Can not a woman lead life alone without the prop of a man? On this plaintive plea from Kamakshi, film’s final protagonist, ends master auteur of Malayalam cinema Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s latest oeuvre Naalu Pennungal. Sadly, the same ‘mournful moan springs forth from avowed Adoor’s aficionados for whom the director’s latest tryst is a sore let-down.
Devoid of depth and deftness and directorial acumen one enjoys in Adoor’s cinema, Naalu Pennungal, woefully does not scale up to the class and craftmanship of earlier outings Adoor is legion for. Yes, the selfless spirit to sincerely bring onto celluloid eminent Malayalam writer the late Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s classic stories is evident. However, in his attempts to narrate four different strands of stories knit by the thread of woman’s plight, lack soul. Weighed down with the core concern of capturing the subtleties of the four fables of women’s fortitude in the face of social and societal opprobrium, in different dialectical delineations, the thespian has faltered.
However, this is not to discount the film in toto. For the maestro comes into his elements in the last leg of his four-part story, where his skill is in full play.
While, the first three tales are pithily told in a matter-of-fact manner sans any spark, it is the fourth, thanks to the superlative and brauva performance by versatile and vividly expressive Nandita Das, as the woman fated to spinsterhood, that Adoor’s sheer adroitness shimmers to sparkling effect.
Set in ’40s and ’60s of verdant Kuttanadu, at the core of Adoor’s Naalu Pennungal is how life plays a cruel joke and is a woe on its four principal women — namely a prostitute, a virgin, the housewife and the spinster. Even as there is abundant fertility all around them, their lives, though, is infertile with their aspirations of a marriage or congual consummation rendered infructuous.
For, if the prostitute’s longing for sanctity of marital bliss is shot down by a mocking judicial system and a lecher’s cruelty, the virgin’s life remains thus thanks to an impotent glutton to whom she is married off. While the housewife courts barrenness and respectability to comprising with a well-wisher to bear her a son, an ageing sister is consigned to spinsterhood with a suitable match eluding her.
While the cast do their bit, M J Radhakrishnan’s subtle, sensuous and scintillating cinematography and Isaac Thomas’ moody, measured, harmonic background score match up to austere and assiduous Adoor’s eclectic craftmanship.
