Recently I got to re-watch Girish Kasaravalli’s Diploma film Avasesh and It was a rewarding experience. The film is about a brahmin boy feeling isolated and alienated, in his home and the outside world.
Few things I noted while I was re-watching:
1. Filmmaker’s emphasis on long distance shots on a subject dealing with isolation (both inside his home and outdoor, particularly the latter) makes it an interesting juxtaposition.
- Using body movements to visually express the kid’s dreams and wishes.
The first instance happens while the kid is showing his grandma’s belongings to his friend and mentions that he once wanted to marry his grandma. The filmmaker employs a beautiful semi-circular arc shot on the kid’s hand movement; like a camera on a swing; as the kid passes on the belongings to his friend and gets it back, which visually almost suggests a betrothal. In the next shot we see the friend lose interest and runs away. Unaware about this (as he is engrossed in searching the grandma’s box) the kid turns and finds his friend isn’t there, shouts the name of the friend and understands he won’t return. The scene ends with the kid looking dejectedly at a piece of a torn garland used in a marriage.
The second instance is when the kid is rummaging in a box and finds a piece of cloth. In the background we hear noises of children playing. He takes the piece of cloth and wraps around his eyes and starts to play on his own, around the home.
There is a good reason why we are asked to close our eyes to enhance our imagination. While we are physically present at a particular place, the mental landscape could be quite different, making us forget our immediate surroundings, for a temporary moment.
On the second instance, while the kid goes about his role playing in the game, around the home, his father calls him for help. With that his sense comes back to its place. But the kid instead of obliging to his father’s call, hides behind a column just opposite to his father. The father calls out multiple times and the scene ends with the frame showing both the father (in lookout for his son) and the kid hiding behind the column, just opposite. The kid wilfully doesn’t want to discard his world and oblige a person who has disturbed his experience.
In both the above instances, he was never physically present at what he was imagining, and while he might have been physically present at the outdoor – roaming around the river and temple etc, he was never able to fully get into the rest of children’s mental scape. (The first point)
This exploration of mind body disharmony in a film on isolation is something beautiful and to do that for a short film requires a lot of refinement!
