The film deals with a repressed and dark
chapter of Indian histroy in 1984, when the Prime Minister Indira
Ghandi was killed by her Sikh-bodyguards. The incident
provoked high politicians to use this for provoking a campaign
against the Sikh minority in New Delhi that lead a terrible backlash.
More than 5000 people were reported killed by the incited crowd.
Their houses were burnt – even the houses of Hindus who wanted to
protect their neighbors were not spared.
In every image of Amu we feel
concerned, which can´t be achieved in cinema just because of a
collection of facts. Like in the films by Ritwik Ghatak or Cambodian
Rithy Panh, this human concerns find its cinematic form in a natural
way.
During the opening titles we hear
sounds from an airport. And before the film begins it shows the
machine-like character of cinema which allows us to travel through
time and space and which creates a very special space for
imagination.
Kaju is a young Indian woman grown up
in the USA. After finishing her studies, she returns to her native
country. She visits the family of her foster mother Keya who had
emigrated with her to America when she was a little child. Her
parents she is told died under an epidemic in a village. She tries
now with the assistance of her video camera tracking places and
things which shall help her to remember. She is received by this
family in New Delhi like one of their own. But though, underneath it
seems that she is a stranger She converses mostly in English with
American accent and wears western clothes which obviously provoke
attention.
At the beginning the film has a more
episodic narration. Like Kaju we have just arrived and like her we
try to get familiar with places and a lot of other strange
impressions. Like Kaju, we see at the first sight banal things and
places which do not tell us much. Slowly bit by bit it becomes
obvious that Keya and her family try to keep her away from certain
places. Kaju does not find the very place supposed to bring back her
memories. The strange behavior of her foster family confirms her
doubts and causes more questions in her than answers. Kaju´s image
about her own biography opens cracks. The credibility of her own
story is questioned more and more by herself. It is a little bit like
the story of Madeleine in Hitchcock´s masterpiece Vertigo.
Kaja is attracted in a ghetto in New
Delhi which seems strangely familiar to her with its small lanes and
houses. While visiting this ghetto she wins the friendship of a
family. Rather like in trance and following an impulse she slides
gradually in the precipice of her past. Gradually and surprising, the
films seems to turn into a tight net composed of images and signs in
which every detail becomes important.
Wherever a film deals with memories, I
have to recall the „beings of time“ by Marcel Proust of which
human identities are composed. And these „beings of time“ begin
to have a life. Of their own. With sudden violence they occupy Kajus
consciousness with fragments of memories. We feel it through strong
image,- and sound montages which come over Kaju like inner
earthquakes. There is a sequence that seems like a rupture in the
world and where we sense almost physical Kaju´s hidden pain: she
looks at a railway passage where a noisy train passes by. In a film
theatre on a big screen it appears like gigantic Laterna Magica.
Behind the train we see an irritated and scared woman who looks for
help. Kaju is irritated and almost dizzy from this vision. For now
the rupture is closed but the world won´t be the same for Kaju as
before.
The family story which began
episodically turns now into a thriller-like intensity and at the same
time it becomes a search for the truth like in Orson Welles Citizen
Kane.
The time of doubting begins.
She learns that the epidemic under that
her parents seem to have died is pure fiction. A track leads her to
the 1984 riot against the Sikh minority in New Delhi. Her biography
like it is told to her is a lie. Kaju and this film have to tell her
story once again. And we like Kaju, who often believe blindly in
stories told in films have to re-define our own place in this
cinematic universe. What became of her parents? Where they victims or
perpetrators?
There is the small idea of a love story
between Kaju and Kabir, a son of a very powerful politician. But it
brings little ease because of the involvement of Kabir´s father in
the agenda of 1984. There are not only the flashbacks or verbally
narrated memories that pitch Kaju more and more into the mental state
of an irritated child. These different „beings of time“ are
visible in the beginning. Kaju learns to believe that And Konkona
Sen Sharma embodies in the truest meaning of the word her character
Kaju. On a big screen this tiny young woman has an almost “Orson
Welles-like” presence.
The film moves like a time machine
backwards to the tragedy of 1984. When so much films dealing with
grim subjects turns knotty – the director Shonali Bose is managing
the delicate balance between consequence and sensibility with a
purity of feelings. Even though her atitude is explicit, she does not
give up her gentleness.
Finally, Kaju is told by her foster
mother the real story of her early childhood. We see them sitting in
a car behind the front window which frames Keya and Kaju and also
isolate them from the world outside. The flashback begins with the
very day of the pogrom. We hear noises from the street. And we see
her father, her mother, her little brother and Kaju whose name was
Amrit and whose pet name was Amu. Her family was part of the Sikh
minority. The flashbacks of Keyas memories are punctuated by Kajus
fragmental memories which are presented with emphasis. We realize the
story and at the same time we witness Kaju´s emotional reactions and
the kind she imagines traumatic details. There is the tiny girl who
looks through a small window how the angry crowd is beating her
father to death. But actually Kaju (and we) see only a mass of very
hectic moving bodies. That is a moment which shows the horror of this
event without any voyeuristic effect.
There is again the scared woman on the
railway tracks whom we now recognize as Kaju´s mother. And we see
also (what Keya tells but in which Kaju can´t remember) like
policemen are just watching without interfering and how politicians
are provoking from certain sistance the madness of the killing crowd.
Their sentence „No Sikh shall survive,“ is one of the sentences
which got deleted in the Indian theatrical version because of
pressure of the censorship. The film returns often from the
flashbacks to the car in which Keya and Kaju sit and where we see
Kaju´s emotional reactions.
The revelation now reaches us. We are
told that Kaju´ s family died and their story is almost forgotten in
the public memory. The film does not tell how Kaju will continue her
life with the knowledge of here real story. The time comes when we
have to leave the fictive story and as well the character of Kaju
whom we have so far accompanied. For me it has a tragic dimension.
Since a very long time I haven´t seen a final scene which moved me
like the end of Amu. At the station, Amu sits with Kabir on a
bank. They are holding each other´shand. And at this very moment we
get the idea of a more hopeful future for Kaju – the harmony is
again disturbed . On television they report about a bomb
assassination on a full packed train.
Again a seemingly religious motivated
mass killing that makes the history of 1984 so alive to today. Slowly
the camera moves over railways which are now shown from an extreme
distance. We see some persons crossing the rails. I think having
recognized Kaju and Kabir as well among them. Our close relationship
to Kaju, built through the fiction doesn´t exist anymore. The
fiction has disappeared now from the world in this film. Even though
nothing happens which refers to the story – I am strangely moved
like at the end of Hou Hsiao Hsien´s Hsimeng Rensheng (The
Puppetmaster) or Rithy Panh´s Neak Sre (The Rice field). And
while music appears we read the dedication of Shonali Bose to the
memory of her mother who lived from 1943 to 1986. It is a span of
only 43 years. The letters which stay a while on the image have the
appearance like a tombstone. And this image still remains. A long
train passes heavy and in incredible slow pace diagonally shown
through the image frame. After a seeming eternity the train finally
leaves the frame. Then comes the black on which the end titles roll.
There are films which show their
greatness just in the kind how we are introduced and dismissed. There
are the sounds of landing aircrafts at the beginning and the train in
the last image which frames 100 minutes of composed (Life) time.
This
film has - of course - already raised attention because of its delicate
subject. But this attention was achieved by Shonali Bose and her
film "Amu" only through the possibilities of the cinema. In
several ways,
"Amu", the only new narrative masterpiece which was shown
at the
Berlinale 2005, is a piece of "re-searched time" ( Temps
retrouvé).
Rüdiger
Tomczak (first published in shomingeki No. 16, Summer 2005)