Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi’s debut feature film Baksho Bondi (Shadowbox) is a moving exploration of a wounded family—an ex-soldier Sundar (Chandan Bisht) suffering from PTSD, his teenage son Debu (Sayan Karmakar) who loves him as much as he gets embarrassed by him and tries hard to practice music in this dissonant world. Last but not the least is the wife-mother Maya (Tillotama Shome) single handedly trying to hold things together, getting no support from her own mother and brother and doing several odd jobs to make ends meet. In all of this what she still manages to retain is self-respect and dignity, strength and resilience and compassion and loyalty for her ailing companion. Sundar’s sudden disappearance and a murder investigation bring things to a head for the threesome.
Baksho Bondi that had its world premiere at Berlinale recently has been made by a conglomerate of 17 producers, unprecedented in the history of Indian cinema. Filmmakers Das and Sahi, lead actor Shome and producers Naren Chandavarkar and Aman Mann joined CE for a conversation on the film that’s setting new benchmarks for Indian independent cinema.
My first question, and a kind of conversation starter, for debut filmmakers is—how close is the film to their own lives?
Tanushree Das: It is very close home. We shot it in Barrackpore where I grew up for the first 25 years of my life. I lost my father in 2018 and by the time we understood that he had depression we used to wonder why dad was like that. My mother’s marriage was the only love marriage in a society where it was not considered good. For her it was (an act of) rebellion, and it was a very hard love that I grew up watching. For me this film was a way to understand what it was. It was a means to come out of a very dark space myself. It was like a ladder that helped me climb out. (Co-director) Saumyananda Sahi is my life partner, and this film helped us to try and make sense of all of that in my life.
So Saumyananda somewhere, Tanushree’s story is your story as well?
Saumyananda Sahi: We found many overlaps during the writing and the creative process. There are a lot of elements that come from my childhood. I had a friend in school when I was about eight or nine years old, whose father thought that he was God, and he used to come and disrupt the classes. But my friend would really stand up for his father. There was an element of embarrassment. There was an element of pride and an element of wanting to protect his father from everybody. He would beat people up if necessary. A child in a kind of a parental role to his own father. When I was about nine, my friend's father tried to stop a train and was crushed head on, and he died. A year later, there was a writing assignment in school about describing a hero, and, while people wrote about sportsmen etc., my friend did it about his father. He stood up in the class and read this out to everybody. His pride has been a very strong memory for me. While a lot of things come from Tanushree’s life, it was also my way of coming into the story and to look at this family from within, those bonds and relationships, which are non-judgmental because they are formed out of empathy and love.
What made you come on board for the film, Aman (Mann) and Naren (Chandavarkar)?
Naren: Saumyananda and I first met when we were in school, and I remember (it was) on the football field. We exchanged books and music and didn't play football. Much later, we worked on a film where I was an EP (executive producer) and Saumyananda was an editor and cinematographer. When they developed the idea and were looking to apply somewhere, Saumyananda invited me and asked me if I'd like to be a producer. The thing that really resonated with me is the struggle around mental illness. What Saumyananda and Tanushree discussed right now is also something close to me, and something I've grown up seeing in my family. How these conversations are sometimes pushed under the carpet or relegated to the shadows. That’s the first thing that pulled and propelled me into the project, which was to understand why this conversation is in the shadows. Also how in the shadows, even if there wasn't much understanding in a very explicit or specific way, there was so much love. I really love the idea of seeing love as a rebellion, but also love as a redemptive and powerful force that is spoken of in this very rosy way. However, sometimes love is resilience, and sometimes love is making very difficult choices that might seem counterintuitive but speak to a larger and more healing whole that you look forward to in the future, especially when considering a family. I saw healing in this story, and in this process of making it.
Aman: We were, of course, familiar with Saumyananda and Tanushree’s work, with everything that they had done in independent cinema over the past decade. Saumyananda had worked with us on All That Breathes. The screenplay had everything that I think we would have expected from them. The molten code of the story was love in all its messiness, complexity, knottedness, the way in which it can both liberate you but also tie you down, the difficult decisions that must be taken. And all of it was happening through this very embedded, detailed character story. There’re so many things that the film touches on, whether it came comes to the labor that Maya carries out, physical, emotional; the whole idea of mental health, the stigma, the burdens and efforts and frustrations involved in the act of caregiving, and yet, all of these are being dealt with through this very gentle, nuanced touch, and through these characters. With Tillotama’s (Shome) performance, and as the rest of the team filled out, the film got more and more fleshed out, and more layers kept on getting added to it.
There are many real and relatable characters in the film but did you write the film around the strength and resilience of Maya (played by Tillotama Shome)?
Saumyananda: Yes and no. In one way, we realized that as filmmakers, we were in Maya's position, of the caregiver, where we couldn't be so presumptuous that we understood her husband Sundar (played by Chandan Bisht), or that we could pigeonhole him into a clinical study. Our relationship with Sundar’s character was from the point of view of Maya wanting to understand. Maya naturally became a fulcrum for us because it was also our perspective. But then there was also (her son) Debu’s point of view, whether it's Tanushree as a Debu herself, and my friend, who is another Debu. And so, while at one point we ended the film with Maya cycling, through the process of making the film, we realized that it's not only Maya's story. It is equally Debu’s story, and it is Sundar’s story. Maya is the natural perspective from which we look, because it is our perspective also. But then through Maya, it is also a very strongly Debu’s story, and Sundar’s story too.
Maya is very fascinating in terms of the various emotions that come together in her, whether it is care and concern and love for the two men in her life, or the sense of authority with which she becomes a single parent to her child. There is dignity, assertiveness, agency, choice, pride, ambition…
Tanushree: If a person is not economically stable, we very often think of them as victims. But sometimes the work a woman does is, paradoxically, also her escape. It is also her strength. I have always respected dignity of labor. I have seen my mother get up at four in the morning and work and support all of us. Not for a second did I feel bad. No work is less or more. I remember ma saying that don't be mediocre, and don't do things half-heartedly. Maya never does anything half-heartedly. She may not have enough money to put IKEA furniture or whatever, but if you see her house, she has the curtain, she has things matching, and she has a design. This is a kind of care. Women put these little touches. I think these things need to be celebrated. I don't want to look at them as somebody sad, or bichara (poor thing), that is not the angle. I want to tell them that don't think you are unseen. We see you. You are the pillars who are holding things in all our lives.
Tillotama, how did you respond to Maya?
Tillotama: I was very taken in by the script and then I met the people, and it increased exponentially. I really like them a lot as people. And I like the script too. I had a very strong sense of connection with some scenes, and then the pandemic happened, and my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and that's the time when the true meaning of this film began to settle in. At that point I did not think I would ever return to films. Life was so grim. But the idea of this film, the idea that one day we will make this film was like an emotional ladder that helped me come out of it, helped me feel like there was a possibility of a life outside of this COVID-cancer dynamic. It became a huge emotional support for me at that time. I am very indebted to that. It was an understanding and a shared grief about the vulnerability of the elderly that added many layers to us looking at this script. In fact, I remember one thing that we asked that, given the time that people are going through and the sense of anxiety, how do we want people to leave after watching this film. So, yes, it is tough, it is knotty. But we realized that one needs hope even in these difficult situations. So, I love how as my life grows, it also starts reflecting in my work in a certain way. And there's this sense of osmosis, which I'm really enjoying.
There are these little details that seem to have gone into the making of the character, the way she folds the clothes for instance. Was this your contribution or the script’s?
Tillotama: It was all there. I didn't have to do anything. Her ironing the clothes, everything is part of her world, the number of jobs she does. Tanushree and Saumyananda lived in Barrackpore for a year before shooting. They moved there with their child, and I would get these amazing images from there that would fire my imagination, spaces overrun with trees, roots that had broken into the foundation of buildings, possibilities of Maya and Sundar home, the music that my son would listen to, Maya's playlist, Maya's book of account, love letters exchange between Sundar and Maya. They shared it over a period of five to six years. All this information was there, and they then took a life of their own.
Tanushree: It’s not just that we did our homework. It draws from a lot of power in an actor. When we watched our final mix, that was the first time I was watching her on the big screen, and I was mesmerized by how her muscles just moved. It becomes subconscious, almost unconscious, it's like a real person.
There are also the interactions, with the son or the husband or the brother. Different ways of confrontation. Tillotama I would love to know a bit more about your equation with the actors.
Tillotama: I must mention Anamika Haksar who did a workshop with us. It’s there that I got a chance to really observe Chandan, his body language and the nape of his neck, his wrists, how he puts his hand, rests his hand on things. I had my own imagination of what Chandan has been through. You start building your own imaginary relationships with certain parts of his body. I observed a lot. That workshop became a great space to understand the dynamics with my son and my husband. Sayan Karmakar [who plays son Debu] is a great young person. You can really tell from his eyes. There's a certain stillness in his eyes. I also felt I was seeing a young person who has a lot of responsibility, perhaps at home, and he brought that sense of responsibility into the world of this film. He must grow up sooner than perhaps he needed to because of the circumstances. There are certain scars that I imagine the husband Chandan has on his body like invisible wounds and with the son, I felt that through his eyes. I felt like he had seen a lot in his real home. I just had to hold him close and was already there. That's what I mean, the amount of time that Tanushree and Saumyananda have put into the casting that it really felt that one just had to show up.
There's a saying that it takes a village to raise a kid. An entire community of filmmakers, the film fraternity, has come together to make this film. How did it all happen?
Naren: It’s very heartening to see that something like this is possible. We're hoping that we can continue to replicate it over time. Independent filmmaking can be quite challenging, and filmmaking in its essence, is extremely expensive. So, having the ability to bring a model like this allows for the ability to bring all these people together and in a very simple, practical way. One thing that it really helped with is that if we spread that risk, that expense across so many people, then suddenly it's not such a difficult thing to do. You can protect the integrity of the creative process and the vision. It also allows for an equitable and fair way of filmmaking. So, all the producers who've joined, no matter when they joined and what state, what point they went in, or the experience that they brought, are all on equal footing. There's no preferential treatment to anyone who came on board. It also allowed for a way of creating where we didn't shoot for more than eight hours a day. We took the break days before difficult days, we paid everyone on the same level, but still made it work at a budget that made sense for an independent film. It was really incredible, because you had not only this practical support of everyone chipping in to make the film feasible and to help finance it, but also an immense amount of experience, both in terms of creative feedback through the entire development process, post production support, a real insight into that very difficult journey after film is made, which is getting distribution and making sure it finds an audience. And we hope with this model, and also with, the very heartening success we've seen with independent films recently, that there is an audience, there is a place for success for these kinds of films, where an independent film is not relegated into the shadows of a festival but can be profitable.
Aman: All of it—the 17 producers—really sprang from the fact that there was that essential security, that at the end of the day it was Tanushree and Saumyananda’s vision, and everybody who was coming on board knew that and understood that and respected that and here we are.
from Hindi https://ift.tt/pKu8tg1
via IFTTT
