The Imperfect Cinema of an erratic genius – John Abraham article
P.K Nair writes about John Abraham’s Malayalam film ‘Amma Ariyan'...
Master of Imperfection
If I were to pick up one Malayalam film , that is truly a landmark , my choice would unhesitatingly be John Abraham’s 1986 black and white political reportage Amma Ariyan ( Report to Mother ). John who died young in May 1987, I would recall with fond memories as an “erratic genius”. All his films (he made only four features) are master works of imperfection. He never believed in cosmetic perfection in Cinema let alone in Life itself. No wonder he could not get along with self styled “ perfectionists “ who loathed him when he was alive and struggling but were quick to join the bandwagon to sing euologies, once he is no longer there.
“People’s Cinema”
Amma Ariyan is an eloquent testimony to John’s commitment to what he spearheaded : “The Odessa movement for a People’s Cinema “- a Cinema which breaks all the shackles of filmmaking , right from the funding monsters to the monopolists in the prevalent production , distribution and exhibition system . In that sense Amma Ariyan is more than a film. It’s an event and a torch bearer to a certain mission and commitment. As it happens with such mavericks, John could not help himself being consumed by the flames of the very torch he was heralding to his fellow filmmakers. ….. .
The Story
Preparing to leave for Delhi, PURUSHAN bids his mother goodbye, promising to write to her regularly. In the thinly populated forest area of Vayanad , (north east of Karalla) the jeep in which he is travelling is stopped by the Police, who take possession of it to carry a dead body found hanging on the wayside tree. The dead man’s face looks familiar to Purushan. He becomes restless and is ceased with a pathological obsession to find out the identity of the deceased. Against the wishes of his girl friend, he abandons his trip to Delhi and sets out to seek his friends who may have some clue. Purushan meets journalist friends , doctors , and finally a veteran comrade, fondly addressed as Balettan ( Elder brother Balan ) who identifies the dead as the fellow musician who accompanied Satyajit , the guitarist . Satyajit confirms the deceased is his friend Hari, the tabla player. Together they decide to inform Hari’s mother who stays in Cochin. They set out on a long eventful journey from the northern highlands of Vayanad to the Southern port city of Cochin ……
As they move from Calicut to, Beypore, Crangannore Trichur, Kottapuram, Vypin, and finally to Fort Kochi (Cochin). the group swells as they meet many mothers and their sons and relatives who have known Hari , Some had known him as a table player , some as Tony , the jazz drummer and others as a silent political activist , a victim of police brutality , and a loner . Drug addict and one who used to drown his sorrow and pain in his music ……..Through their recollections, Hari’s rather diffused identity unfolds. His classmates remember Hari as an introvert, weak indecisive. His worker comrades identify him as a staunch revolutionary with a strong resistance and will power. But then what went wrong?
The colonial past of the places , what they took from us and what they left behind as well as the peoples’ protests and uprisings , the region witnesses and their heroes and victims are integrated into the narrative , by way of information as well as critiquing .
As Purushan and his group wait for Hari’s mother to come out of the baptism ceremony from the church, they analyse their own past, nod the emerging debate focuses on the romantic evasions and tragic failures of the extremist movement. When Hari’s mother finally turns up and faces the youth congregation, she asks “Suicide wasn’t it? “The film ends with Purushan’s mother watching Hari’s mother wiping her tear in the film
The Journey
The whole film is designed in the form of a “journey” - the journey of life Putrushan sets out for the journey with the intention of going North ( Delhi ) but after his encounter with “death” he reverses the direction and travels South from the forests of Vayanad in North Kerala to Fort Kochi , the port city , traversing practically the whole of Malabar , a land which had a long tradition of political activity and people’s movements in Kerala? Even though John came from further down, Kottayam, he seemed to have a thorough grasp of the political and cultural history of this region. The film is an eloquent testimony to this.
History of class struggles
While reporting to his mother about Hari and his friends and their mothers on his southbound journey, John also reconstructs the history of the land through a series of class struggles, student protests, and workers’ union clashes that took place in the region where Purushan traversed. Starting with the medical students agitation against commercialization of medical education ( a topical issue to this day ), to a short dialogue with Karuppuswamy, the unfortunate victim who had lost both his legs in a colliery workers’ struggle for better wages and human dignity , in Kottapuram , to Vypin island where several mazdoors (labourers )either died or lost their eyesight in the man made hooch tragedy, to the citizens group’s forcible taking over of rice and sugar hoarded by unscrupulous black marketer traders and distributing to ordinary people at fair prices and giving back the money colleted to the traders , to the manipulated fight between workers of two feuding unions in a Mattanchery street in Fort Kochi. Where four fishermen had died, and also some targeted working class leaders in a fake Police encounter , an abortive factory workers’ strike extending solidarity to the retrenched women workers in Fort Kochi … are some of the long list of peoples protests and struggles reported with deep concern and feeling by Purushan in a long letter to his Mother …..
Unforgettable moments
The way John has captured the individual reactions to the tragedy shows his keen sense of observation of life and human beings. Purushan goes to Neelambur Balan (Balettan) who is in the midst of a drinking session with his fellow comrades. On hearing the tragic news one of the comrades comment: “It’s true . It’s true ….. While another says: “How sad ….How sad …. “
John exposes the hypocritical reaction of pseudo comrades to personal tragedies. Vasu, another disillusioned extremist at a later point remarks “You may go. There is no point in my coming “ Hari’s father contemptuously abuses Purushan and his fellow comrades as self styled revolutionary dogs and calling them “ scoundrels “ but breaks down as he raises his hand to slap Purushan who conveys news of his son’s suicide . And finally the real mother reacts “Suicide wasn’t it? I could never understand him, his dreams and desires …,” as she takes out her glass, wipes her tearful face, and puts it back. The action gets repeated on the improvised film screen being watched by Purushan’s mother who gets up and walks away with the crowd as the end of Amma Ariyan and the film within the film coincide reinforcing John’s last mission : “ that it’s not merely making of such films but showing them to the common people , countering the well entrenched exhibition monopoly, that really matters ….”
“Balettan enjoying the Tamil song sung by the jeep driver “ Chilar Chirippar Chilar azhuthar Gnan chirichhukonden azhutindren….Gnan azhukonde chirikindren … ( Some people laugh , some cry but I keep on laughing while crying …. ,, and crying while laughing….,) and Balettann instigating him to sing one of his Tamil favourites …. “ Irandavanaiyum appidi irandavanaiyum chumandavanum irandittar... Athe iruppavarum enni patha marandittar … (He who bore the dead on his backs ... he also died …The alive forgot to count the number that died ….)
The baby doll dangling behind the windscreen as the jeep steers through the highways and bridges comes as a disturbing reminder to the viewer of the suicidal hanging which we went through earlier. Whomsoever Purushan meets to join the journey - all friends and well wishers of Hari including his critics - are all engaged in some activity or the other – whether , directing a play “ Wee Wee Mandela …” , repairing a fishing boat , conducting a Judo training class on the sea beach , or consoling a mentally deranged sister who suspects every knock at the door is that of the Police or playing the drums in a jazz music session . The scene which I can never forget is the our where the woman palmist sitting at the backside door asking for “ Dakshina” ( sacred gift ) extending the ritualistic chess board and starts reading the palm of the housewife ,narrating the fortunes of her radicalism son and the measures to be taken to ward off the evil in his life .. A youth from Purushan’s group turns up in the front enquiring about their comrade Vasu. As the youth waits for Vasu and skips through a book of photographs , the palmist’s marathon narration goes on uninterrupted behind By juxtaposing the soothsayer’s words of wisdom and prophesy ( ? ) Which son Vasu debunks as waste of time with the some of the unforgettable photographs of the last century, of human suffering and intolerance. John makes his point about life and belief quite eloquent. A totally disillusioned Vasu rejects the idea of accompanying the group as it’s not going to serve any purpose...
The master scene one can never forget is cameraman Venu’s marathon walk to and fro with his handheld camera through the long winding queues of men women and children waiting for food grains snatched from the illegal hoarders and black marketers being distributed by people’s protesters . Mrinal Sen who had not seen the film earlier was taken aback when I showed him the clip in the Archive Steinbeck table and immediately selected it for inclusion in his edition of Indian Cinema for the BFI ‘s Centenary of Cinema Project .
When the driver asks Balettan, how Marxism and drinking get along, he explains: “Marxism is my philosophy but the practical aspects of it do not appeal to me … and drinking is my ….” He doesn’t complete the sentence but goes on to add later “Marxism has often had a laugh at me ….” Though a hard core leftist himself John does not fight shy of criticising trade union leaders who sided with the capitalist management, Police and the bureaucracy in crushing down genuine workers’ protests ….. He says while narrating the Fort Cochin strike for reinstatement of retrenched women employees one among the long list of abortive attempts in Kerala’s politics …….
The Great Mother – not one but many
As in all primitive cultures which have the power to overcome contradictions of faith , in Kerala too radicalism has gone hand in hand with the mother cult The mother goddess is worshipped in its varied forms - as Devi , Bhagavathi , Parvathi and Kali – all alternate forms of Durga , the consort of Lord Shiva . The embodiment of energy and destruction. The traditional matrilineal kinship , sensitively shown in the scene between the mother and the son’s betrothed drying the wet cloth in the sun , in a way points to the strong influence Purushan ( also means The Man ) has in defining his personal radicalism . The male (Purushan) seeking an umbilical solace in the female (Nature) through the expression of his inner self thereby becomes the crux of John’s narrative. “Suicide” is something that John tries to come to grips with as the little boy asks: “Father, what’s suicide? “ And Purushan clumsily tries to explain but fails ….
Two mothers in the film -one Hindu and the other Muslim ask themselves and to us: “why these youngsters are committing suicides? “, As we look at their faces, we realize John is not telling the story of one mother and one son but of several mothers and several sons and also the tragedy of a time in Kerala’s socio political- and cultural history. As with Ghatak, for John also the mother image is the most vibrant cohesive force in Nature which binds people of different sensitivity together. His protagonist’s journey begins and ends with the same belief.
Alone in the crowd
As the journey proceeds and Purushan takes stock of his life and goes into reflections of his umbilical links with his mother and the beloved as they always appear together as a single entity in his mind , he finds himself more and more alienated from the group and their ideology ,( if they have one ). The alienation becomes complete towards the fag end of the film with an arresting image of him lying alone in bed of flowers under a tree and the camera captures his face in a way that reminds us of the dead face of Hari in the mortuary His total identification with Hari takes him to come to terms with himself and both the mothers ….
Premonition of Death
One keeps wondering at the repeated image of the dead body in the mortuary which John keeps on showing again and again almost to the point of an obsession. I was told John’s body after his accidental death , falling from a terrace on the wee hours of 31st May 1989 and not getting prompt medical attention , was kept in the same mortuary in the same Calicut Medical College Hospital . The repetitive images of the dead face of Hari, who had a strange resemblance to John himself, provokes me to think that perhaps John had some premonition of his impending departure ….. The repetition rises to significant heights as if the author - filmmaker is recording his own death, which is to happen few months later …. Only a John Abraham could have conceived such a weird thought.
Truly a landmark
In one sense John was narrating a fictional story. But he was also talking about real people, and Real events which have become part of our socio cultural history. The film therefore can’t be discarded as mere fiction. It’s much more than that. There is so much of truth in it to provoke all of us to think for many years to come. Perhaps John was trying to explore a new form of Cinema which defies any Pigeon hole categorization. In that sense it’s undoubtedly a landmark.….
