Elippathayam - a Retrospective
I had made an absurd claim, a few years ago. ‘Malayalam cinema got better in the 2010s, and emerged exceptional during and after the pandemic’. I don’t chide myself though. Growing up in the early 2000s, an era which was filled mostly with absolutely pointless flicks in Mollywood (at least the ones I watched), while at the same time films like Lord of the Rings, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind blew me over, this mindset was inevitable. As my fascination in film grew, I have gradually realised the beauty of the Mollywood antiquity. One such film that completely broke down all my notions, was Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s 1982 magnum opus, ‘ Elippathayam ’.A landmark in the Parallel/New-wave cinema, Elippathayam is set in the era of transition in 1960-70s in the socio-political order of Kerala, with breakdown of the age-old feudal system and the emergence of the world’s first democratically elected Communist government. Unni (Karamana Janardanan Nair) lives in a dilapidated, ‘tharavad’ ...