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.
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