Rat Trap

Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s international breakthrough is an intensely psychological portrait of Unni (Karamana Janardanan Nair), the last male heir of a declining aristocratic family in Kerala, whose inability to cope with the end of the patriarchal, feudal system into which he was born leaves him increasingly isolated, paranoid, and powerless—caught in a metaphorical ”rat trap” of his own making. With its masterful, richly symbolic use of color, sound, and silence, RAT TRAP established Gopalakrishnan as one of Indian cinema’s most important and uncompromising auteurs.