Pankh - Movie Review

It is a story of human suffering and about the tragedy of human predicament. The film tries to explore the complex maze of relationships: the Oedipal, the homosexual, the exploitative. It tears that veil of shame that covers the face of this glamorous profession. Truth stares naked at the face of an audience bred on and allured by the sham of this life.

Synopsis

Baby Kusum was a child star...

Baby Kusum achieved tremendous success...

Baby Kusum was a Boy.

Baby Kusum is now 20 and still searching for his identity . . .

Baby Kusum explores various spaces--- the real space, the mind space, the sexual space and the spiritual space. All stand juxtaposed together and often are intermingled to create panoply of gore and blood, of intensity and brutality, of love and shame. Cinematically it confronts the time space continuum. It conjures and jumbles up the time past, the time present and the time operative, all together within the same mental space. It creates a delusion. It provokes and raises several pertinent questions. But it never ignores basic human emotions. That is where it becomes a moral fable, a pious tale. That is where it connects to the common man.

PANKH is the story of a young man caught in a psychological matrix of gender confusion that has been imposed on him by his social circumstance. In linear time, the narrative encompasses twenty four hours of the protagonist Jerry’s life during which his entire world order goes topsy-turvy. A mentally deranged Jerry lives trough a passage of several spatio-temporal zones – time present, time past and fantasy time all blend and merge into one another and the differentials are blurred. He bears the burden of a false identity imposed on him by a ruthless system. The surreal dream woman Nandini acts as his counterfoil, constantly provoking him to fly beyond the drudgery of a mere mortal existence. In many ways she becomes his alter ego, and extension of his mind, accentuating his psychological trauma. It is a bizarre and disturbing film that questions and confronts traditional notions of psycho-sexual politics and pushes the envelope to a point that shocks and benumbs the audience.