Shankarabharanam

So far as I can remember, my father appeared to us no big fan of the cinema. While he approved of my enthusiasm for Laurel and Hardy and condemned my poor teenage sister’s insistence on going to watch the wonderful Hindi films of the Sixties, I’m sure neither of us can recall his presence at any of those films.

In all, so far as going to the movies was concerned, I only went to see two films with him: Oh God and Shankarabharanam. Some of the rationale behind my luring him to these films lay in the fact that, to me, he resembled the protagonist in both.
By that age, he seemed to me, on the one hand, a George Burns and, on the other, the story symbolized for me his life, as I saw it, of intimate friendship with God. As for the other film, it is as if I sensed that he had once a fascination for Carnatic.

Shankarabharanam is a Telugu language film and my father was from Andhra, the region in South India where this "Italian of the East" was spoken. This film, like many another Indian movie, is replete with songs. The difference is that Shankarabharanam mainly features classical Indian music.

To me, Jonnalagadda Venkata Somayajulu strongly resembled my father. There was a grace and gravity in his manner, a delicate tenderness, a beauteous posture of piety and devotion-traits which I saw in my father even in the smallest day to day routines of life. In this film, J.V. Somayajulu is "Shankarabharanam" Sankara Shastri, a Carnatic singer.

All those who have known my father will have mental images of him singing. He would often burst into gentle song to illustrate some stanza from the Bhagavad Gita or even when a fit of humour or appreciation of beauty seized his spirit and drew forth lines from Sankara’s Bhaja Govindam or Kalaidasa’s mellifluous poetry.

Quite a few urban Indian youngsters of the Seventies had turned to Rock and Pop, a trend for which the Hindi film music of the Sixties had already laid a solid basis. However, even in those families where the love of Indian classical music (Which had always been respectable in the South due to its association with devotion and seems to have gained a respectable status in the North post Independence) was not a pivot of daily intercourse, many a young lad and lass had hearts which moved more to the ragas than their bodies to the cacophony which they blared from radios much to the annoyance of sedate elders.

Shankarabharanam is said to mark a turning point in Indian cinema which brought the audience back into the fold of classical music.

Here are some songs from this film with as much information as I can find about them for the moment:




Brocheevaarevaruraa
Raagam: Khamas

Oh, Raghuvara! Would anyone other than you come to my rescue?




Dorakuna Ituvanti Seva
Raagam: bilahari
Can I ever obtain a servitude like this?




Omkara
Raagam: Shankarabharanam
The celestial sound called Om




Sankaraa

Tsukigami or The Haunted Samurai

I knew that I could count on some fun with a Japanese film whose title was The Haunted Samurai. Three years ago, when I was totally under the thrall of Western Media and had no access to anything but Hollywood or Bollywood or other Indian cinematic offerings, my expectations from Japanese film-making would have been sex and gore of the most perverted genre.

But visiting Malaysia opened to me the gates of an amazing audio visual perception of diverse cultures: I have since viewed films from Thailand, Korea, Japan, China, The Philippines, and even lately, one Greek film!

And although I have digested some violent Japanese films ( Boiling Point, for example), my basic journey of initiation into Nipponese cinema took the path of The Twilight Samurai, Train Man, Udon and so many others, to lead me to an entirely new perception of the Japanese psyche as delicate, tender, and value based. And this is what made me buy and view this incredible film.

Director Furuhata Yasuo and cinematographer Kimura Daisaku cast the cute young Tsumabuki Satoshi in the lead role for this wacky period film version of a novel by Asada Jiro "Tsukigami".

Bessho Hikoshiro is a struggling to survive in the caste system of the Bakumatsu era. Separated from his rich wife and son, he now lives with his good for nothing elder brother and wife. A noodle seller tells him that one of his friends, Enomoto, rose in life after praying at a shrine in Mukojima.

One night, a drunken Hikoshiro tumbles down off the road near a small neglected shrine and thinks he has found the one in Mukojima. He offers a prayer ...

Which is answered but alas! Not in quite the way he imagined as one after the other the God of Poverty Iseya, the God of Disease Kuzuryu, and the 1200-year-old God of Death , come to plague him.

The film shows us how he deals with and outwits them. It took me totally by surprise with its enchanting way of tackling the theme. The Rap style music is very foot tapping and way in which the titles roll at the end is delightful.

Death as the Grim Reaper we can live with but who can resist the form it takes in this film?

Arabikatha-a 2007 Indian Malayalam film

Few are the Malayalam films that I have seen and of those little remains that is memorable.

However, I have my cousin-in-laws to thank for sending over a bunch of films from Kerala.

These girls have given me such an amazing pile of movies that I literally wept buckets and am now a confirmed fan of Malayalam cinema.

Arabikatha tops my list for the moment.

Kerala is a very "Communist" State in India. And Indian Communism is very peculiar to India-an eccentric mix of art and literature, of Don Quixotish idealism. Most of the Indian Communists come from high caste families, are not too well off preferring to live off slogans and strikes than to do an honest days work to feed self or family.

Cuba Mukundan is just one such specimen. All he knows is party politics and that too only that of his little town. He is a simple man much loved by all who are acquainted with him. All?

Alas no. He has made his share of enemies in the course of his "protests". And a small bunch of people plot to throw a spoke in his works.

When his father is accused of embezzling money, it is up to him to go out into the real world to pay off the debt. And where do Malayalees go to earn some extra bucks?

Mukundan finds himself adrift in Dubai. Jobs elude. Crooked hearts abound.

Yet the timeless spirit of Indian brotherhood surges to the rescue and strangers with compassionate hearts shelter him.

The tale is entertaining and told with gentleness.

I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to explore films from Kerala.