Exploding embers

Film: Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani
Director: Jiju Antony
Cast: Sanal Aman, Adnan Khan, Amit Singh, Yash Bhosle

1995. Bombay had just changed to Mumbai. I arrived in the mahanagar for my first job. My lodgings were in the Central Government Staff Quarters in Antop Hill, Sion. I stood at the balcony of my third floor flat and looked out. I saw a few Fiat taxis parked and some of the drivers talking to young girls. Wow, my innocent mind went. What a place. Even the drivers have girlfriends. Later I found that those were the ladies of the night and the drivers were their facilitators. My awe was tempered, but taxi drivers still fascinated me.

Fast forward 20 years. My college-mate Jiju has made a movie about a Mumbai taxi driver. A frightening, yet hard-hitting story. Of imbibing violence and enacting it. Of mundane lives and repressed rages. A debut that soars without ever not touching the ground.

Prashant Jadhav (Aman) is a taxi driver. A violent act occurs in his life that leads to consequences. But that’s just the beginning. We go back in his life, all the way to his childhood, to understand the extraordinary circumstances that led to it. And realize they are not so uncommon after all.

Jiju uses the Memento style in that the story is told in reverse. But that doesn’t seem at all a gimmick as our journey is to go back in time. A root-cause analysis, for want of a better phrase! It follows an episodic structure with 10 chapters going back in time. A reverse countdown. Jiju and his cinematographer Pratap Joseph use colour and its hues to separate the various chapters in an ambitious way. Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, the director of the controversial Sexy Durga, supports the venture by taking on editing duties. 

The actors are mostly not that. Sanal Aman is an incredibly loud actor, especially considering he barely talks most of the time. His eyes scream out at us. We experience how anger and anguish are not that far apart. Adnan, Amit, Yash enact Prashant at ages 16, 10 and 5. And prove to be excellent finds. Rajshri Deshpande, who cameos in a small role, is probably the only experienced actor. But, at no point, does one feel you are watching non-actors. 

A lot has to do with the effortless way Jiju crafts his film. A run-time of 81 minutes leaves you wanting more. The limited budget of the crowd-funded movie never comes to the fore, nor is there any attempt by the professionals working on it to show off. 

The title of the film means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It is a biblical phrase known to scholars and a religious few. While retaining it in Aramaic (or Hebrew) will be contested, I don’t think there will be another title that is apt for this story.

The Vinu School of Film Appreciation, Evaluation and Reviewing, of which I am the founding and so far only member, lives and dies by the dictum that you cannot be a good reviewer unless you want to make a movie yourself. So far it has worked on the big Hollywood fare that I tend to write about. But this is much closer to home. I am mad that a country cousin has made a movie in Marathi, a language he knows as well as Vulcan. I am furious that he has done it without any formal training whatsoever. I am incensed that he now has Film Director on his CV. Trust me, I will take out my wrath on his next movie. Because this one didn’t give me any chance.