Fails to bring you home. Review on 15 Park Avenue

Films like 15th Park Avenue, are very rarely made in India. Most films fit into two categories; commercial and parallel cinema/art. 15th Park Avenue, is not really either, it is more intellectual cinema. The kind of films David Lynch is famous for, it provokes thought, raises questions and leaves the viewer to interpret the film and resolve it.

This film is an intellectual endeavour, however, unfortunately, while this film tackles issues such as existentialism, relativity, religion and physics and is definitely more profound than your average film, it ultimately fails to bring home the viewer.

It fails to handle and integrate these subjects properly and bring them to the fore of the viewers conscious mind. The ending especially is shrouded in ambiguity, and while it does have an internal-logic, it is very vague and only after you anaylse it, does it become apparent.. The majority who watch this, are not going to intellectualise, so a lot of what Aparna Sen tries to convey goes amiss. This is partly because Aparna Sen is trying to be too clever and only drops passing references, that are esoteric in nature.

Aparna Sen wastes a lot of time pussyfooting about, when really she should have developed these ideas and explained them a little more clearly. Ambiguity can be thought-provoking, but most of the times it is only confusing and even pointless in this film.

Not everybody is going to know about Quantum Mechanics and Schrodinger's equation about superimposed realities and possibilities and even those who do, not all of these are going to relate this to the message of the film. Which is very much open to interpretation, but my own take on it, was that Mittali had merged into her own reality, which exists as a parallel universe.

The film raises the question on what is the nature of reality, and how do we know which reality is absolute. The answer it provides, is that reality is very much subjective and we all perceive it differently, according to our senses, beliefs, values- there are no absolutes. For example, if you see a vase, but the rest of the world sees a table lamp, does that mean your reality is any more unreal than theirs?

In the case of Mittali, a schizophrenic, who believe she has a husband, children and lives at an imaginary address(15 Park Avenue) she is emotionally, physically and mentally involved in her reality, as we are in ours, so is it anymore unreal?

Mittali's goal is to find her 15 Park Avenue, she is trying to find something that does not exist in the real world. However, as very poignantly said in the film, when Rahul Bose's character(Jodeep) tells his wife this, she does not actually consider this a Mittali-specific problem, and tells him "Aren't we all" and the camera lingers on her for a while. If we take this message to it's conclusion, it is saying that we only find contentment and fulfilment within, not on the outside.

This is actually a great deal more sophisticated than previous films dealing with schizophrenia and delusional reality, such as "A Beautiful" mind, I do have an admiration for this. At the same time, none of this is very clear in the film. There is no scene where you are hit with a realisation or ponder in deep meditation. I can only explain it as I am, because I am coldly intellectualising it.

Now, moving onto the rest of the film - The acting can seem rather contrived and unnatural. Sometimes it feels like they are acting in slow motion. The pace is too sluggish, there is a lot of unnecessary footage.

It seems very odd when they speak English. I don't know anybody who speaks English like that. They also use very arcane vocabulary, and have a tendency to eat their words. It's feels completely unnatural. To make matters worse, the gaps in dialogue can really seem forced.

While Konkona Sen and Shabana Azmi do a good job, the dialogue and direction really lets them down.

This really is one of those films that rely completely on the ending - unfortunately to get there, you need to sit through a lot of boring scenes, full of unnatural acting and stilted dialogue, at a snails pace, which does not make it a very good film to watch and enjoy. You are better of reading a book to get a better insight on the subjects this film tries to tackle.