ചിദംബരം CHIDAMBARAM_RestoredFullHD1080p I G. Aravindan I 1985

Written, Produced and Directed by Govindan Aravindan
Production - Saj Productions
Presented by Sooryakanthy
Story - C. V. Sreeraman
Cinematography - Shaji N. Karun
Music by Paravur G. Devarajan
Executive Producer - Sethu
Assistant Directors - Padmakumar, Rajeev, E.C. Thomas
Sound Recording - Harikumar, Chandran
Art Direction - Namboothiri
Stills - N. L. Balakrishnan
Makeup - Sunil Bose, Ramu

Summary:
Unfolding in exquisitely photographed poetic rhythms and coloured landscapes, this is the simple but cynical tale of Muniyandi (Srinivasan), a labourer on the Indo-Swiss Mooraru farm in Kerala. He brings a wife, Sivagami (Smita Patil), from the temple town of Chidambaram. She befriends Shankaran (Bharath Gopi), the estate manager and amateur photographer with a shady past.

Their friendship transgresses the hypocritical but deeply felt behavioural codes the local men inherited from previous social formations: i.e. that women are to be denied what men are allowed to enjoy. The tragedy that ensues (Muniyandi suicide, Shankaran’s descent into alcoholism and Sivagami withering into a worn-out old woman) condenses the tensions between socioeconomic change (as tractors and machinery invade the landscape) and people’s refusal to confront the corresponding need to change their mentality. The tension is, however, most graphically felt in the way Sivagami life-force is extended into the naturescape, which is shot around her with garish colour (e.g. purple flower-beds) suggesting that the very nature of Kerala’s beauty and fertility, as she represents it, has been irredeemably corrupted from within.

The film then shifts to the equally oppressive cloisters of the Chidambaram temple, as Shankaran and Sivagami meet once more: he is there to purify himself through religious ritual while she is now employed to look after the footwear of devotees and tourists. The nihilist film ends with a rising crane shot as the camera can only avert its gaze and escape, tilting up along a temple wall towards an open sky.
(Summary Courtesy : Indiancine.ma)

CAST
Sreenivasan as Muniyandi
Bharath Gopi as Shankaran
Smita Patil as Sivakami
Innocent as himself
Nedumudi Venu as himself
Murali as Cheriyan
Dr Mohandas as Jacob James

Release date : 8 March 1985
Running time : 99 minutes 54 Seconds
Country : India
Language : Malayalam with English subtitles(Hardcoded)
Aspect Ratio : 1:1.33
Shot on 35MM Color Film Stock, Digitally Restored at NFAI, Pune.

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