[Reader-list] A brave new film called I Am

[Chintan Girish Modi]

>From http://www.thehindu.com/arts/cinema/article1980937.ece

*Stories no one told you before*

By Sudhish Kamath

Got an open mind? Make sure you take that with you when you enter the hall
to watch Onir's most honest and powerful film till date.

Because, when you hear a man still haunted by child abuse confess that he
felt the love of his step-father strangely comforting that after a point he
used to manipulate their incestual relationship for personal gain, you will
need empathy to soak in the complexity of this intricately woven tale of
people and identity.

Because, when you watch a family of a reformed mujahideen living in Srinagar
refer to Delhi as India, you will need the compassion to dig into their
tense, military-supervised everyday lives, understand and accept that
ideologies have caused irreparable damage between friends.

Because, when you see a divorced woman waver around about wanting to know
more about her sperm donor but not wanting him around after the delivery,
you need to see it as a fleeting moment of confusion, a perfectly normal
thing for an anxious mother.

Because, when you see a powerful man blackmail a struggler into going on a
dinner date with him for purely sexual reasons, you need the perspective to
understand that there are very few avenues left for gay men to openly flirt
with other men.

And because, people are complex.

This anthology of short stories — I am Afia, I am Megha, I am Abhimanyu and
I am Omar — is a mixed bag. There are loads of issues packed together into
every short story apart from the broad common thread of identity and the
role of the system in defining boundaries, so much that each story is
complicated in its own unique way.

If the system prevents a mother from meeting a sperm donor in I am Afia
(Nandita Das), the system has caused a permanent rift between best friends
in I am Megha (Juhi Chawla), the system is in denial about child abuse in I
am Abhimanyu (Sanjay Suri) and the system is the two-faced hypocritical
oppressor in I am Omar (Arjun Mathur). The last story is more about Jai
(Rahul Bose) than Omar though.

Each story, irrespective of the intensity of drama, is treated refreshingly
low-key that the dramatic background score actually jars in a couple of
places. Despite the extreme nature of the issues explored, nothing is done
to shock and awe. With *I am*, Onir has really come of age as a filmmaker
with an original voice. And it's a voice that needs to be heard.

*I am Afia Megha Abhimanyu Omar*

*Genre: *Drama

*Director: *Onir

*Cast:* Nandita Das, Purab Kohli, Juhi Chawla, Manisha Koirala, Sanjay Suri,
Rahul Bose, Arjun Mathur, Anurag Basu, Anurag Kashyap

*Storyline: *A divorcee meets with her sperm donor to have a baby, a
Kashmiri Pandit returns home to Srinagar after 20 years, a filmmaker is
haunted by child abuse and a gay man is humiliated

*Bottomline:* A daring indie film about identity, boundaries, sexuality and
societal norms