Essay
The Leader in his Labyrinth: Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s MUKHAMUKHAM (1984)
Narrative Ambiguity Giving Rise to Multiple Interpretations
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Background
Mukhamukham (1984), the fourth film of Adoor Gopalakrishnan is set in the political landscape of Kerala in south India, making it an important film to be analyzed. Adoor’s third film Elippathayam (1981) deals with feudalism in decline perhaps in the 60’s there. It was the strong political left in Kerala that caused it. Adoor’s first film Swayamvaram (1972), highlights the social issue of acute unemployment in the state during 60’s. It shows a political meeting and a march protesting against retrenchment of workers. Kerala was the first state to have an elected communist government in India as early as 1957 although it got dismissed in 1959, bringing the state under President’s rule. The communist party split into two and the strong leftist faction formed its own party in 1964. The rise of the left in Kerala capturing the government, losing power and splitting into two form the background of Mukhamukham.
The Plot
The first part of the film is set in the decade ending in 1955. [1] The plot of the film is as follows. The title sequence and the following introductory sequence are in the omniscient point of view about Sreedharan (P. Gangadharan Nair) the trade union leader who is on a protest against the management of a tile factory. Still photos of him and newspaper cuttings about him are shown suggesting that he is dead. Then there are the reminiscences of him in third person point of view by people knowing him such as the tea shop owner (Vembayam), Sudhakaran (Ashokan) who was the boy who brought tea, the old farmer (B.K. Nair) and the factory owner’s minion (Alumoodan). After that there is a gap of a decade in which he goes into hiding as he is implicated in the murder of the tile factory owner. The film rightly doesn’t disclose what happens during that period. The second part, which is in the omniscient point of view showing Sreedharan after his return from hiding, is set in 1965. [1] We see him in person as the title goes (Mukhamukham meaning face to face) and not through others. A pale shadow of his past, he is vastly different from the image of him created by others. He drinks liquor and slumbers most of the time, not taking part in any activity. There is no clue as to why he behaves this way as information about Sreedharan is given from the outside and we don’t understand his psyche.
Narrative Ambiguity
With Mukhamukham Adoor deviates from classical narrative by creating ambiguity. A denotative meaning based on the plot presented is inadequate. We’re pushed into a connotative reading which gives rise to higher level interpretations. What we come to know about in the first part about Sreedharan is largely through the eyes of people who know him and newspaper cuttings. The question arises as to what the truth about him is. Either what we have seen is the image of him which is not true — as he looks far from an idealistic leader when he returns from hiding — or perhaps he was truly an idealist as most of them say and he doesn’t have the spirit any longer after what he has gone through.
First Interpretation: Shedding the Image?
In the first interpretation, Sreedharan is perhaps just a party worker who has been elevated by the party giving him the image of a leader. He may not be a leader with great ideals as others think of him. So, what we see in the first part of Mukhamukham is the image of Sreedharan that is held by them and not the real Sreedharan. He is playing the role of a leader as the party wants him. As for the murder of the factory owner, there is an ambiguity. We do not know who committed the murder. After living in hiding for a decade Sreedharan doesn’t want to play the role of a leader any longer. He has turned into a drunkard. He completely stops all his activities which is shown by his frequent slumbers.
Second Interpretation: Idealist in Hibernation?
In the second interpretation, Sreedharan is perhaps a true leader as many people thought of him. This is reflected in Adoor’s statement on the film: “There lives an idealist, a revolutionary — not necessarily political — in every individual. But in the course of time, as a matter of common experience, this spirit either dies out or becomes dormant. The idea of this film was born out of my desire to search for this spirit. Hence the basically investigative character of its structure.” [2] Living in hiding deprives him of family life. The farmer’s daughter Savitri (Kaviyoor Ponnamma) with whom he lived was in family way when he left home. He hasn’t even seen his child who grows into a boy. It is as though he is in prison for a decade. He wouldn’t have had proper food and physical activity. Living in a state of privation would have affected his psyche deeply and his revolutionary spirit might have ebbed. Also, living in different names in the underground might have made him lose his identity to a certain extent.
When he returns after hiding, he has no more energy left for continuing his political activity. His inaction is shown by his frequent napping. Solitude is a recurring theme in the film. From his trade union days, he has been shown as a loner without a family till the farmer takes him home when he is seen lying on the road beaten up. After that interlude, he would have continued to be mostly alone when he was underground. There is a suggestion that he might have had contact with another woman. He has been distanced from his family by the decade of hiding. His propensity to solitude might make him appear apathetic. The party gave him up for dead and built a memorial for him. By now the party is split into two. He becomes an embarrassment to both of them. Once he is killed by unknown assailant/s, the two communist parties unite in their march to resurrect his image as the leader and celebrate his martyrdom carrying his garlanded photo. The Internationale is played on the soundtrack for the second time in the film.
Adoor has said that Mukhamukham is not for or against any party. He has shown the reality of that time. Most of the comrades who went underground suffered from ailments of the intestine causing severe pain. Since they couldn’t go to a physician, they took to drinks for assuaging the pain which became a habit to them. [3] However, the film created a controversy in Kerala as it was thought to be showing the communist movement in poor light. Adoor has said that the former Chief Minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, didn’t find anything objectionable in the film and in fact welcomed it. [3]
Third Interpretation: Neurological Problem?
A third interpretation can be made thanks to the built-in ambiguity in the film. From Adoor’s second film Kodiyettam (1978) to his fifth film Anantaram (1987) the approach is that of a biography of an individual. Mukhamukham, his fourth film, is very much part of this approach. The individual happens to be a political leader in the film. It’s an unusual biography in that it presents an individual as a changing entity which questions the notion of personhood. While everyone undergoes some change over a long period, there are people who undergo drastic change. It may be due to brain disorders called FTD (Frontotemporal dementia) that impact one’s personality and behavior. In Mukhamukham, while the frequent slumbering of Sreedharan is a significant detail to depict his inaction, it also happens to be an indication of the neurological problem (FTD) that causes personality change. Sreedharan’s loss of embarrassment (in taking a currency note from the pocket of the beedi maker in full view of his followers, stealing from wife’s purse, and passing out drunk near his son’s school) and apathy also happen to be symptoms of FTD. It’s astonishing that all these details about Sreedharan furnished by Adoor make the film rich as it lends itself to a third interpretation: The phenomenon of personhood undergoing a significant change depicted in Mukhamukham may point to a neurological problem which has its basis in biology.
The Leader in his Labyrinth
The film critic M. K. Raghavendra has mentioned Vladimir Nabokov’s short story “A Forgotten Poet” (1944) as a literary parallel for Mukhamukham as the former “simply describes the devastation that time inflicts on the human psyche.” [4] The Nabokov story is about a revolutionary poet, supposed to have been drowned, stages a comeback after fifty years. Without taking anything away from Adoor’s original film, viewing it alongside a literary work enhances the understanding of the film. Yet another literary work we can look at is Gabriel García Márquez’s novel “The General in His Labyrinth” (1989), considering the mysteries surrounding the political leader Sreedharan and his apparent change in personality, although it cannot be called exactly as a literary parallel like the Nabokov story. Certainly, Sreedharan the small-time union leader cannot be compared to the leader of Gran Columbia General Simón Bolívar who is known in six Latin American countries as the Liberator. However, like the Márquez novel that came after it, the film Mukhamukham also has several labyrinths that lead to a dead end. It is not known who murdered the tile factory owner and what happened to Sreedharan during the 10 years of hiding which resulted in a change in his personality. The Márquez novel covers Bolivar’s retreat from public life which is somewhat like the last part of Mukhamukham in which Sreedharan makes a comeback mentally exhausted and withdraws himself from all the activities. The heroic liberator of Gran Colombia is a confused and diseased man who faces dead ends in multiple fronts: personal, political and geographical. Metaphorically, Bolivar is caught in a labyrinth. After his return from hiding, Sreedharan is also trapped in a labyrinth. He cannot relate to his son who is eagerly waiting for him to wake up and talk to him. Politically he can neither align with the left-wing communist party nor the right-wing communist party. The young rebel Sudhakaran looks upto Sreedharan who doesn’t guide him. Finally, it is not known who killed Sreedharan. Literally there is a dead end as the film ends in his death and all the secrets about him are buried along with him. The structure is that of a series of labyrinths in Sreedharan’s life.
Closing Thoughts
In his first three films — Swayamvaram (1972), Kodiyettam [1977] and Elippathayam [1981] — apart from presenting a realistic world, Adoor incorporated another level of meaning conveyed by the title. In Elippathayam, apart from the rat trap in the title, there is also a physical rat trap as mise en abyme which helps in understanding the protagonist’s situation. The denotative meaning is somewhat fuzzy in Mukhamukham, forcing the viewer to look for connotative meaning. In Anantaram (1987), Adoor goes one step further by doing away with the denotative meaning and we’re left to make connotative meaning only. Mukhamukham is a very significant film in Adoor’s oeuvre as subject wise it is set during the communist movement becoming a political force in Kerala and, in terms of form, its ambiguity makes the viewer go beyond what is shown and look for higher level meaning.
References
1. Adoor Gopalakrishnan in the interview with Bikram Singh, “Mukhamukham: Face to Face”, The Sunday Observer, 2 December 1984
2. Adoor Gopalakrishnan, “The Director’s Statement”, 2017,
https://adoorgopalakrishnan.com/2017/04/12/mukhamukham/
3. Adoor Gopalakrishnan in conversation with VK Cherian, “Creative world of Adoor Gopalakrishnan -Swayamvaram@50-Episode -4 Mukhamukham (Face to Face)”, Swayamvaram50 Channel on YouTube, 2022
4. M.K. Raghavendra, “50 Indian Film Classics”, Noida, HarperCollins; 1st edition, 2009, pp 236–237.
Title Mukhamukham
Year 1984
Duration 107 minutes
Language Malayalam
Editing M.Mani
Audiography Devadass
Music M.B. Srinivasan
Cinematography Mankada Ravi Varma
Producer K Ravindran Nair
Story, Script and Direction Adoor Gopalakrishnan
