S Durga begins with the macabre rite of Garudan Thookkam — devotees strung mid-air by metal hooks, men zoned out in the heady blend of pain and piety. More of a frame of reference, it shows how the jute bust in a festival procession is revered while the Durga in flesh and blood is just ‘sexy’. Not the cool, casual urban sexy, but sexy in classic patriarchal parlance — commodity. But the irony was lost on many and the title dragged the director to a nasty censor war, forcing him to rechristen it to S Durga. Yet the film was pulled out of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) and its certificate suspended for an alleged violation of the Cinematograph Act.
After losing a couple of months in the ruckus, the film, the first from India to win the Hivos Tiger Award, has been cleared without any cuts and is currently gearing for release on March 23. “The title and content are symbiotic. From the seeming incompatibility of words ‘sexy’ and ‘Durga’ springs an entire spectrum of meanings. This points to the true character of our society, the bizarre inconsistency in worshipping and victimising in the same breath,” says director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, who is undeterred by all the setbacks, including the way his film got completely overlooked when the State film awards were announced a fortnight ago.
He feels any work of art will suffer at the hands of a society incapable of grasping its nuances. “While a section is enraged, there are others who consider it a publicity gimmick. Both liberals and conservatives are not ready to view it as a work of art from a reasonable perspective. In such a situation, we don’t have many choices other than compromises. I don’t make films for a niche audience and I want it to reach the maximum number of people. But then, they all are aware of its original title by now, so it doesn’t make much of a difference.”
Woven around an eloping couple, S Durga explores the essence of violence without ever feasting on it. He agrees the tactic was intentional. “The violence you feel can be more unnerving than the violence you see, so it was a conscious decision to mute it in the main track.” Sanal says he always keeps a distance from existing patterns of cinematic art, often opting for erratic experimentation. “You will find certain randomness in all my films as I often allow the narrative to develop on its own.”
Sanal does not believe in immaculate scripts and says all he needs is a thread to build on. “A pre-planned script is something that curbs the organic flow of a film, it limits the scope of impromptu evolution.” The same policy goes for casting as well, “an established actor comes with a set pattern of style and mannerisms. It’s like you are on auto-pilot and it’s not easy to break that template. This is one reason why I go for unfamiliar faces and in my next film there are around 150 actors, it’s a film led by incidents, not actors.” Sanal also tries to bring on board technicians with certain sensibility and vision, not out-and-out professionals. “My DOP Prathap is a poet and filmmaker. So instead of seeing the film as technical fragments he is able to perceive it in its totality.”
He agrees his films are marked by apparent raw edges as he is not a great fan of technical finesse. “I would go in for shabby shots rather than designer ones. Life as such is imperfect and I have tried to retain that untreated beauty in my films. If the energy of the moment is captured well, I choose to push aside technical deformities.”
Ask him about the theme of his upcoming Unmadiyude Maranam and Sanal says his films lack predesigned storylines and morals. “I see my films as fluid, amoeba-like beings. Depending on the memory and mental make-up of the viewer they can be interpreted in umpteen ways. In Unmadiyude Maranam, the borderlines between reality and fantasy are often lost in their reciprocal trespassing. It’s like interpreting an abstract painting, a process which is quite different from decoding a Ravi Varma work.”
His Ozhivudivasathe Kali bears an eerie resemblance to the murder of Madhu, as recently we watched the deeply unsettling climax of the film coming alive on TV. But this time the gruesome tableau was not part of an award-winning work of fiction, but the verification of an ugly reality he tried to expose through his film.
