M Mukundan looked tiny at the end of a big stage facing a crowd of several hundred people spread out at Nishagandhi of Thiruvananthapuram on a December evening two weeks ago. The adored Malayalam writer announced with some joy that his masterpiece novel Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil will be adapted into film. This will not be the first of his literary works taken to cinema. Malayalam cinema history is marked with many such adaptations of literature. Back in the black-and-white days there were a number of literary adaptations, writers turning into scriptwriters in the process. There was a grey patch in between, but Malayalam cinema of recent years is once again returning to books.
“There must be at least 25 to 30 films made from Muttathu Varkey’s writings between the 1950s and ‘70s. Many great writers of those times became associated with films – MT Vasudevan Nair, Vaikom Mohammed Basheer, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, and Ponkunnam Varkey. Some of them turned into scriptwriters,” says film critic and writer GP Ramachandran. One of the most noted films of the 50s, Neelakuyil, about an oppressed caste woman falling in love with a dominant caste man, was based on a story by writer Uroob.
The trend, taking literature in large doses to the big screen, continued actively till the 70s. KS Sethumadhavan, a prolific filmmaker who often paired up with actor Sathyan, was known for this. The late filmmaker had said about one of his best known works, Odayil Ninnu – an adaptation of Kesavadev’s book of the same name – that it worked in his favour that others who tried to adapt it before him had dropped it because they didn’t think a movie about a rickshaw puller would succeed. He’d often face similar doubts voiced by others when he adapted books. Malayattoor Ramakrishnan’s Yakshi was another such, when a producer “had run away fearing failure”, Sethumadhavan once said. But Yakshi, another film that Sathyan led, about a partially burnt professor who begins to wonder if the woman who walked into his life on a rainy night really existed, was a commercial success.
Watch: Song from Neelakuyil
In the 70s though, there was a bit of a shift, both in the number of films adapted from books and the way literature was written. “That was the time of many socio-political changes. Land reforms were implemented, the Gulf migration happened, and a new middle class had formed. It was also the time of modernity in Malayalam literature. Instead of looking at society like earlier works of literature, writers began looking at the individual, at the inner truth and so on. Writers like Mukundan and Zacharia began churning out works of modernism. It was difficult to bring to cinema such literature, as it was not very descriptive,” GP says.
He also finds another marked departure in cinema during this time – how elements of fascism and rightwing politics found its way into films in the 80s, and how literature continued to be free of such influences. GP mentions a string of films that he terms ‘thampuran films’, thampuran being a reference to the feudal lord character played by the male lead actor.
Occasionally though, some lovely works of literature did find its way to cinema in the 90s, such as Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Mathilukal from Basheer’s novel of the same name, Lenin Rajendran’s Daivathinte Vikirthikal and Mazha coming from books by Mukundan and Madhavikutty, Murali Nair's Arimpara from a story by OV Vijayan, and Shyamaprasad’s Agnisakshi from Lalithambika Antharajanam’s. TV Chandran’s Ponthanmada from CV Sreeraman’s stories and KP Kumaran’s Rugmini (1989) from a novella by Madhavikutty also came during this time.
“Some of my novels were adapted for films in the past, but I wasn’t fully involved in their making. I didn’t write scripts for these films. Some films have disappointed me. Daivathinte Vikruthikal, which won the State Award for the best film, was an exception. Raghuvaran’s outstanding performance as Alphonsachan made this film memorable,” Mukundan tells TNM.
Watch: Song from Daivathinte Vikruthikal
He made his first attempt at scriptwriting recently, adapting one of his short stories for the Ann Augustine-Suraj Venjaramoodu film Autorickshawkarante Bharya. It was difficult but he enjoyed writing it, he says.
The one question that writers and filmmakers who adapt literature keep facing is whether the film has been faithful to the source material. Shyamaprasad, a director who has adapted several literary works into his films, finds that question absolutely nonsensical. “That is always the question, whether you are being fair to the original work. But the point is you have to stay true to yourself and your medium. The story is a single element in filmmaking. You observe and reshape it because you are taking it to a different medium. In a novel, everything is said through words. In films, you have a sensory medium, you communicate with visuals, audio, time, and space. Obviously, both will be different. You have to be faithful towards cinema as a medium, to the viewer, and to yourself. If you can do that honestly, you can also be fair to the piece of literary work in your own way,” he says.
This is an area that writers and filmmakers feel strongly about — comparing the film to the book, when both are two different mediums giving two different kinds of expression and enjoyment. Mukundan says that film lovers should watch the film, forgetting completely the novel on which it is based, to avoid deception. “Unfortunately this isn’t possible. Great novels get adapted to movies, so I think I shouldn’t run away from this possibility. In the modern era, a novel has multiple lives – books, movies, audiobooks etc,” he says.
Shalini Ushadevi, who made Akam in 2011 as an adaptation of Malayattoor’s Yakshi and more recently scripted the Tamil film Soorarai Pottru, says that adaptation itself is a work of art. “When you are adapting, unless you are that faithful to the source material, there is a lot of yourself you bring into it. A writer uses a different lens to look at earlier works of art. Yakshi is a great novel. However, I have come across other books that are perhaps not great literary works, but the premise might translate to great films,” she says.
A still from Akam
Shalini was 30 when Akam was made, and her adaptation was a contemporisation of Malayattoor’s 1967 novel. She was responding, she says, to something in the book — in this case the shifting dynamics in the relationship of the protagonists, the professor and his mysterious lover. “What makes sense in the literary world, or rather what makes sense to you as a reader, need not make sense to you as a viewer. These are two different conventions — movie making and writing. My approach is then to think about what resonated with me in the first place,” she says.
Both Shyamaprasad and Shalini speak on similar lines when they say this — that they have to respond to or identify with something in the literary source.
Agnisakshi, Shyamaprasad’s first as a director, won many awards — nine from state and the national award for best feature in Malayalam. The story, written by a woman of a different time, was one that he, a man of another generation, could identify with, Shyamaprasad says. “That is a key part, identifying with it. So you make that story your own instead of just filming or illustrating a story. In my experience, it is always more satisfying to base your work as a director on something really substantial, or something that captivated you while you read the book, rather than manufacturing a story. It is a different case if you are also a storywriter making a film. I have done both — adapt from existing works and create entirely new stories. My experience with making a story just for a movie has always been disappointing personally,” he adds.
Watch: Song from Agnisakshi
Shyamaprasad doesn’t want to make a sweeping statement that movies did better in the time periods when a large number of them were adapted from books, “because there have always been good and bad films.” But you can observe how in the late 90s and the early 2000s, when Malayalam cinema went through struggling times, literary adaptations were also fewer in number. Writers Mukundan and Hareesh agree that bringing literature to cinema has done the latter medium good. Both of them mention Chemmeen, a landmark film in Malayalam movie history, adapted from Thakazhi’s iconic novel by the same name, telling the love story of a Hindu woman and a Muslim merchant in the fishing community. Mukundan says, “Chemmeen was as good as the novel it came from. Good novels should be adapted to cinema only if talented directors come forward.”
It is afterward, in the 2010s, that new ideas began dropping on Malayalam cinema, revival of literature-based movies being one of them. Shalini’s Akam, Shyamaprasad’s newer movies like Artist (based on Dreams in Prussian Blue by Paritosh Kuttam), Lijo Jose Pellissery basing his famously experimental films on the works of PF Mathews or S Hareesh — all of it happened in 2010s, a period in which Malayalam cinema is reckoned to have climbed back to the heights it had fallen from.
Hareesh, whose Maoist became the source of Lijo’s Jallikattu, also ridicules the notion of drawing parallels between movies and the books they are based on. “The mediums are different, the kind of viewer enjoyment is different, the language is different. When you are a writer, you are doing every little bit of it the way you want to. But when you are scripting, you keep the director’s interest in mind, on what they see in the story. The whole responsibility of whether the film becomes good or bad lies on the director,” Hareesh says.
From Jallikattu
Shalini, who has also scripted films for other directors, makes a similar observation. When she writes for her own film, she knows what appeals to her and how it is going to play out on the screen. But when she writes for another, she has to get a sense of what works for that person.
Together though, the writer-director combo appears to work some wonders, the beauty of two expressive mediums merging into one. In the decades that show an overflow of literature into cinema, there have always been a lot of notable works, discussed, appreciated, or critiqued. We are having one such period now. Lijo’s hugely discussed Churuli was an adaptation of a short story by Vinoy Thomas. We have also just had GR Indugopan’s Ammini Pilla Vettu Case coming out in film as Oru Thekkan Thallu Case.
More book-based movies are awaited — Blessy’s Aadujeevitham starring Prithviraj from Benyamin’s hugely popular book on the real life struggles of a Gulf Malayali, Aashiq Abu bringing Basheer’s horror novel Neela Velicham to the screen, Mahesh Narayanan teaming up with Fahadh Faasil to adapt MT’s short story Sherlock. Good times, it seems.