The Unsettling Academy Award winning Parasite (Bong
Joon-ho) proved a point last year, that the global audience are well prepared to
accept experimental-taboo and unorthodox scripts, shaping opportunities for
potentially gifted and bold filmmakers to invest in such eccentric projects in
the coming decade. Writter-director Bhaskar Hazarika, somehow anticipated the
future and released his Aamis (Ravening) only few months before Parasite, but
remained deprived of any recognition being a regional movie. Aamis, came to me
as an unusual blend of romance and horror, kicking off with the innocence of a
typical boy-meets-girl plot and developing into a disturbingly twitchy tale of doom.
Sumon (Arghadeep Baruah), a PhD student writing his thesis on the peculiar meat
eating habits in the North-East and a middle-aged-lonely married doctor Nirmali
(Lima Das) come across each-other, and immediately bond over their shared unusual-uncompromising
preferences of taking their meat (fresh and cooked in the right way). Their
frequent gastric excursions involved meals of mutton, wild rabbits, catfish
with colocasia, bats and even foul smelling insects. Realizing soon enough of
their taboo relationship, Sumon takes a startling resolution to immortalize their
love and to somehow transcend the barriers of physical intimacy and sexual
passion by feeding Nirmali his own meat. Meat instead, quickly became a
metaphor for love, passion and connection and transcended to be an aphrodisiac
for both the protagonists. Totally consumed by their cannibalistic tendencies,
the addiction for human flesh drives both our protagonists into a violent hunt
for food leading them to a path of crime and self-demise.
Hazarika ventilates a pristine narrative to the
viewers, constantly questioning their own prejudice of love and companionship.
The horrifyingly tragic fate of both the protagonists nudge the viewers into a
state of awe and discomfort. Arghadeep’s delightfully timid Sumon with all his
insecurities and preconceptions forging a monster out of the love of his life and
the persistent conflict with his inner demons is portrayed brilliantly. Lima
Das on the opposite spectrum plays the vibrant-implacably honest Dr Nirmali
with sheer conviction, Nirmali’s commitment to her newly discovered bizarre
craving for human flesh and striding down a menacing trail is depicted
skillfully. To sum it all up, Aamis is the step in the right direction for the
coming-of-age filmmaking, viewers throughout the globe deserve more such
unsettling projects which for a change provokes us to rethink our own
perceptions of moral codes. Personally, it took me a second watch to finally
like the movie..!!
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