Eyes Wide Open

“The key element of this film is to push the audience to think about it. The story and the answers are something that the viewer has to arrive at. I am constructing my own universe and inviting you into it for a journey. It will take you where you want to go,” says Avikunthak, who identifies himself as a film artist, rather than a film maker. The difference, he elaborates, lies in the former’s lack of interest and concern with catering to the audience’s needs. It is only fitting then that his work is being screened at Chatterjee & Lal, the art gallery housed at Colaba’s Arthur Bunder road, until July 31.

Although the film appears as largely abstract in its form, its dialogue and debate is charged with socio-political undercurrents. “The very act of making a film, which is deliberately outside the marketplace, is fundamentally a political activity for me. But there is also something ostensibly political happening in the film — the very act of invoking Mao in today’s time,” he says.

During their quest, set against the backdrop of a war, the two protagonists read the Chinese revolutionary Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book. Avikunthak’s use of the Communist text juxtaposed with the religious landscape of Kumbh is a commentary on the politics of contemporary India.

In the end, the two protagonists find Kalki, unlike Beckett’s characters in Waiting for Godot. However, viewers only begin their search through a new-found disillusionment, requiring them to revisit the film a second or third time. The poetic irony of the film lies in its ability to free its audience from an assigned perspective, and yet possess it enough to trigger a chain of thought and questions.

mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com