Shyamaprasad talks about his 3 influences in cinema

The BIFFes jury member says out of every 100 Indian films, just about 10 are good

Shyamaprasad’s films are poetic and melancholic. His films, some of which have won national awards, are sombre meditations on life.

Although his filmography is entirely in Malayalam, he brings a sensibility that is more cosmopolitan than most Malayalam filmmakers, with stories of gay men and Anglo-Indians, some adapted from Anton Chekhov and Sunil Gangopadhyay, and with musical references to Ludwig van Beethoven and the Beatles.

He was at BIFFes as a jury member in the Asian film category, and in an exclusive conversation with Showtime, he spoke about his formative influences. Excerpts:

What is it like when a filmmaker turns jury member?
When you are a filmmaker, and even before that, you are still a film viewer. You are someone who loves the medium. So, you basically judge from the point of view of the viewer. Technical evaluation comes next. But if the film has satisfied you emotionally and aesthetically, it means that it has worked technically also. It’s pretty simple — you keep your heart open and watch it with wholesomeness.

According to you, where are the most interesting film movements happening and filmmakers working currently?
If you take 100 films produced in every country, 80 will be good in Iran. In India, it may 10. In Europe, it may reach 60 to 70. Iran still surprises you, with their deep commitment to humanism and simplicity and great values in art.

Isn’t humanism a big factor in your films too?
That’s not for me to say. That has to be evaluated by viewers and critics. That is one aspect that attracts me to a material. Many of my films are based on books. At first glance, my heart goes to those kinds of stories, rather than the so-called political stories. That is a very complicated area to get into because, in a sense, even these stories are political. Without the social situation, you can’t analyse a human being. So, if we are talking about my ‘Ore Kadal’ (2007), the economic situation of the characters determines the dynamics between them. Many may not look at that as a political situation, but to me, it is.

There are long breaks between your films. Is that because you are searching for material?
Yes, it’s exactly that. I am involved in all levels of the process, even if I am not the writer. In the movies where I am not the screenwriter, I am still very much involved in the writing process. It’s not like one person writes and another directs; it’s not a piecemeal process. That’s why each one takes a long time. I’m just happy I am getting as much done as I do.

You speak a lot about people from the fringe. ‘Akale’ spoke about an Anglo-Indian community, ‘Rithu’ had a gay man for a villain. Do you look out for such stories?
I would say I am interested in the complexity of human life. I am not interested in a normal love story, one where you have a good guy, a good girl and the father is a villain. That sort of simplistic analysis does not attract me at all. I am more interested in good versus good. Or, a lesser good versus another lesser good. That gives me a lot of scope for analysing life and the human mind. And I hope the gay man in ‘Rithu’ didn’t turn out to be a villain. He had his mischief, but I hope that doesn’t make people seem like villains. We are all villains in another person’s story. Those ironies interest me.

I remember seeing an old photo of you from the 80s behind the camera during an interview of John Abraham. Was John ever an influence?
No, John never influenced me. I was in Doordarshan at that time and I produced that interview, which is probably the only surviving documentary about John. Among Malayalam filmmakers, the only possible influence, when it comes to the choice of materials and the way to go about it, is K S Sethumadhavan. He was also enchanted by literature and wanted a certain depth to his films. The idiom of cinema and the tools filmmakers used back then were very different. It was a time before niches like ‘art’ and ‘arthouse’ had been developed. Still, he explored complicated subjects. I wanted to work with him as an assistant.

And didn’t you get the chance to?
He suggested that I don’t become an assistant. Being an assistant meant camping out at Kodambakkam (a euphemism for the Tamil and Malayalam industries of the day). He realised that I am not cut out to be that. He asked me to study somewhere, maybe in a film school. Then I did my theatre and went in a completely different direction. That turned out to be lucky. So, I didn’t have to be an assistant director to anybody. More than him, there was Satyajit Ray. In my formative years, I was attracted to film as a medium and in dealing with life very truthfully after watching Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy. Stylistically and in terms of thematic obsession, a filmmaker who gripped me a lot was Krzysztof Kieslowski, in terms of his use of cinema as a poetic medium to reach a deeper layer of reality. Others like Woody Allen and the Coen brothers are great, too.