F.i.g.h.t C.l.u.b

Depression is a symptom of a gloom caused by social system and its invariable ability to isolate individuals.

The film is not about the narrative of the fairy tale. It is but a reflection of how I see the world right now. As it was then, when the piece was written, the world is in a flux. India is changing radically, along with the politics of the world, and these changes are essentially driven by system driven violence. My storyteller, therefore, is a lost soul. Unable to deal with the cacophony of his circumstances, he dives into the fable, as if to save himself. The characters of the fairy tale are all extensions of the storyteller, and the story itself has a life of its own. Every story is the same. And it is always the telling that shifts the paradigms.

In the film, it’s his story that helps the storyteller overcome his ennui and to take a decision that would change his life.

The prince is depressed, because the storyteller is. A deep isolation caused by the sense of loss, of one’s self. Stagnant and paranoid. Stuck in a space and time that is almost a cocoon, with the appearance of a prison. While the storyteller is confined within the two parallel railway tracks, the prince is in his palace, a hopeless fortress, as it seems to him.

Tasher Desh is also about belief and magic. The oracle, the fairy watching over our prince, is needed because impetus is external. This is what connects us to the world outside our mind. Instead of drawing inspiration from the mundane reality, the storyteller as the concerned friend of his protagonist invokes the fairy. The prince’s transformation is immediate. Touched by the power of illusion, he suddenly begins to realize that his emancipation is in movement. He needs to go away. One of the most important things holding him back was his broken mother. He comes out to his mother, and then dives into his fantasy. The storyteller also jumps the wall of his reality.

It could be argued that social governance and its monotheistic, patriarchal nature cause collective depression. Tagore’s utopia is bizarre, with masked beings, strange rules and social paranoia of change. The cards in the film seem to have lost all human tendencies.

When the prince and the friend meet them. But the prince, newly liberated, is impatient to try out the power he has been given. A demi god now, devoid of intrinsic human folly, he delivers the message to the ace of hearts.

The storyteller travels the path he has often traveled in his fantasy, and when he arrives at the palace of his dreams, he finds her. The ace of hearts, a widow living in the shadows of a ruined structure. Mystical, magical, she is the one he was waiting for. Suddenly he has someone to tell the story to. Get it out of his soul. The widow and the ace of hearts merge in his story, and a revolution begins.

Tasher Desh symbolizes the triumph of a pagan form of ritualistic cleansing through love and identification of the self, in a postmodern society. it’s a vision of the man cleansed pure by the woman, and the seed of identity being sexual in nature. The ace of hearts takes away the storyteller’s attention, at the same time making his story more palpable, more intense, and more romantic. The film turns a sharp corner therefore, and begins to intensify on finding that one point, the spark. It’s a feminine revolt that the story narrates now, no longer a tale of male neurosis. A non-­‐violent revolution fuelled by love. In utopia. Tagore was a pure romantic, and i have tried to place his sensibilities in the confusion of our time. a violent world without any screen violence. A fairy tale without any fabrication and frills. I have tried to find the unreal right beside me. All the art properties in the film were objects we can find easily. The locations were live. The look, inspired heavily by Japanese forms, from kabuki to manga, had to be basic. There are no visual effects used, apart from layering two or three visuals together, to find an image that allows all the realities to exist together, form a relationship. And a video game reference that was done with video moshing, a very low fi technique. The idea was minimalist. Within that apparent reality, we would try to find the sublime. The magical.

The film is a musical. Following an ancient oral form, we have retained the songs as they were, written eighty years back. Associating with some of the finest musicians across the world, I have tried to place the sound of Tagore’s time with the current ones. The words of the songs, so eloquent, emerging from a romantic poet of the highest standard, are actually lines for the characters that sing them. With the use of music, the reality is broken time and again, but every song contains a message so intrinsic to the character, one can lose one’s self in them. Sound and colour play crucial roles in the film, creating the environment and the tension of the spaces explored.

Once upon a time, there was a storyteller. In a lonely railway station, somewhere in Kolkata, he spoke to trains. He wanted to tell a story. It was not a new story. But for him, it was the only story to tell. Inside the darkness of his mind, his story unfolds, a kaleidoscope of fantasy.

Once upon a time, there was a prince. a victim of his destiny, he was banished with his mother to a dark and distant prison palace. Here he grows up, without hope, without a future, with his mother drowning herself in alcohol. His depression countered only by his friend, the merchant’s son, who argues that it was indeed the prince’s choice to remain locked in. realizing the extent of his despair, the friend invokes the oracle. A mysterious figure, the oracle passes on a message of liberation. The prince realizes that he is indeed a prisoner of his mind. He takes a decision, to leave. He has a final moment with his mother, who lets him go. The prince takes hold of his destiny, and sets off on a voyage with his friend, searching for an adventure.