+of the legendary hero’s human weaknesses. His
+name is invoked by all factions as a rallying
+cry, making his presence all the more
+embarrassing. One day, he is found killed. With
+the man safely out of the way, his image can
+once again be mobilised, untarnished by the
+complexities of real life. Violently attacked by
+the CPI(M) establishment in Kerala, the film
+works on several layers: in critiquing the state’s
+left establishment it also critically evokes a
+tradition of political melodrama in Kerala (cf.
+Thoppil Bhasi’s scripts). It suggests that its
+protagonist in all his roles - fiery leader, spent
+force, political legend - is inescapably reduced
+into stereotypical functioning, in the popular
+melodramatic sense, of one kind or another.
+The film thereby shifts the entire critique into
+one where the mass culture generated by
+incomplete capitalist growth merges with the
+rhetoric of left activism, the whole masking
+what the director suggests to be the major
+problem: the absence of a valid indigenous
+culture able to define the terms of its
+engagement with capitalist systems.
+
+[[Film]]