Remembering Pavithran

Remembering Pavithran


Pavithran may have made only a handful of films in his three decades long career, but his presence and now his absence can never be measured by it. Even in this seemingly small oeuvre, marked by long spells of inaction and revelry, there were all kinds of films – personal, milieu, realistic, historical, farcical etc. This diversity itself marks him off. But more than that, life itself was his medium par excellence.

Enamored of films from his teens, he went to Pune to join FTII. But institutions were always allergic to him, and he couldn't get admission. So he was forced to hone his skills outside the ramparts of the Institution. Evidently, he was after something radically different, which one finds reflected in his early works. In a period when everyone crawled when asked to bend, he and his friends like Backer and Chandran made Kabani Nadi Chuvannappol. It was a very daring film and one of the few films made during Emergency that dared to revolt.

His first independent work Yaro Oral (1978) is undoubtedly one of the most significant works in the history of Malayalam cinema. One of the very few 'personal' films in Malayalam, it was a film that broke all the rules. It was a quintessential Pavithran film, with its dark, pungent humour, utter disregard for naturalism, deep sense of humanity, total negation of realism and linearity etc. Though it was a typical film of the period with its long static shots and extended spells of silence, no other film had dared to take it to such extremes, and the critics hailed it as a 'surreal fable about death'.

In his next films, Uppu (1986) and Utharam (1989), he indulged in the very same realistic styles he spurned earlier. But he did it with a definite style and mastery over form and narration, something that further validated his rejection in a way. Uppu still remains one of the most sensitive films about the Muslim milieu in Kerala, and Utharam was a fast-paced psychological thriller parading all the stars of the period. In his last work, Kuttappan Sakshi, he tried to develop his own style further and make it address the challenges of the changing times. It was a hilarious but severely critical journey through the history of Kerala, looking at the life of the subaltern that has remained unchanged beneath the glossy surface of Kerala's progress and progressiveness. Made with a shoestring budget, this very disturbing and introspective film didn't get the exposure it deserved.

But beyond these handful of films, Pavithran will be remembered for his warmth, his vitriolic sense of humour, his ability to make every moment of life into a celebration, his keen understanding of music (this was something that was lacking in almost all the filmmakers of his generation, especially of the 'new wave' group. Incidentally, he did the music score to TV Chandran's Krishnankutty), his anarchic love that transformed the life and understanding of many of his friends like me, for his total indifference for recognition of any kind, and above all, for the way he valued friendship and camaraderie over everything else.


Adieu, Pavi..