14/07/2021 Between Fact and Fiction: Couple-photographs in Malayalam Cinema - ALA (അല)

Between Fact and Fiction: Couple-

photographs in Malayalam Cinema
30TH APRIL 2021  ISSUE 32

S. Harikrishnan writes about how Malayalam cinema uses couple-and-wedding

photographs as a useful plot device—to guide narrative, enhance contrast and add
depth to characters.

S. Harikrishnan

Between cinema and photography, Roland Barthes famously chose ‘Photography in opposition to the
Cinema, from which [he] nonetheless failed to separate it’. To Barthes, this was to do with
the  temporal distinction  between photography and cinema. With the former, a spectator has control
over time and circumstance, while in film, this power is ceded to the author. Two years after
Barthes’ Camera Lucida was published, Agnès Varda made Ulysse (1983), a documentary where she
retraced a photograph she took three decades ago, in search to find its meaning—a ‘punctum’,  as
Barthes would have called it, or a ‘caption’, as Walter Benjamin describes in his A Short History of
Photography  (1931). With little luck in finding anything concrete—Varda traces down both the
humans in the picture only to find out they have no recollection of the image, and she shows the
picture to a goat who eats it—she concludes that ‘nothing appears in the image’, and that the picture
itself could have been clicked any other time and the people in it could be anyone else. Her attempt
was, as she concedes, to try and find/ascribe meaning both to the photograph, and through it, to her
own oeuvre of film-making. It was an attempt at understanding the relation between photography
and/in cinema. If we concede that a photograph is given its meaning—its  punctum—through a text
(caption), how can we begin to think of a cinematic adaptation of this? What can a photograph offer to
cinema? I recently happened to revisit this question of the relationship between photography and
cinema while watching (and re-watching) some old and new films from Kerala.

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The image from 1954 that Agnes Varda retraces in Ulysse (1983)

The most common use of photographs in cinema tends to dwell on the photograph as a mute and
intransigent object from the past, providing disputable/indisputable proof of an event that has occurred.
This reading of a photograph as ‘evidence’ is most commonly seen in thrillers, detective movies, and
melodramas. When the Chief Minister is assassinated in the classic Malayalam thriller  The
Truth  (1998), the inquiry revolves around a camera and photographs found at the spot of a woman
presumed to be the assassin. A photograph, here, is both the evidence—and as we discover eventually
—the decoy. Other thrillers like No. 20, Madras Mail (1990), and FIR (1999) also see a similar use of
photographs as ‘evidence’. But my interest in this piece is on a very peculiar type of photograph that
has made its presence felt in Malayalam cinema—the wedding and/or couple photograph. The
wedding photograph has, to borrow Susan Sontag’s phrase, ‘been as much a part of the ceremony as
the prescribed verbal formulas’. How, then, are wedding/couple photographs used in cinema to guide
narrative?

Just before we are introduced to the brilliant climax of the recently released  The Great Indian
Kitchen  (GIK)comes one of my favourite scenes from the film: a forty-five-second montage of
photographs—mostly of married couples—from across generations all hanging on a wall in the house.
The sequence cuts from one photograph to another as sounds of banal and everyday kitchen chores
play in the background. The sequence ends with a wedding photograph of the unnamed protagonists
(played by Nimisha Sajayan and Suraj Venjaramoodu) whose marriage hangs by a thread, and the
sound of a ‘whistle’—a literal and metaphorical releasing of (pent-up) steam. This is not the first time
their wedding photograph is shown to the audience. It appears thrice in the film before this scene, each
time reflecting the changing nature of the marriage itself, as tensions simmer between the couple. The
first time, we see it positioned on the wall as the couple have their first fight. By the time it reappears,
the tensions have already become much more visible. Here, the photograph hangs on a background
wall between the couple, as Suraj confronts his wife for applying for a job without his permission. The
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third time we see it, the photograph stays in focus as the wife closes a door behind her; differences
between them have now become irreconcilable. The last time we see it is as part of the montage,
reminding us that it is but another marriage like the many before… almost.

Image credit: Mankind; Symmetry; Cinema Cooks

In GIK, the photograph is not merely a mute and intransigent object from the past, but also a constant
reminder that the happy couple whose photograph hangs on the wall is starkly different from the
couple we see in the film. In this sense, the photograph aims to overstate its difference from the film
itself. A similar use of the wedding photograph can be seen in Kumbalangi Nights (2019). One of the
film’s early posters was a picture of Shammi (Fahadh Fasil) and Simmy (Grace Anthony) as
newlyweds. The wedding itself was never a part of the film plot, but, like in GIK, we see the wedding
photograph printed on a calendar that hangs in their bedroom; a happy memory in stark contrast to the
aggressive and moralising masculinity of Shammi that unfurls on-screen. Once again, the photograph
does more than just freeze a memory in time. It reminds the viewer of the contrast.  

The wedding picture in the Kumbalangi Nights poster (left) seen printed on a calendar in the film (right) [Image:
Youtube/Bhavana Studios]

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In Innale (1990), the climax of the film hinges on photographic evidence of Narendran’s (Suresh Gopi)
marriage to Gauri (Shobhana). The film begins with Gauri meeting with an accident that causes her
amnesia and resulting in her forgetting her past. She begins a new life as Maya and falls in love with
Sarath (Jayaram). Meanwhile, Narendran’s quest for his lost wife brings him to Sarath, who promises
to let Gauri leave if Narendran has proof that she is, indeed, his wife. Narendran insists that they would
not need a photograph as proof because Gauri would recognize him as soon as she sees him. But when
Gauri talks to him with no recollection of the past, Narendran is confronted with a dilemma of whether
to bring up a photograph to prove her identity or not. Once again, the photograph becomes a powerful
agent upon which the very plot of the film hinges. In a suspenseful scene in the climax, Narendran lays
out two photographs on a table, battling with himself about what the right thing to do would be.  

In contrast
to GIK, Kumbalangi Nights,
and  Innale, which use the
photograph as a
reminiscence of the
past,  Bangalore
Days  (2014) uses wedding
photos to indicate future
events. All four main
characters from Bangalore
Days—Divya (Nazriya
Nazim), Krishnan (Nivin
Pauly), Arjun (Dulquer
Salman), and Das (Fahadh
Narendran lays out photographs on a table in the climax of Innale (1990) Fazil)—appear on-screen
together for the first time
for a photograph at Divya
and Das’ wedding. In this scene, Das—and along with him, the audience—is given a hint of his
upcoming relationship with his wife and her cousins, as he stands awkwardly by himself while Divya,
Krishnan, and Arjun get their pictures clicked. Even before a word is spoken, we are given a sneak
peek into events to come.

Another film that uses the

couple-photograph
ingeniously to drive a
narrative is 

Dineshan and Shobha’s (ruined) photograph from Vadakkunookiyanthram

[Image: Youtube]

Sreenivasan’s Vadakkunokkiyanthram (1989). In what has become the most memorable scene from the
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film, Dineshan (played brilliantly by Sreenivasan) and his wife Shobha (Parvathy) visit a studio to get
their photograph clicked. In the previous scene, Dineshan is convinced by his friend that hanging a
photograph of the couple in their bedroom would be a good way for the newlywed wife to ‘see’ him
and talk to him while he’s away at work. Dineshan is also told to use as much ‘make-up’ as he needs
so he can look as fair as his wife at least in the photograph. This is one of the early scenes from the
film when we are introduced to Dineshan’s insecurities and inferiority complex which builds, as the
plot progresses, into a severe case of Othello syndrome. Trying to look taller in the photograph,
Dineshan moves just as the photograph is being clicked, thereby ruining it. This picture would also
become the iconic image from the film that is etched in popular memory (a simple Google search of
the film will prove this). Far from its intended purpose of assuaging Dineshan’s insecurities, the
photograph becomes a frame that freezes them in time.

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The photograph from Vadakkunokkiyanthram has etched itself in popular imagination

Over the last decades, other films like  Photographer (2006), 5 Sundarikal (2013),  and more
recently,  Maheshinte Prathikaram (2016)  have further explored the theme of photography within
cinema directly. Even as the debate on the comparative merits of film and photography rages on,
photographs remain useful as film-ic tropes.  This is because photographs, as David Campany
has written, operate ‘somewhere between fact and fiction, between  history and memory,  between  the

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objective and the subjective’. This is what makes them a powerful tool at the hands of a film director.
It is this artistic freedom that gives a photograph its punctum within a cinematic adaptation. 

About the Author: S. Harikrishnan is a postdoctoral researcher at Dublin City University, and a co-
editor of Ala.

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