Ramakaushalyan Ramakrishnan바카라s Poem of the Wind is made of fragments. We dip in and out of moments and scenes from a theatre artist Bharani바카라s life. These range from his childhood to the very nether. Increasingly, sadness of the unsaid accumulates. There바카라s so much he wants to say. He aches to fly off but is held back. His pain and grief materialise through a voiceover binding every chapter together. It바카라s wistful, impassioned and searching.
The film staves off any obligation to narrative structures. Instead, it swirls, freefalls and crashes through its ruptured episodes. There are no high points, rather a series of ebbs in the portrait of the artist that forms. Ramakrishnan, who has also shot the film alongside Sanjay Sreeni and Kishore Karthik, uses the camera with the languor of a drifter. We are let into snatches from the man바카라s past바카라a network of violence and coercion, which disorients his deeper impulses. Every flashing snippet presents the shape of his scars.
The meandering nature of Bharani바카라s reminiscences finds a contrast against the very rigidity of adherence he endures. There바카라s no straying from hardline norms바카라the social intruding on individual expression and identity. Bharani wrestles with projections of masculinity. As a child, he harbours conventional prejudices about gendered difference. It바카라s not that there aren바카라t pockets of resistance. In an early scene, his sister questions the act of perceiving women merely and wholly through the prism of beauty. She asserts recognising womanhood바카라s ferocity and valour. Bharani is quiet for a while before he retorts that women are unequipped for wartime. With a touch slow and sure, the film prises out the elemental push-pull in Bharani between inhabiting masculinity and moving outside it.
A deep unhappiness trails him. He has to re-negotiate a whole host of conflicts jostling within. He can바카라t find himself at ease within the configurations of heteronormative, aggressive masculinity. His life is a tussle between conditioning and the discomfort he experiences with it. It바카라s in the fleeting space of performance that he can express some of his anguish. However, the minute he is out of the space and back amongst men, the rush of connection he felt he elicited is negated. They jeer: who claps for plays on women? Bharani바카라s desolation intensifies furthermore. He바카라s dismissed and derided. A certain fluidity that performance allows him is put through its own trials. Can he own up to his self?
Melancholy and resignation wash over Poem of the Wind. Patriarchy exerts a vicious stranglehold of power; its rhetoric of superiority and violence edges out compassion and tenderness. The film also weaves in the contemporary socio-political fabric fraught with fundamentalism바카라communal tensions spark off in towns at the sites where plays are staged. But this segue doesn바카라t bristle as it should have. On the micro and intimate level, Poem of the Wind gathers tense undercurrents. Theatre is a conduit for tough, direct dialogue. Various anxieties are laid bare within the confrontation of a monologue. Isn바카라t empathy바카라that women are believed to have바카라a curse?
바카라If I바카라m soft as a flower, am I not man enough?바카라 Bharani demands. This lamentation threads together the film. He yearns for release, liberation, acceptance. Innocence is lost; the blue bird of his childhood has disappeared. Instead, there바카라s the invasion of proud, emphatic, brute force masculinity. It바카라s an imposition that inevitably forces itself in. The film feels a tad unsure when Ramakrishnan accentuates the literal violence and abuse on women바카라s bodies on a sidetrack. It바카라s more effective in the dread-coiled wait, though the sepia tone is amateurish and distracting. Some of the visual shifts don바카라t land as smoothly as others. Nonetheless, Ramakrishnan evocatively builds an inner world that바카라s under constant threat.
Poem of the Wind culminates in ruins. All that surrounds Bharani is the wreck of a society unable to reflect on its damage. Everything has fallen apart. What remains of him is just a faded residue.
Poem of the Wind had its World Premiere at the Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF) 2024.
