Let’s face it. Queer cinema in India is in its infancy. With very few filmmakers, barring a Rituparno Ghosh here and an Onir there, even attempting to get into the sensitive space, director Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda (in Marathi) is the kind of unalloyed cinema which raises significant hope for the future of Indian cinema. It does what our cinema rarely does: it lets the characters be, allows them to breathe freely even if they exist in a stifling social order.
The point is, the film’s protagonist Anand (Bhushaan Manoj, sensationally natural) gets to choose from his own absence of choices. The quietly persuasive film begins with the death of Anand’s father. The frames capture the death with a steeply subdued tonality of expression, as though the death is not quite registering the finality it is meant to.
Director Kanawade seems to master the silences that wrap themselves around his protagonist’s head in the time of mourning. We see Anand reliving his old times with his father even as he copes with the constant stream of inquiries (“About time you married”) and demands (“Don’t go out… sleep on the floor… eat only one meal…”) which fill up the space that separates loss from living.
Bereavement in Sabar Bonda is not given much slack.
Love is. From the time Anand reunites with his childhood friend Balya (Suraaj Suman) we know they have a history. It is the silences between them. The awkward word-bridges built between two people who don’t need to speak to one another to communicate. The actual lovemaking takes time. There are stages of communication to be explored before the skin is in.
Balya, ironically, is the more free-willed, more fearless of the duo. Anand is more cautious, although he has the most unexpectedly supportive mother that rural India has ever seen in the life of a closeted gay man. The mother (Jayshree Jagtap) is not only privy to her son Anand’s sexuality, she has even processed it in her mind and seems to know what Anand should do to remain true to himself, better than Anand himself.
Anand’s mother tackles his awkwardness before the rest of his family with a commanding stoicism. When relatives insist he gets married, Anand’s mother supports him with a quiet defiance.
What is most remarkable about this pathbreaking film is that it drains the drama out of the situations without tampering with its energy. It is like watching a slice of life in cinema without the accompanying cinematic conceits. The characters are in the grieving mode. But there is too much of living going on to think about the dying.
Sabar Bonda (a cactus fruit which is hard to find and almost impossible to eat without the thorns getting in the way) revels in its mood of silent protest. Anand, the protagonist, who returns to his village to mourn for his father, is trapped between grieving and desire. But he never feels the burden of his existence: the film doesn’t have room for cinematic affectations.
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