A gentle auteur

Shaji N. Karun’s standing as a Malayalam cinema doyen does not rest upon a huge body of work. Quality over quantity was what he strove for and achieved. The handful of narrative features that Shaji directed had a profound impact on cinema in Kerala. His films, marked by a unique sensibility and elevated by a delicate and distinctive visual palette, were not only rooted in specific cultural ethos but were also driven by a deeply humanist vision.  Shaji also influenced cinema and its dissemination in his home state as the founder chairman of the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy. He was among those who were instrumental in giving shape to the International Film Festival of Kerala, which quickly evolved into the country’s most-loved event of its kind. Later in his life, Shaji served as the Kerala State Film Development Corporation.

His passing at the age of 73 at his home in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday has left a void that will be hard to fill. Shaji made only seven feature films in a career that began in the mid-1970s. His first three features – Piravi (1988), Swaham (1994) and Vanaprastham (1999), made over a period of a decade and a bit – were all selected for the Cannes Film Festival, a rare feat for an emerging filmmaker. In 1989, his debut film, Piravi (The Birth), about an aged father who waits in vain for his missing son to return home, won the Camera d’Or – Mention d’honneur at the Cannes Film Festival, besides a large number of other awards at festivals across the world.

A still from the movie 'Piravi' by Shaji N Karun.

In 1994, Swaham (My Own), about a boy who seeks an job to help his mother and sister tide over the family’s financial troubles but loses his life in an incident at the military camp, competed for the Cannes Palme d’Or. Vanaprastham (The Last Dance), which revolves around a lower-caste Kathakali dancer who has an affair with an upper-caste woman, made it to the festival’s Un Certain Regard section. 

Shaji’s subsequent films may not have flown as high on the global stage, but every cinematic essay that he crafted, notably Kutty Srank, starring Mammootty, and Olu, his last feature, bore testimony to his exceptional technical and storytelling skills.

His filmmaking style and artistic credo were firmly rooted in the land of his birth and the idiom he employed sprang from a creative space entirely his own. It is understandable why the soft-spoken, self-effacing Shaji would often lament the derivative methods that some of Kerala’s younger filmmakers adopted.

Shaji (right) with G Aravindan during a shoot.

Shaji’s own roots lay in the cinema of the iconic G. Aravindan, with whom he collaborated over a long period. Before he became a director, the Film and Television Institute of India alum worked as the cinematographer for eight of Aravindan’s films, including Kanchana Sita (Golden Sita, 1977), Thampu (The Circus Tent, 1978), Esthappan (1980) and the absolutely exquisite Chidambaram (1985).

One of the most remarkable collaborations between Aravindan and Shaji was Pokkuveyil (Twilight, 1982). Aravindan recorded the film’s background score first with Hariprasad Chaurasia on the flute and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan disciple Rajeev Taranath on the sarod. He and Shaji then composed the visuals on the basis of the musical notations.

A consummate master of his craft, Shaji also cranked the camera for films helmed by other noted Malayali filmmakers like K.G. George (Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback and Panchavadi Palam), MT Vasudevan Nair (Manju) and P. Padmarajan (Koodevide? and Arappatta Kettiya Gramathil), starring Mammootty and Suhasini in her Malayalam debut, and Lenin Rajendran (Meenamasathile Sooryan).

Shaji went on to work with both actors after he turned director, with Mammootty heading the cast of Kutty Srank and Suhasini playing a key role in Vanaprastham, which starred Mohanlal as the male lead.

Shaji also shot a couple of Hindi films, Ek Chadar Maili Si (1986) and Antim Nyay (1993), both directed by Sukhwant Dhadda, who subsequently produced the only Hindi film that Shaji directed, Nishad, starring Rajit Kapur and Archana.

One of the most ambitious films of Shaji’s career never got made due to budget constraints — Gaadha, an international co-production based on a T. Padmanabhan short story. The film was to star Mohanlal. In his director’s statement for still-born Gaadha, Shaji wrote: “Music is a miracle, where enchantments attain silence. Such mystery is also an important sensation to understand the beauty of human life. We miss such kind films in our time.”

He added: “For the first time in Indian film history, this film will explore Indian classical music intermingling with western opera and symphony.” Gaadha was in the works for several years before it was abandoned. It would have been his magnum opus, the crowning glory of an illustrious career that deserved another global breakthrough to round it off. That was not to be, but even if Shaji had not made anything after Vanaprastham, the benchmark he set with his first three films would have assured him immortality.

The writer is an award-winning Indian film critic.