Padmarajan's coming-of age cult classic movie Rathinirvedam

Smells like teen fantasy

TK Rajeev Kumar's latest film — a retelling of Padmarajan's coming-of age cult classic Rathinirvedam was a surprise hit with Kerala audiences. Malavika Velayanikal talks to the director to find out what inspired him to remakethe classic and how he navigates the boundary between commerce and art

If Adam were an adolescent boy, Eve in his fantasy would have been a sensuous middle-aged beauty. Hormones play roulette in pubescent male brain. The line between love and lust is blurred. For Malayalis, this topic is forbidden. Not surprisingly, viewers went berserk in 1978 when Padmarajan and Bharathan —filmmakers hailed for heralding a new wave in Malayalam cinema—brought the subject to the mainstream. The audience clucked their disapproval, but flocked to the theatres anyway. Rathinirvedam became a cinematic landmark. Decades later, another gifted filmmaker TK Rajeev Kumar picked up Rathinirvedam again, and it was trickier still. This time, it wasn't just the cultural clamp on the coming-of-age theme, but Rajeevkumar was also "re-making" a cult film. Critics and sceptics readied brickbats in vain again. The story of Pappu, a teenager enamoured by his older and beautiful neighbour Rathi chechi, was a hit once again. An unusual verdict as the audience is rarely kind to a remake. "But I wasn't remaking Rathinirvedam the movie. I was making a movie using the beautiful script written by Padmarajan," Rajeev Kumar clarifies. He was tad nervous initially, when producer Suresh Kumar approached him with the project. But when he got the original script written by Padmarajan, he knew he had a winner. He took back the story to Haripad in Alapuzzha, to the green plains of central Travancore that Padmarajan had in mind (Bharathan, who directed the older version, had shot the movie in Nelliyampathy). He set the story in the seventies, added a few new situations and made the film with more restraint and subtlety than the original . surprisingly while the earlier film had gotten an A rating, this got a U/A certificate, which means that 12-year-olds can watch it with parental supervision. The sensitivity with which he handled the theme won kudos with women more than men. "Women told me that they found the movie innocent and emotional. The women in the Censor Board had the same remark," he says. Did that surprise him? "Not really. Female audiences have always been more open to such themes if portrayed in the right manner. Men usually wear the mask of morality, and are more pretentious. They create a false standard of morality and hide behind it. Women have more conviction." Rajeev Kumar's 1999 movie, Kannezhuthi Pottum Thottu was about a young girl who seduces an old landlord and his son. Then, to take vengeance for the murder of her parents, she goads them into killing each other. Rajeev Kumar wrote and directed the film. Before this, Malayam cinema had seen sensitive portrayals of sexuality but without the explicit only in the movies of Bharathan and Padmarajan. The movie won several awards, and had box office ringing with an overwhelming appreciation largely from a female audience. So is he a "parallel filmmaker" like the two masters? "I don't position myself as middle-of-the-road or strive to strike a balance between intellectual and commercial cinema. I appreciate Padmarajan and Bharathan, and many other brilliant filmmakers, but I wouldn't position myself in the middle-of-the-road school of cinema. I have never followed a certain set path. I got into filmmaking under Jijo Punnose of Navodaya Productions. They gave me the proper training, and taught me the importance of the technical aspects in cinema." Rajeev Kumar's started off as an assistant director for My Dear Kuttichathan, India's first 3D film, at the age of 21. His independent directorial debut was Chanakyan, starring Kamal Hassan and Urmila Matondkar, in 1989. Since then, he has made several award-winning movies and short films, including a few in Hindi. "But I couldn't write in Hindi. That I found was a handicap during filmmaking." He usually works with his own screenplay and dialogue. Rajeev Kumar's movies have dealt with a variety of subjects: passion, jealousy, mystery, murder, deceit … "I admire the way Padmarajan approached human relationships boldly, without any masks. He is one of the best scriptwriters. I like the courage which appears in all his film scripts." Absolute conviction, he believes, is the key to good filmmaking. "After a point, I decided I will do what I like and what I am completely convinced of. You can't keep speculating about the preferences of audience or critics. If you are fearful, you will try to cover your honesty, and that will show in your work. You are making the film, you have to believe in it absolutely."