Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Adoor Gopalakrishnan (born July 3, 1941, Pallickal [now in Kerala], British India [now India]) is an Indian filmmaker who was one of the leading figures in the New Indian cinema movement of realistic and issue-based filmmaking that arose in the 1970s. His best-known works were Elippathayam (1982; Rat-Trap), Mathilukal (1990; The Walls), and Nizhalkkuthu (2002; Shadow Kill).

Gopalakrishnan was born into a family of patrons of the classical dance form kathakali. He graduated from the Gandhigram Rural Institute, Dindigul, in 1960 with a degree in economics, political science, and public administration.

Gopalakrishnan studied cinema at the Film Institute of India (now the Film and Television Institute of India) in Poona (now Pune) and obtained a diploma in 1965. Afterward he founded the Chitralekha Film Cooperative in Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram), which produced and distributed films that were an alternative to the commercial Malayalam cinema industry in Kerala, and the Chitralekha Film Society, which was the first in a wave of organizations that showed classic and artistically ambitious films of both India and the West.

Throughout his career, Gopalakrishnan made both narrative films and documentaries. Excelling in the art of storytelling, Gopalakrishnan developed an austere, neorealist style of filmmaking. His debut feature film, Swayamvaram (1972; “One’s Own Choice”), which won him the National Award for best film, deals with the complexities of living in an urban milieu, portraying the protagonist’s struggle to maintain a meaningful relationship with his wife while battling poverty. The movie also garnered him the first of several National Awards for direction. His second film, the National Award-winning Kodiyettam (1977; “Ascent”), is set in the countryside and concentrates on the protagonist’s attempt to move from a meaningless physical existence toward a more fulfilling emotional one.

Rat-Trap examines the end of feudalism in Kerala through one family’s fall from power. The Walls is set in a British colonial prison in the 1940s and is about a political activist who falls in love with an unseen woman in a neighbouring prison after hearing her voice. Gopalakrishnan’s Kathapurushan (1995; “The Man of the Story”) examines the life of a communist activist from 1937 to 1980; it won the National Award for best film. In Shadow Kill, a hangman grapples with the knowledge that he executed an innocent man.

Gopalakrishnan’s later films included Naalu Pennungal (2007; Four Women), which was based on short stories by the Indian writer Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, and the family drama Pinneyum (2016; Once Again). Eau/Ganga (1985; “Water/Ganges”), an impressionistic work about the Ganges (Ganga) River, is one of his many documentaries.