There is a deceptive
simplicity about Adoor Gopalakrishnan's new film
Naalu Pennungal (Four Women). Each episode
of the film is a pithy understatement –
they are tales of unconsummated love that excavate
the despair of women's lives. Naalu Pennungal
weaves together four different episodes based
on the stories of the celebrated writer Thakazhi
Sivasankara Pillai depicting the condition of
women in the mid-20th century central Kerala:
Oru Niyamalanghanathinte Katha (Story of an
Illegal Act), Kanyaka (The Virgin), Chinnu Amma
and Nithya Kanyaka (Eternal Virgin).
The film is an incisively clinical look at the
condition of women from different stations of
life and status in society. The low caste Kunjipennu
(Padmapriya) and her lover in the first part (Oru
Niyamalanganathinte Katha) despairingly assert
their relationship as husband and wife before
a social system that do not accord human-ness
to them. The condition of the rest of the women
in the other episodes is no different. If it is
an aggressively exploitative patriarchal system
that looms over the Kunjipennu's life, in Kanyaka,
it is indifference and impotence. Here the father
is incapable of protecting or empowering her,
while her husband is a moron, aroused only by
food and money-making. Kumari, (played by Geetu
Mohandas) is left behind, bitter and despairing,
but resolute in her loneliness. She asserts before
her parents and the neighbours that her marriage
never happened. If in Kumari’s case, the
marriage is never consummated, in the case of
Chinnu Amma, it is motherhood that fatefully
evades her. Chinnu Amma (played by Manju Pillai)
is another story of fruitless fidelity and the
never-ending wait for an offspring. When an occasion
presents itself to break away from it, she shirks
herself out of that temptation of flesh and progeny,
and decides to shut herself in the prison of being
a 'virtuous' wife. The fourth episode (Nithya
Kanyaka) presents an array of women in different
facets: the protective mother torn between what
is rightful and proper, and the exigencies of
everyday life (KPAC Lalitha); the temptress and
sensuous girl, nubile and inviting, fiercely possessive
and assertive (Kavya Madhavan) and the eternal
virgin who is fated to play the role of the sacrificing
nurturer and surrogate mother to all, Kamakshi
(Nandita Das). Whatever life offers to Kamakshi
are snatched away from her, and she ends up living
'for the sake of' things other than her self and
her body. The film ends with Kamakshi affirming
as if in response to the pleading knocks at the
door and directly to the audience, the possibility
of women living without a male companion.
 Naalu
Pennungal is about non-consummation of love,
or the impossibility of love, and the systemic
exclusion of women from any 'transgression'. One
of the recurring motifs in the film is that of
closed and closing doors. Sometimes it is the
woman who closes the door upon the world, more
often it is the other way round.
It is the extreme minimalism in form that strikes
the viewer immediately. There is no rhetoric or
flamboyance of any kind – visual, aural
or narrative. Composed mostly of mid-shots of
a detached observer, the film resonates with a
kind of energy that invites the viewer not to
identify but observe, not to sloganeer but to
reflect upon a certain human condition that seems
to envelop the lives of women like a shroud.
Women have always been a marginal presence in
Adoor films. Even when they were central to the
story, they remained a magical presence or an
absence that is filled in by the desires and anxieties
of the male hero (Anantaram (1987)),
or one whose presence is made all the more poignant
by her physical absence (Mathilukal (1990)).
The most significant quality of Naalu Pennungal
is that it doesn't fall into the trap of a psychological
realism that vainly hopes to enter into the woman's
mind and explicate its inner motives and patterns.
Or, to put it crudely, Adoor doesn't pretend to
make a
'feminist' movie that claims to voice the angst
and anger of women but instead steadfastly remains
detached from such easy temptations. It rather
portrays women with deep empathy and any kind
of fist-clenching and condemnation is alien to
its form and treatment.
All the powerful and aggressive men in the film
are totally self-centred and engrossed in themselves.
The frustrated drunkard conspires against Kunjipennu
to wreak revenge, and all the judges in the court
jeer at their 'claim' to be husband and wife.
In Kanyaka, the husband is a glutton,
her father is physically debilitated and the neighbour
who feigns to help is only good at spreading canards
about her. In Chinnu Amma, the husband
is unable to fulfill her desire for an offspring,
while the crafty paramour only tries to talk her
into fulfilling 'his' lust. In Nithya Kanyaka,
the whole family becomes a mechanism of exploitation,
turning their daughter Kamakshi into a slave for
its own continuity, comfort and survival. And
all the acts of rebellion on the part of women
are acts of moving away from the clutches of the
System – legal, familial, social and moral
– and into a solitary world of one's own.
The institution of marriage and the place of
woman in it are central to each narrative. In
all the episodes, the family as such is never
consummated, made whole, and it is always marked
by a lack or an absence. It is only in the case
of Kunjipennu that it is a positive and liberating
possibility. But that desire of theirs is firmly
crushed by society and the system. For Kumari,
though she is technically married, it is not consummated
through bodily union, and she has to break away
from it. In the case of Chinnu Amma, despite being
married and sexually active, she is unable to
bear a child and attain motherhood. The only opportunity
that tempts her is one that would require the
denial of the family, or compromising her fidelity.
Nithya Kanyaka poses both the impossibility
of marriage for Kamakshi and the fragility of
the marriage of her younger sister, who is married
and has kids. The institution of marriage takes
several equally illusory forms here and like any
other ideal, always remains treacherous or elusive
in reality.
These women have no access to power or control
over their sexuality; all their desires are actually
the obverse desires of the male society that envelopes
them. And it is this marginalization of their
selves and desires that Naalu Pennungal
thematically frontalises for us. Formally, it
is this very spirit of economy and minimalism
that stands out in sharp relief. In a way, it
is history at its barest. For all those who look
for conclusions and closures, assertions and easy
messages, the film would be an enigma.
What the film tries to do or depict is not what
Thakazhi the writer was up to in his time. Even
while being a 'period film' in the strict sense
of the term, the film works like a live memorial
to the contemporary viewer – a memorial
that constantly reanimates our
history/memory to pose uneasy counterpoints to
the present and also very startling and disturbing
continuities.
MJ Radhakrishnan’s cinematography impressively
captures the varying moods and tones of the narrative
and the mindscapes. The dimly lit interiors of
Kerala houses and places like toddy shops have
never been so evocatively imaged. Similarly, the
skin tones of the characters. Likewise, Issac
Kottukapally’s music is employed very sparsely
but pointedly to subtly underline and evoke various
motifs that run through the narrative.
The end of Naalu Pennungal is sure to
remind one of Swayamvaram (1972). In
Adoor’s first film, Seetha is also left
alone, with an uncertain and gloomy future staring
at her. The fragile wooden door between her and
the outside world rattles ominously. In Naalu
Pennungal, the fourth episode begins and
ends with the pleading knocks of a man at Kamakshi's
door. But the eternal virgin here is more resolute,
for she holds no illusions about the world. The
male world upon which she has slammed the doors
is one where she knows she will neither find freedom
nor fulfillment of any kind. Pleasure is still
far away, remote and ever elusive, which is how
the film makes its vital connections with the
contemporary.
Dr C S Venkiteswaran, is a Kerala based
film critic who has won state and national awards
for film criticism. He is now Director, School
of Media Studies, Kochi, Kerala. He writes regularly
about film in various national and international
journals.
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