4 Women - Movie Review

Having only heard and read about Adoor Gopalakrishnan, I had never gotten around to actually watchin any of his movies, and I must really thank Lady Luck for this, and the other movies being shown at the India Habitat Centre. Organised by the Public Service Broadcast Trust - a Not-for-profit trust in partnership with the Prasar Bharati Coporation affiliated to the United Nations, there were movies from Russia, South Africa, Canada and Switzerland as well, all of which I missed out on!
Coming back to the movie - 4 women, originally Naal Pennungal and in Malayalam, this movie was made in 2007 and stars Nandita Das among others.
You must try and watch this movie, so I will strictly speak tangentially (comes quite naturally to me!) in an effort to avoid giving the entire movie away!
The movie has 4 separate stories, and explores the emotional, mental, social and physical lives of 4 different women, one at a time.
The movie starts off with a prostitute, and then later deals with the lives of a married woman, a housewife and a spinster.
Each of the stories is very well picturised, and what one will appreciate in the movie, is that the subtle elements of a typical village in Kerala is very, very well captured.
There is very little background music, and even the very little, is a Carnatic Classical "mood", very well chosen and with perfect timing.
The use of natural sounds stands out, and the feel of Kerala is served to you, to the extent possible, in all its natural purity.
If only Stein Auditorium in the India Habitat Centre had Dolby Stereo! It could have been so much more pleasant to experience natural sounds reproduced in a movie! The main/central speaker behind the screen is not too bad, so movie viewing on a big screen continues to have its own charm :)
Atleast 2 of the four stories are open ended, and the questions they pose are only to be answered, if at all, by the viewer herself or himself.
3 of the 4 stories are about the turn of events, the "swinging"of destinies destinies of the women (if I may say) from happiness, to helplessness.
Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Nandita Das were present for the screening, and Adoor, the humble man he is, refused to be addressed as "Guruji" by another artist/director, saying that he wasn't knowledgeable enough to be a teacher.
Adoor took on questions from the audience, and I could stay around to hear him for only 2 of those questions.
One was about the choice of stories, and open endedness - Adoor had chosen short stories, since they have a lot of scope for creative direction and development of the plot, picturisation etc.,
And then, Adoor also spoke about his motive and idea behind the "threading" of the four stories together.
Adoor was explaining about how each of the stories stands for a "Bhoga" as understood in Hindu philosophy...He had jst about completed mentioning the Bhogas when it was time to go!