The story in the beginning ends with a forest virgin's aporetic response to the king:
"How do I give myself to you? I am not the owner of my body".
Who possesses the woman's body then? Does she oscillate like a pendulum periodically touching the extremes of both the perpetrator and the dead weight of tragic masculinity? Whom does she follow, the sadistic father or the trembling child?
Chola drags us to the fundamental questions concerning identity and gender. When does she transform into a woman? Is it in the moment of abuse, or in desiring and performing the death of the demon? Vengeance follows rape, yes! But how many men do you kill? How many could one woman kill? The rape is concealed from the eyes, instead, Sasidharan lets the shrieks bounce and echo against yellow-lit vacant alleyways. The camera tracks and pans as aggressively as the feral jerking of the rapist.
Or, beginning with Gandhi's quote about man's exploitation of forests, is the film a document of appropriation and enslavement of nature? Sasidharan maneuvers the sound design himself and makes this an ode of sound as if. Never are we without voices of storms, thunders, waters, mist and forest. And it is a perpetual voyage inside the insides of wilderness. On a mountain, in the woods, on puddles, inside still, over rocks, under waterfall (the second rape, where even the lens fails to register the body beyond the force of falls). A recorder is switched on somewhere, and we hear the interplay and interaction between human wailing and natural flowing. And the end is perhaps a sorority between the violated woman and the exploited forest. We find the woman sleeping amongst ancient stones piled over each other in a form of prehistoric ritual and worship.
The tale ends with the old woman's voice from darkness: "She asked the earth whom do I belong to? And the earth trembled". Its other name is Shadow of Water. Perhaps there was a time when even waters had shadows. Now it's just weight, thrist and waste. Long back the shadows were swallowed by men of substance.
Praise be to Sanal Kumar Sasidharan for making this, to Joju George and Nimisha Sajayan for being the two opposing forces of nature.
Thank You for Reading.
Comments