Murali Nair’s ‘Unni’: A delectable experience
This Unni could have been named Murali. And why not, as Murali Nair – the one who had debuted with a Cannes Camera d’Or-winning Marana Simhasanam (The Death’s Throne) in 1999 – draws from his own childhood to come up with this delectable mix of innocent storytelling and subtle comments on the societal prejudices as seen through a child’s eyes.
Yes, Nair makes it more tantalizing by telling his audiences – as he did following a screening of his latest film at the 29th Festival of 3 Continents film festival in Nantes in France to an audience comprising yours truly as one of the minority adults amidst a gaggle of highly-curious French school children who seemed overawed after viewing this tale set in rural Kerala – that yes, there are autobiographical elements in his film, but they come with a generous doze of fictional elements. “Which one of the kids were you?” asked one little boy from a local school in this pleasing-to-the-eye birth place of Jules Verne, located 50 miles off the Atlantic coast in Western France. “Which one do you think was me?” counter-questioned Nair, quite clearly aware that the predominantly-French audience – the only other Indian in the audience was Adoor Gopalakrishnan – would not know that the protagonist, just like him, is shown to belong to the Nair community, placed high on the caste ladder in Kerala.
Unni is in many parts a simple fable, and in many parts not, depending on which way one views it. Unni’s father, like many Malayalees, works in the Gulf, and the young kid stays in his well-appointed traditional home with his doting mother and grandmother. Unni’s best friends are, to the annoyance of his family and teachers, belong to lower castes, but children never bother about such ’sensitive’ issues unlike the class and caste-conscious adults.
So he just goes on enjoying his life, playing pranks of teachers, going through growing up pangs, developing a crush on a class mate, and so on. Unni and Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Naalu Pennungal (Four Women) were the only two Indian films to be shown in this year’s edition of the festival that last year became the only film festival worldwide to screen all the 36 films made by Satyajit Ray in a unique effort from the India-loving festival directors, brothers Allain and Phillipe Jalladeau. Coincidentally, both were in Malayalam.
But both stood strong in their own ways amidst over 100 films from Asia, Africa and Latin America (which explains the name, ‘Festival des 3 Continents’) because of the conviction with which they have been made. Nair turns a new leaf with Unni, a simply-told multi-layered piece of work that totally contrasts with his highly-abstract Pattiyude Divasam (A dog’s day) and Arimpara, both of which were screened in the Un certain regard section at Cannes in 2001 and 2003. Nair has developed it as part of a bigger project of a trilogy, with Unni growing up in the subsequent (and yet-to-be-made) two parts, moving out of his village to a city and then to the world. “It is basically my own life’s story, with certain amount of fiction thrown in. Unni speaks about this young boy’s story in a Kerala village, and in the next parts, the boy will grow up, move to a city and maybe to another country. It is partly autobiographical, but when one tries to remember one’s childhood, reality and fiction gets mixed up somewhere,” Nair said after the screening last week. In that, the concept sounds like Ray’s Apu Trilogy, but the director assures us that there will be nothing more dissimilar.
Going by Unni, the future two films of the trilogy will be worth waiting for, but right now Nair is getting ready to make his first Hindi film that will be set in Hyderabad, where he is based right now. Unni has been screened in film festivals in Pusan, Goteburg, Milan, Fribourg, Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Hyderabad, and next it will be seen in Nair’s home state, at the forthcoming International Film Festival of Kerala. Made with a French producer, the film surely struck a chord with the French school children, who bombarded Nair with questions about children in India, the school system and even corporal punishment, and it is unlikely that it would not repeat the feat wherever it gets screened. The film does not have any stars, and that probably explains why it is yet to be released commercially in Kerala, but then, it has been released commercially in Switzerland.
Tags: Malayalam
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It is such a pity that i haven’t seen any of their work: i know their DVDs aren’t available, i don’t know how to see thm : i m located in delhi have no filmy/southindian connection, so how can i watch it: My philosophy prof was interested in showing Mr Adoors movie in the lecture but even he doesn’t know how to find it : can sum 1 help
nikhil
check out the french cultural center in dilli
they have a film club if i am not mistaken… (this info is pretty old – 12 years old actually)
you are bound to find most of adoor’s collection there…
Thanks Dpac for ur help i will certainly chk it out: meanwhile i have come to know Mr Adoor comes in Spic macay so let me see if he is coming to delhi (sharing this info for whoever might be interested)