THE FOLLY OF FRAGILE, TRANSIENT INFATUATION

Celia Fremlin, the mystery fiction writer, equated infatuation with a ‘love that is inconvenient to go on with’. But, sometimes, inconvenient love refuses to go away.

“ವಿಮುಕ್ತಿ” (‘Vimukthi’, which means: ‘Redemption’) is a 2010 Kannada flick that delves on that theme of incestuous infatuation; it received a battery of awards, including the prestigious National Award. The movie was appreciated by critics and has the Neo-Freudian psycho-sexual theory of ‘Electra complex’ for its plot.

Madhavi (Bhavana) is the only daughter of Keshava Rao (Ramakrishna), an artist proficient in the traditional art of Mysore paintings. Deprived of motherly love early in her life, Madhavi develops a strange, unresolved attraction for her father and yearns sub-consciously for his unconditional love.

Madhavi’s relationship with her husband, Vibhin (Aravind G), is strained― courtesy: her clouded and cluttered psychological frame of mind. She becomes obsessively possessive and regressively jealous, when Nava (Hoda Balovti) begins to learn the art from Keshava Rao.

Unable to deal with Madhavi’s behavior, Keshava Rao deserts the family. Tormented by her dormant compulsions, Madhavi withdraws from Vibhin’s company too. After several years, Madhavi unable to tame her inner demons goes to Varanasi in search of her father.

Directed by P Sheshadri, the narrative is slow, but intense. The complex theme of love and infatuation is depicted philosophically with a heady cocktail of drama and dialogues against a backdrop of death. He exhibits great dexterity to allow his characters to develop and to operate with a sense of destiny. His screenplay is devoid of creative frills and cinematic thrills; yet, the suspense is built to a crescendo with deliberateness in story-telling that is SPELL-BINDING!

In short, Sheshadri’s handling of parallel cinema is nonpareil!

Pravin Godkhindi’s background score is soft, refreshing; distracting song-and-dance routines are…mercifully absent. Artistic and technical elements of this spiritual film are plain, yet pleasing. The sequences shot in Kashi are surreal.

The entire cast has done a splendid job depicting their respective roles; but, the cause célébre of the film is undoubtedly Ramakrishna.

I rate this domestic drama: 8.5 on 10!


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