Thursday Jan 08 2009, Trivandrum

Kanjeevaram: Art vs. Art-y!!

Directed by - Priyadarsan

Produced by - Shailendra Singh, Bhushan Kumar

Music by - M.G.Sreekumar

Casts - Jayakumar, P.Sreekumar, Geetha Vijayan, Sampath Kumar, Dr.Bharadwaj etc.

Starring - Prakash Raj, Shreya Reddy

A film from Priyadarsan’s heart as against all that he churned out from his ‘mind’ would have been better off without the arty pretension and period flavour that he once constantly mocked in his movies and interviews.

‘Kanjeevaram’ is supposedly Priyan’s passion project, meaning, one that has no corny comedy or zany slapstick.
This movie, for all practical purposes, is for the awards, and meant to establish the director for his true artistic capabilities and vision.
Sure enough, Priyan has managed to take ‘Kanjeevaram’ through the right film festival circuit, and the darling of the masses is turning ‘classy.’
If only the movie too lived up to the hype.
‘Kanjeevaram’ is a one-dimensional melodrama that is so utterly predictable and often downright silly that it hardly tickles the grey cells. It reinforces the argument that Priyan is better off in his turf, churning out mindless comedies, and of course, he has mastered that art.
There is no doubting the cinematic quality of ‘Kanjeevaram’ from a technical perspective. The film has the trademarks of a classic – but sadly, it is thoroughly cosmetic. Dig deeper into the movie, and it is as hollow as any Priyan venture. And therein lies the problem.
Just as Santosh Sivan, who made memorable, unpretentious movies like ‘The Terrorist’ slipped with ‘Before the Rains’, yet managed to gain international acclaim, Priyan too leverages on this newfound ‘Western’ acceptance for ‘Indian period’ movies to mark his milieu in ‘art cinema.’
The focus of the filmmakers is all too obvious: Their viewer is not the Indian, who will easily wade the shallowness of the films, but the ‘Western’ critic, who will sit enamoured with all those magical images of India and forget that the content hardly qualifies for great cinema.
‘Kanjeevaram’ fails where it should have won: The script. Priyan tries to salvage the situation with the flash-back technique, giving it a sort of quixotic appeal but setting the story in a run-down bus from the past, and stealing a few moments for comic relief.
But move into the heart of the story – the sad tale of Vengadam (Prakash Raj), a thoroughly talented weaver in Kanchipuram – and the movie falters. Every moment of the film seems to be centred on a quirky one-liner: “The weaver never gets to wear a piece of silk.” So from birth to death and all that struggle in between, Vengadam’s life is centred on one mission: “Weave a silk sari for his daughter’s marriage.”
He steals remorselessly, and in between, his wife dies, he becomes fascinated by the Communist ideology, and he turns turncoat on his comrades. All because he wanted that silk sari woven from stolen thread completed in time.
After the film’s screening at the Dubai International Film Festival, Priyan said that he was not making a political statement with his movie. All he wanted to tell us was that people can tend to be exceedingly selfish, and even ideology will not stand in the way of a ‘selfish father.’
If selfishness is all the core of the narrative theme, why labour into the past miseries of the weavers in Kanchipuram? Why bring in any ideology? Why all these pretention of high art, when your ware is wafer-thin?
In fact, the answers lie in the questions: Priyan needs the best of both worlds. He needed the ‘ambience’ of the past to create the illusion of ‘high art’, and also try a hand at mass appeal by giving a one-dimensional story.
Priyan says his objective was to make a film (of class) that does not have the weariness of the ‘art movies’ While our arthouse moviemakers have indeed spoiled us with their high-brow approach, there is no doubting the sheer weight of thought that has gone into movies like ‘Swayamvaram’
The ending of Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s debut feature is still a lesson for aspiring movie-makers, and Priyan could still learn a lesson or two from the master, given that there is so much in common with the two moviesAfter all, ‘Swayamvaram’ and ‘Kanjeevaram’ are both about the utter helplessness of individuals, when facing situations that are beyond their control, and being exposed to the shifting tides of ideology