15 Park Avenue: But There's Nobody Home

To me, Aparna Sen represents a certain standard (and filmic pedigree), so no matter what, I always try to watch her films. In the last 25 years, she has directed 7 films, of which I've seen 4. The ones that made an impression on me are her directorial debut and her two most recent films. They are not "great" films (IMHO), but they all feature original stories and unique characters. Two reasons good enough for a dekko, right?

(BTW, there's a shorter review of the film by Uma here.)

I remember reading a review of the Beatles' White Album which appeared in a 1968 issue of Time magazine. One sentence from that review has remained in my memory for nearly 20 years. It said that album was a showcase of the Beatles' "best abilities and worst tendencies".

Best abilities and worst tendencies is an apt summation of "15 Park Avenue" too.

About the best abilities first. Aparna Sen chooses under-explored and emotionally rich subjects. She writes female characters very well and extracts a solid performance from the lead character. Konkona Sen's performance here is just damn good. Technically, her films are above-average in execution. As an example, her use of background music and lighting in "15 Park Avenue" is far, far better than Hindi films cursed with ten times the budget.

She also seems to have a knack for picking memorable titles. "15 Park Avenue", a throwback to the specific-ness of "36 Chowringhee" is meant to evoke a certain mood and create curiosity in the viewer's mind. Now, Park Avenue is home to Manhattan's rich and the powerful. But in the film, we learn right in the very promising opening that the story unfolds in Calcutta. We learn that there may not even be a "real" place called 15 Park Avenue. Right there, the film hooks you.

We also see Mithee's frightening world. It is a world filled with voices, invisible children and paranoia. Her world - her mother, her older sister and a maid - are all impacted on a daily basis by the illness, but it is mostly her sister, played with (the expected) artistry by Shabana Azmi, who deals most directly with the challenges. The household, (without a single male character, btw), does what it can as it struggles with significant tangible and emotional challenges. If you've seen a real-life family in such a situation, and we all have, you will find the depiction both painful and realistic.

The director's worst tendencies start showing up at this point and the story goes into a downward spiral, just like poor Mithee. All characters are flat, one-note characters. I mean that literally - the English dialogue doesn't help one bit. This was a problem in her previous outing also. But unlike that film, the story-telling in "15 Park Avenue" is haphazard and some aspects of it are outright questionable.

After you've established Mithee's terrifying world and after you've established her family's troubles, what remains? There's got to be *something* for all those characters to do, right?

Enter the Old Flame. The Old Flame - played with frozen plasticity by Rahul Bose - was once in love with Mithee. They were even engaged. But a life-changing event (more about this later) in Mithee's life forces him to re-examine his relationship. In other words, he vamooses. His return into Mithee's life (or the other way around) is helped by a coincidence. Coincidences are a sure sign of narrative problem. Anyway, the coincidence here is that both Mithee and Old Flame land up in Bhutan at the same time. She, with her family and he, with his family - an insecure, jealous wife and two kids. I am thinking of a word that starts with M and ends in "elodrama"...

This hill-station part of the story is loose and scripted poorly beyond belief.

First of all, Mithee is missing from the screen for a hefty portion of this act. Then Old Flame and his wife's conversation is cliched to the point that I was doing a MST3000 with the film. That couple's love-making scene shot in blue actually ends in a cigarette being lit - COME ON!!! How many times must we watch a love-making scene cut to a face-shot of the couple draped in that infamous L-shaped bedsheet?

There's some terrible on-the-nose dialogue between some new characters about this holy man who hears voices and there's a little love triangle thrown in for dramatic tension and Mithee and Old Flame walk around and talk - just what the hell was going on there?

In short, the Bhutan act killed the pace of the film completely.

The really odd thing about the film is that in spite of these shortcomings, the film has a very touching end. The closing long-shot on a house is unnerving, almost like a scene from a horror film.

A terrific opening and a powerful close - maybe this should have been an excellent 20-minute short film, who knows?

Now about that life-changing event (a rape) in Mithee's life. I found it plain gratuitous. You don't use a plot device like that so lightly. The two purposes served by that rape sequence could be to

a) show the viewer that assault and abuse could trigger schizophrenia (but not be the root-cause), and
b) provide a reason for Rahul Bose's character to exist in the story. If he doesn't run away from her, there's no third act.

In other words, the chilling sequence is used for some pedagogy (nothing wrong in that) and worse, for solving structural issues in the story. Watch the film without that sequence and nothing will be out of place. In other words, completely gratuitous.

Still, "15 Park Avenue" offers small pleasures. The opening audio collage of traffic is one. Then there's a homeless, mentally-ill woman living outside Mithee's home. This cameo character offers a heartrending contrast to the upper middle-class Mithee. Who cares for the mentally ill on the streets? Who even offers them sympathy, let alone hospitalization and a getaway in Bhutan?

Watch David Cronenberg's 2002 film "Spider" for a really scary look at schizophrenia and see how the same subject is handled by him in a different genre. It is a really disturbing film.