Laali Review- Quietly affecting tale of powerfully realized aches
In the opening ten minutes or so of the short film Laali, the protagonist, a middle-aged man in a suburban neighborhood somewhere in Kolkata who irons clothes for a living, does not even utter a word; all the viewer hears is a richly detailed sonic panoply of radio chatter, the stubborn buzz of nocturnal insects, the late night traffic whooshing and trundling by noisily, and the occasional announcer rolling past on the streets outside. It’s an exquisite long take, simple and unadorned, allowing the viewer to absorb in every intricacy with which the shop’s front-face has been constructed, and of course the spare mastery of the actor in the center, Pankaj Tripathi.
The unnamed character keeps to himself and hobbles about in his room, packed and spilling over with customers’ clothes, having a drink or two at night and seeking refuge in romantic music. He comes across a woman’s red velvet dress that got mixed up in the clothes from a men’s hostel that were sent to him, and the dress initiates a string of thoughts and recollections in the man, as he recounts his time in his village he is from , the woman he left behind to move away to a prospect of decent and respectable livelihood in the city. There’s a faint note of lament for the life he chose to steer aside in his voice but he doesn’t wallow in it. Director Abhiroop Basu is fluent in the language of silences and subdued, delicate gestures. The filmic storytelling is definitively laconic and the manner in which Basu reveals and conveys to us the slightest details of and insights into the protagonist’s history has a restraint so imperceptible it could almost come off as being under-written . If the viewer is discerning, he or she will admire the unobtrusive confidence that is immanent in Basu’s telling. There is no pretense of any attempt to wheedle emotion out of the viewer or present something tightly compelling or gripping to instantly hook the viewer, instead the slow accretion of the sense of place and the character’s inner world that Basu conjures up with minimal fuss and strain is stunning. Basu shrewdly handles space; the physical spaces the protagonist inhabits is constricting, the visual motif of spatial limitation ascribing and confining the inner expression of the reticent man to a narrow orbit.
For the man, the dress is an eloquent reminder of the love and life that he has frittered away, letting them flit by, without realizing the price of it and the ensuing acute loneliness that has engulfed him completely. He takes the dress to have been that of an orchestra girl in his village of Sonpur, the poster of whom is taped on the wall, perhaps the only wordless sliver of human connection he confides in. He carefully places and arranges the dress on the chair or the bed and the viewer senses his intimate possessiveness about it. He becomes almost fiercely attached to it. But it’s a spell that’s bound to be broken, and a rude shock awaits him, snapping him out of the stirrings of love the dress inspired in him and which enabled him to verbally articulate the ache within him.
In Basu’s debut short, Meal, the microcosmic portrait of the horrific patriarchal oppressions in a middle class household merged seamlessly into a much broader indictment of the nation and society, without using a line of dialogue. Meal and Laali demonstrate Basu’s clear lack of interest in verbiage; he is guided by the cornerstone of economy in the telling, aided with a smart confluence of elements that form the soundscape. Laali is efficiently propped up by the superbly intuitive, exceptionally minute sound design by Aakash Ghoshal and the mixer Anindit Roy, and marks a solid triumph for both. There’s a genuine porous attentiveness and an ability to generously weave in the incongruent sounds of the night and day that accompany the character as he goes through the motions of his work, and retires to his bed after indulging in drinks at night. The wedding shehnai, the cacophony of the celebrations, the late night ghazals that act as a balm, everything is wound together with fluidity. While Meal had a bristling rage artfully contained in its silences, scratch the surface of Laali and you will find undercurrents of volcanic yearning simmering tremulously. Laali reflects Basu’s sensitivity to the human condition without spelling out the emotions in excess. The short has a technical sharpness and Basu’s editing finely sculpts few deeply vulnerable moments of the character languorously. Deep Metkar’s cinematography has a modest elegance in the way he manages to tap the subterranean sense of emotional desolation in the cloistered interiors. Pankaj Tripathi summons a distinct evocation of loss and melancholy that gently sneaks up on the viewer. There’s the familiar emollient edge to him, and also something piercingly poignant.
Though the ending is predictable and sags on that account, it does not take away anything from the film because it has all the vivid, skillful assuredness of touch of a filmmaker who is accurately keyed into the well-observed realities and nuanced little touches of the narrative terrain he traverses. I urge you to make time for Laali.
Laali is currently playing at the Dharamshala International Film Festival , which is being held online till November 8.
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