G. Aravindan and the Legacy of New Malayalam Cinema

The Hindu

02-07-2025

Published : Jul 02, 2025 17:32 IST - 7 MINS READ
He had a short life and an even shorter tenure as a filmmaker: Just 15 years during which he directed at least half a dozen masterpieces that were both the pride and the envy of his best peers. The 90th birth anniversary of the Malayali auteur Aravindan is being observed across the country. Govindan Aravindan (1935-1991), was one of the key figures in New Malayalam Cinema genre. There was a time in the 70's and the 80's when Calcutta film clubs would unfailingly celebrate in varied ways—screenings, discussions, writings in journals— whenever Aravindan made a new film.
Like many of his predecessors and contemporaries in Bengal, Aravindan never went to film school, nor did he serve apprenticeship under anyone. The innocence of his foremost characters can partially be attributed to his coming into films without any formal preparation, combined with his intrinsically philosophical temperament that were finely tuned to his eclectic sense of music.
He had learnt nothing within the confines of a classroom, so the need never arose for him to unlearn anything when it came to making films. He started out with a tabula rasa, making it easier for him to structure his signature in varying styles and idioms in the few but markedly different films he made. All that he had by way of qualification to be a filmmaker were sharp, sympathetic eyes that took in the minutest detail of human conduct or nature's moods; an ear trained in both Carnatic and Hindustani music; the imagination of the poet, which at times veered on the theatrical, married to the temperament of a wayward minstrel; and the intellectual curiosity to experiment with every input that goes into the making of a film.
Combined, these rare attributes make a joke of one of his distinguished contemporaries' constant carping that 'the man didn't know where to place his camera'. Seeing the fascinating end-result of Aravindan's alleged lack of technical knowledge, notably in such masterpieces as Thampu or Kummatty, one can only retort: 'Thank god the man never went to film school, for if he had, there was every possibility that he would have learnt where to place his camera but failed to keep his date with the muse.'
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The final outcome of Aravindan's delayed decision to gravitate to filmmaking was that when he died on March 15, 1991, at the age of 55, he left behind a body of work, which would match the best exertions of the best of his peers in this frenetic, highly competitive field. Varied in subject and style, many of his fictional features, starting with Uttarayanam (Throne of Capricorn, 1974) and ending with Vasthuhara, are leavened by a documentary flavour, indicating his interest in not just telling a story but injecting a veiled commentary on social realities.
Spirit of free enquiry
Aravindan's documentaries, which one would have normally expected to be critiques of the plaintive human condition in modern India, actually relate more to the arts and well-known practitioners of the arts and even include a mystical philosopher. All these point to a restless, esoteric spirit, a seeker of the higher realms of truth and beauty without divorcing himself from the here and now. Not that he succeeded in realising his goals in everything he did, be it fictional features, documentaries or fusions, but the thing to note was his spirit of free enquiry that drove him to tread difficult terrain. The well-read man that he was, it is likely that Aravindan was aware of Corneille's dictum: 'To win without risk is to triumph without glory'.
April 5, 1991, was a day of grief and celebration for Aravindan enthusiasts in Calcutta. On that day, the all-India premiere of Vasthuhara (The Dispossessed), the director's swansong, was screened at Nandan, the West Bengal Film Centre. The screening was preceded by a brief, solemn function at which some of Bengal's best-known directors spoke, including Mrinal Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Goutam Ghosh. Two of Aravindan's associates had come from Trivandrum for the occasion. The speeches were part personal reminiscences of Aravindan, part a respectful assessment of the artist and his oeuvre, highly individualistic but never too far away from the concerns and conditions of the common man, the little man.
What change can do to people's lives is the theme of Vasthuhara. The story is of dispossessed people; of men, women and children deprived of their homes and belongings, robbed of their identity and honour. Using Venu, a Malayali officer working for the Rehabilitation Ministry who makes periodic trips between the Andamans and Calcutta to select Bengali refugee families of 'lower' castes for resettlement in the distant islands, as his central character, Aravindan sought to bring home to viewers the pain and anger and humiliation that never leave the materially and emotionally dispossessed.
Aravindan explained: 'The attempt in this story of tense personal relationships is to highlight the eternal phenomena of people being uprooted and swept away and forced to seek refuge in alien lands for no fault of theirs. The 1947 post-Partition exodus of people from East to West Bengal forms a prologue and the 1971 exodus from Bangladesh to West Bengal an epilogue to the stor'.
Using documentary footage wherever he felt it necessary, Aravindan chose different locales to narrate a story of individual plight and pluck with collective suffering as an enduring backdrop.
When Aravindan made Vasthuhara, he dwelt upon the theme of Partition, which had hardly been explored in the cinema of southern States. His choice of subject, and obvious involvement in it, points to his vast reading as indeed to his concern for fellow-beings in distress. Vasthuhara is a political document of unsurpassed value to film-lovers, especially those whose origins lie in East Bengal.
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However much the credit-denying contemporary or the insufficiently-equipped critic may try, they cannot take lightly the delicate vitality of Aravindan's work spread out thinly but securely over a period of just one-and-a-half decades. His humanism, his sense of calm even under pressure, his empathy with the loner and the underdog: Each of these remarkable qualities, without which no artist of substance is made, can be easily discerned in his best films.
With Aravindan's untimely death, New Malayalam Cinema lost one of its true-blooded treasures, and the repercussions of that loss is felt to this day among film-lovers in far-flung corners of the country. In fact, such was the nature of the man and the quality of the art he produced, that his passing away is still counted as a personal loss by many in well-defined circles in the Indian film world.
Like all originals, Aravindan was able to sculpt a small and steadfast audience, a family of like-minded kinsmen fiercely loyal to his kind of filmmaking that blended elements drawn from diverse yet united streams of thought and perception: Mysticism and materialism, modernism and primitivism, realism and fantastical. By his own admission, he felt attracted to philosophy, not so much in the abstract as a lived-living experience, which shows every now and then in his films.
Allured by Buddhism
With characteristic candour, Aravindan conceded: 'I cannot say I have an in-depth knowledge of Indian philosophy. The basic concepts of Indian philosophy are part of all of us. Something that we live and breathe every day. This interest in Indian philosophy was born and grew with my reading habit. Within Indian philosophy, what fascinated me most was Buddhism, of which I have read more. My association with Jiddu Krishnamurti also helped in deepening my interest and sensibilities'.
One would normally expect a person like Aravindan who was inclined to view practically everything somewhat philosophically, be they related to the arts or to life in the raw, to be a solitary reaper of thoughts and deeds. But the reality was quite different. As if by twirling an invisible baton, Aravindan was able to fashion a gharana of his own, consisting largely of younger fellow-artists imbued with his notions of what was worth pursuing in camera, sound, storytelling.
It was a group of talented young people that he enthused and inspired to creativity by his own example, by no means unblemished but remarkable all the same. It been said that the true artist lives and works not just for himself, but goes out of the way to make sure that those coming after him or working alongside him get the support and recognition they deserve, simultaneously enriching himself by his association with his peers.
To remember Aravindan is to remember many things, but most importantly, the silences of the man, the silences that marked his best films, and the silences that spoke between the artist and his viewers.
Vidyarthy Chatterjee writes on cinema, society, politics. He has been following Malayalam cinema for almost five decades.