(Spoiler alert) Seetha in Swayamvaram waits for her husband to bring in the money and, after his death, in a striking last scene, stares at a closed door and an uncertain future. The arc of the woman from Swayamvaram to Pinneyum is significant. Has Adoor Gopalakrishnan become a feminist? “I am a humanist,” he says. “This is my tribute to all women,” he says. Adoor makes the ordinary, middle-class, working woman of Kerala the hero of his latest film. She sweeps the floor, goes to school to teach (but she is only shown on her way to or from school, never at the place of work), fluffs up the pillow for Kuttan Chettan, sends the daughter to college. The film instead focuses on his wife Devi (Kavya Madhavan), who quietly goes about her life, bringing up her daughter and taking care of her bed-ridden brother. Like Sukumara Kurup, the murderer in the film Purushothaman Nair (his first name means The Good Man, played by actor Dileep), almost disappears after the act. In Pinneyum, Adoor does something very clever: he does not take the obvious route and follow the killer underground. The Buddha said wealth is the root of all misery. It set me thinking: what’s the good life, according to the middle-class Malayali? The Gita asked you to renounce. “This movie is not about Sukumara Kurup, but it takes off from there,” says Adoor, over the phone from Thiruvananthapuram, where he lives. It is an ingenious choice by Adoor, for this is the modern fable of greed. Sukumara Kurup is still the most wanted man in Kerala. The image of the elusive murderer that appeared on newspapers - a bearded, rather handsome face with hair falling on the forehead - once haunted the state so much that people reported a rash of sightings, all of which, of course, turned out to be false. But forensics nailed the lie and Kurup went underground. It was close to midnight when he gave a ride to a film representative called Chacko in Alappuzha, strangled him in the car and set it on fire to pass this off as an accident in which he got killed - to claim insurance money of `8 lakh. On January 21, 1984, Sukumara Kurup, a Gulf Malayali, faked his own death. Not any murder, but one that shook Kerala. In Pinneyum, Adoor does something unexpected. They might trace their art house lineage to him but the new indie that they are part of in Kerala is distinctly different in its pace, politics, voice and concerns. upcomingregionalsection.cms?parentid=61017241&genere=*:* /upcomingregionalsection.Then a singular generational clash broke out as many younger filmmakers came out against Adoor on social media.
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