Suhel Banerjee바카라s CycleMahesh crystallizes through punctuations. Born in imaginative, fluid spaces, its portrait of a migrant laborer changes shape the minute we try to pin it down, define it. Opening in a play-like setting, with a person trapped, it hurls key questions right away: 바카라Does the fire of hunger produce poetry? Does music die in it?바카라 This is the closest the film stretches to spelling out its themes. Otherwise, it바카라s sprawling and slippering, dislodging assumptions. Threading sketches, handheld, phone footage and stately compositions, Banerjee straddles documentary and fable.
As the early intertitle states itself, the titular Mahesh appears in many forms across fiction and non-fiction. We follow multiple manifestations of the twenty-year-old who had a minute of fame during the pandemic, when he cycled 1700 kms over seven days, going from Maharashtra to his home in Odisha. The film puts together re-enactments of snatches in his journey바카라the exulting high as well as sudden inconveniences of being on the road.
He does confess to twinges of fear while embarking on his journey. Who knows what the road holds behind an unexpected curve? 바카라Cycle means courage,바카라 he says, but doubts of sustaining through also linger. Divided over a seven-day span, CycleMahesh is infused with formal freedom that바카라s spirited yet bracing. It바카라s an openness of horizons Mahesh himself desires but remains out of view. The film becomes a conduit바카라a bridge and a gulf between Mahesh and the viewer. Belonging to a lower social strata, he has just few options바카라which are pressed on us with acute force. As we trail him across various avatars and topography, his resilience isn바카라t framed as heroic but tragic, forced by contexts that forever tie him down.
There바카라s a sense of calm in the film juxtaposed with interruption. It believes in no distinctions. Fiction bleeds into non-fiction, creative interpretations fusing with hardy verite approaches. Banerjee바카라s filmmaking isn바카라t hemmed in by rigidities of style and temper. He wants us to sweep over the vastness of terrain with a bird바카라s eye-view but also splices us into the moment바카라s uncertainty. Survival is rocky, prone to being tossed around. What바카라s the salve? Banerjee destabilizes projections of Mahesh, turning it jagged and fleeing fixed scope.
CycleMahesh is free of strictures바카라rolling through shifting landscapes, captured with both sublime wonder and palpable texture by cinematographer Prateek Pamecha. Forest, valley, mountain and rivers바카라Pamecha presents a man who cleaves through them all. We are continually directed to take in sunsets leaking through the earth, torch-shimmers on crabs cutting through darkness, the sheer expanse of rock and village standing vulnerable. Instead of imposing, all of this is done with a gentle guidance. Occasionally, carefully set compositions are pulled back, revealing meticulous arrangements by the hand at play.
The director himself intervenes as does the crew. At one point, we watch the director trying to persuade traffic police about filming permissions. Elsewhere, the layout of the film바카라s opening바카라a scene from a play with Mahesh in an open cage of hunger바카라interposes. Even the real-life Mahesh pops up, a shy, blushing presence, thrilled at having so much fuss being made about his life. For once, he feels that his existence is consequential, that he does matter. Though he knows it바카라s all just momentary, that he바카라ll have to revert to the grind of survival, there바카라s joy and lightness in this interval. Yet, this liminal phase simultaneously stains itself with aching realizations. This is a moment of suspended time he can only indulge in for a while바카라like the minute of fame that he got when his cycle-story broke out in national headlines, this shoot will pass.
There are amusing bits like a scene where the director tries to shoot the real-life Mahesh cycling. But he quickly calls for a cut. Mahesh is being too performative. So a fictional lens, with several actors filling in, gets to render the story. Before we know it, magic, myth and mysterious visions come along.
How do lives like Mahesh바카라s look like when narrativized, put on film? What바카라s the epistemic violence instantly propping up? With endlessly renewing self-reflexivity, CycleMahesh complicates the act of looking at marginal lives. It wrestles with questions of negating harsher edges. Instead of scrubbing out those, Banerjee insists we confront, square with how Mahesh can break out of the loop. His friend Mamta is the one lending perspective to surviving in the village. While one has to move out for work, there바카라s also the threat of permanent displacement. Development projects on the cusp ram through the village, evicting people from their homes. CycleMahesh brings forth this instability. There바카라s no oar to latch onto. Is there any escape?
CycleMahesh screened at New Directors/New Films 2025 (April 2-13)
