Abstract:
This paper treats the Malayalam film Mukhamukham and the debates it engendered in the Kerala public
sphere about the history and legacy of communism as an archive of passions and disavowals that have shaped
the political subjectivities in contemporary Kerala and explores how the film offers a critique of the Left
popular in Kerala. Through a critique of the ascetic modality of the communist hero, Mukhamukham offers
a critique of the representative strategies through which the communist hero was produced in the early Left
political melodramas in Malayalam, which have been a significant part of the Left’s constitutive role in the
construction of the domain of the popular in Kerala. The attempt in this paper is to read the film as one that,
while marked by liberal prejudices, offers a critique of the Left popular and certain prevailing notions on the
Left in Kerala. The paper explores how the film represents the figure of the revolutionary; and the shift from
the melodramatic conventions of the construction of the revolutionary figure that Gopalakrishnan attempts
in the film.