Filmmaker Don Palathara has evolved a signature visual and narrative style of his own in a short span of time

Don Palathara, born in 1986, belongs to the post-liberalisation generation of Indian cinema. He is also a filmmaker who in a short span of time — 5 films in 7 years — has evolved a signature visual and narrative style of his own, producing some of the most poignant and evocative B&W images in contemporary Indian cinema. Perhaps Palathara’s choice of such an ‘archaic’ visual style draws from the narrative worlds he imagines and creates: vast, verdant landscapes, the undulating terrains of Kerala’s hilly regions, the flows and shifts of wind, light and water through them, the hardworking Christian families labouring on small tracts of rubber or coffee plantations, and the physical, sensual and spiritual worlds that envelop them. Fragile bonds This format is turned inside out in films like Shavam and Santhoshathinte Onnam Rahasyam where the narrative unfolds in ‘real time’. For instance, towards the end of Vith, after a fast montage of the son and father locked in a fight that unravels in different terrains — at home, the cliff, on the field, etc., — the scene cuts to a shot of the sky where dark clouds are gathering, and that of the son standing alone amidst the thick foliage that looms over him while the sound of an aeroplane resounds from far above, followed by a very long, deep focus shot of a vast landscape where we see the father walking across with grass for the cattle.