Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Remembering Dr M M Alex

Remembering Dr M M Alex

The earliest image of Dr M M Alex, who had been my college mate in C MS college Kottayam in the seventies , is of a lean boy dressed in Kaavi, an affinity he has kept till his end .He has been then seen more with Aravindhan or Sethu. We parted company  for several years. Then  suddenly he makes an appearance in Madras  as an actor in Tamil and Malayalam >By that time he had  some  memorable roles in raajavintxe makan and thoovanathumbikal I remember him introducing me Lohithadas , who as a playwright has  just won  an academy award winning  playwright . Three of us walked from the lanes of Taj to Gemini. Lohi made history with his scripts and cinema. Alex left altogether cinema
 I think he did the wise thing at an young age .He has then started working on a video cassette on shabarimala Ayyappan, one of the first in the direction He started immersed in vedic literature and ha s established Vedik India society. It seems his lectures on Hinduism were a hit in the Us universities.
He was not only guru to heaven seekers but was in the company of parliamentarians, judges and industrialists. I remember him ordering   a ship of coal to Chennai when a company wanted it badly. Though he could dabble in the money making game he cut it short. I remember an occasion when he refused crores worth of an offer if it  materiliased , a lesson I have also imbibed
He knew the intricacies of the labyrinthine paths in politics and religion and business and coursed through it effortlessly which many could not do .Many become a prisoner of money or power or fame.
One thing  kept him preoccupied . His passion for cinema .He was a notable villain in the eighties and could have made some films but he has turned his mind to otherworldly pursuits a change I have observed every morning during our walks through thiruvanmiyur beach, Chennai. I also remembr him actively campaigning for special jury award for jyothirmayi for he brilliant performance ,as a jury member of the national film awards. He got married and have two successful kids
He enjoyed life and extorted everybody to do the same. A passion he has had till his last moments,which many shared this day
My pranaaams


Thursday, June 18, 2015

The many faces of love in cinema





The many faces of love in cinema


Love is the stuff of which many of the cinemas are made of. Most of the cinemas are expressions of or delineation of the feeling that runs through our arteries which is engulfing us like a flame. I remember looking for all the music shops in madras for Schubert`s unfinished symphony after reading Kurosowas autobiography. Finally I have landed with a piece conducted by Karajan. In those days if I hadn’t come across Schubert it would have been  one of the greatest day of disappointment  for me. What is for me Schubert and Kurosowa.  His last lines if you do love them have your hands clapped raised in me an unnatural feel of the love he had portrayed. So was a very short film by Jean Renoir in a summer night  or so or Doctor Zhivago. The last scene in which Zhivago goes after Laura in a railway station in Russia has always been etched in my memory. Cinema has always reinvented love ,the way we love the way we live, the way civilization go forward. Theres is in Sarjevo where the lovers of different faith tryng to escape the mass anger and crushed by the border.One of the finest love stories I have watched is based on the ethnic conflict there
 But as we grow old and new millennium draws it seems we have become more diffident and less revolting. If we look at the new symbols of love we would be appalled by the conformism it preaches the ephemeral quality it ends its own lethargic stupefying presence in the wide screen It is more peripheral it is more skin deep and doesn’t have the real feel to touch the barriers time caste creed and age has set in
Consider the portrayal of love in Malayalam cinema
The 1954 film Neelakuyil has brushed aside the old feelings of caste and religion and more forthcoming in its revolutionary them . An upper caste man loving a dalith girl the mesmerizing act of miss kumari and Sathyan set to Raghavans music and Janamma Davids words through p bhaskarans lyrics Even after half a century it remains the cannon around which love would be measured It was revolutionary brve and path breaking
The same ethos was continued in chemmeen even though it was more a pop art than avant garde film. That a woman could abandon her husband and could look for her lover even though it is against the laws of the sea ( an aberration done by the writer) it was revolutionary .Kallichellamma went one step ahead .a true change in the gender perspective
But what do we have now?
Love guaranteed by parents and solemnized by the caste and religion more institutionalized by creed and ideas retrograde experiments which may bring in moolah
Does our new film makers have tallest the courage of KG George or Padmarajan or even Adoor /
Actually what we do see nowadays is a corruption of our tastes bringing in the ingredients of tamil pop culture which fantasies on unnatural feelings and retrograde ideas.
Do we fail to recognize love and portray love as it happens or do we give away ourselves to cynical sentimentalism and say it is reflective of the times
When Juliet said
~where art thogh Romeo
deny they father and refuse thy name ~
history of love was made but when it is being trivialized it might bring in moolah but is a travesty of love