Movie Review : Ahalya by Sujoy Ghosh

The short film ‘Ahalya’ by Sujoy Ghosh is going viral on Youtube. It is a thriller in which the viewers’ eyes are glued to the screen for the fourteen minutes. Not a scene can be missed from this movie. And moreover one keeps thinking about the film story line and its interpretation after watching it. It is based on a mythological story of Ahalya and her husband, Sage Gautam. Indra who is attracted to beautiful and young Ahalya disguised himself as Sage Gautam, visited their hut to woo her. The sage caught them together. He cursed her to turn into a stone and came back to life only after the touch of Lord Ram’s feet. He as well as cursed Indra with impotency.

In Ahalya movie, Radhika Apte acted as ‘Ahalya’, Soumitra Chatterjee as ‘Gautam Sadhu’, Ahalya’s husband and famous artist. Tota Roy Chowdhury was a stoned face policeman named ‘Indra Sen’. The story began with a policeman who rang the bell of a house and a beautiful lady opened the door. The policeman, Indra Sen visited the house of the famous artist Gautam Sadhu to enquire about the missing young person Arjun. The beautiful wife of artist greeted him. The policeman saw Arjun’s humanoid sculptures along with others on mantelpiece in their drawing room. The artist told him that Arjun had modelled for him a month ago and also about the magical stone that turns one into whatever one wished to which Arjun might have used before missing. The policeman doubted the story. The artist asked him to check the magical powers. He touched the stone and went upstairs to hand over the phone to Ahalya. She treated him as her husband. He was also surprised to see himself as Gautam Sadhu in the reflection. When he was coming back, in the mid way he changed his mind and went back to her bedroom. He found himself next to the other humanoid sculptures on the mantelpiece.

In mythology, Sage Gautam cursed both of Indra and Ahalya for what they did where as in this movie only Indra Sen was punished where as Ahalya enjoyed her life as before repeating the same mistake again and again. In the beginning Ahalya was wearing white colour dress and in the end she was wearing black after the secret was revealed to the audiences.  

The movie has the shades of ‘Professor Shonku O Ashchorjo Putul’ (Professor Shonku and the strange dolls) by Satyajit Ray and the animated movie ‘Alma’. Professor Shonku went to Sweden and met a person named Gregor Lindquist who was a doll maker and visited him to see his creations and falls in danger. Humanoid sculpture idea was well used in this film.

This movie is really gripping!