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Of human alienation

The growing alienation of old parents in a globalised society and the emerging culture of five-star mortuaries in Kerala is the crux of well-known Malayalam filmmaker Jayaraj's latest movie Karunam being screened in the Panorama and Asian competition sections at the ongoing 31st International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Delhi.

Karunam, which was the opening film of the Panorama section on Tuesday, tells the story of an old couple whose two sons, settled in the US, sell the ancestral house in the village and put their parents in an old age home. While the old father, played by a mentally retarded man, dies waiting for his children and grandchildren, the mother, played by a non-actress housewife, leaves the old age home and wanders the streets before finding refuge and solace in a home for mentally retarded children.

"This is the reality I see everywhere around me in Kerala and the movie has portrayed this. Parents send their children abroad for better lives, but the children neglect them. While shooting the mortuary scene for this film, I saw several bodies of old people lying for 15 to 20 days for the children to claim them. One sees five-star mortuaries with a lot of decoration in several parts of Kerala now," Jayaraj said.

Asked why he preferred to cast non-professional people as the lead characters, the director said that he wanted to be sincere to the audiences for his movie and felt that casting non-professionals gave better results. "They are more realistic," he explained.

Stating that he would continue to work in both mainstream and parallel cinema, he said he was planning to make nine movies based on the navarasa (nine emotions). Karunam was the first movie in the series dealing with the human emotion of karuna or compassion, he added.

Also dealing with another searing bit of reality -- the alienation theme -- is the American movie Boy Don't Cry in the Cinema of the World section at the festival. Directed by Kimberly Pierce, the film is based on the real life story of Teena Brandon, a 21-year-old American girl who is not comfortable with her identity as a woman and fantasises about living like a boy. While living out her fantasy leads Teena to love, it also results in her killing when her identity is revealed.

Speaking at a press conference in Delhi, Pierce said that she made a special effort not to focus on the sensational and dramatic parts of Teena Brandon's story, which the rest of the American media splashed when her story first came out in 1993. It took her three years to choose a newcomer to play the lead character. "I met about 1,000 girls before deciding on Hillary Swank as Teena Brandon. Also, some actresses were reluctant to do the role as there seemed to be a stigma attached to playing such a part," the director said. Made with a budget of under $ 2 million, the movie won the International Critics Prize at the London and Stockholm film festivals.

--UNI