The restored 4K version of the Malayalam feature, the late John Abraham’s Amma Ariyan (Report to Mother, 1986) was screened at the Cannes Film Festival as part of the Cannes Classics section. In connection with this, this critic decided to interview Abraham’s friend and associate Prem Chand, also a noted film critic of Kerala who has written not less than five books on cinema. Prem Chand’s daughter produced a feature film called John while his wife Deedi is a very distinct persona in Malayalam cinema, a woman script writer and Women in Cinema collective activist. Both Prem Chand and Deedi have contributed to this interview.

What was the inspiration to make such a difficult film like John so many years after his tragic and untimely demise?

What was the inspiration to make such a difficult film like John so many years after his tragic and untimely demise?

John is a feature film structured through memory, absence and return. In the film, John Abraham revisits the people from his life years after his death and finally returns to the grave. The people he meets are now older, carrying the passage of time, memory and loss within them. Many of those appearing in the film were actually John’s friends, collaborators and family members, which gives the film its emotional authenticity. My connection with John goes back to many years. At the time of his death, I was working as a reporter and I was the journalist who reported his death. In many ways, making this film felt like destiny completing a circle that had remained open for decades.

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One incident stayed with me. On the day John died, his close friend Hari Narayanan, who was also the hero of Amma Ariyan, came to meet me in a state of anguish. He handed over a set of incomplete screenplays and story ideas that John had made him write down just a few nights earlier. Hari remembered John arriving in the middle of the night, knocking on his door, waking him up and dictating fragments of stories with tremendous urgency, almost as if he was racing against time. Those unfinished writings haunted me for years. That episode is also recreated in John.

But yours is not exactly a bio-pic. Right?

But yours is not exactly a bio-pic. Right?

I did not want to make a conventional biographical film. I wanted to capture the spirit of a man who continues to live in the memories, contradictions and emotional histories of those who knew him. For me, John was never merely an individual filmmaker. He represented a restless cinematic energy that could not be contained within institutions, conventions or even time itself.

What is the team’s response to John Abraham’s film chosen to be screened at Cannes this year?

What is the team’s response to John Abraham’s film chosen to be screened at Cannes this year?

We feel happy and emotional, but also reflective, because over the years John Abraham has slowly become more of a myth than a filmmaker in public memory. Many people celebrate John as a 'maverick genius', quote stories about his unconventional life, but comparatively fewer people have actually watched and engaged seriously with his films. This is perhaps the first posthumous tribute paid to John decades after his demise. There is no monument or memorial built in his honour. I often felt that we owe him this. We romanticise such immortal personalities, but we do not preserve their work or their legacy in a meaningful way.

John had punctured the control of capital on cinema and this deserves a much heightened platform. He believed that cinema belonged to the masses. At a time when crowd-funding was almost unknown. He mobilised ordinary people to make Amma Ariyan. That was not merely a production method; it was a political and cultural statement against the dominance of capital in filmmaking.

For me, the restoration and international recognition of his work is important because it finally brings attention back to the films........

© Mathrubhumi English