Adrishya Jalakangal – An Unfinished Poem

Dr. Bijukumar Damodaran debuted as writer and director with Saira (2005). It was first part of terrorism trilogy and premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival. His second film Raman (2008) was selected at Cairo International Film Festival (2009) in the Incredible India category. Veettilekkulla Vazhi (The Way Home; 2010) was the last film of the trilogy and earned a National Film Award for best Malayalam film in 2010.

This writer was introduced to the work of this extremely versatile and grounded filmmaker from Kerala with his beautiful film ‘Trees Under the Sun’ (2020) which won the ‘Outstanding Artistic Achievement Award’ at Shanghai International Film Festival. Each film of his, mainly in Malayalam, spells out a completely different story drawn from different avenues of life.

It is a completely lyrical film about a Dalit family from Kerala who migrate to a lower Himalayan village in search of better living conditions. It focuses on different aspects of humanity ranging from environmental fears through poverty, parenthood, forced migration and exploited labour. It is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen.

Bijukumar’s latest film ‘Invisible Windows’ (2022) will take your breath away not only in terms of its subject set in a surreal, imaginary space but also because it is one of the most powerful celluloid statements on how just the fear of war can be used as a weapon against an entire community.

In Bijukumar’s words, “It is basically an anti-war film with a layered structure and surrealistic treatment. War is definitely a disaster made by man which causes the life of common people miserable in many ways in many countries. Adrishya Jalakangal is an attempt to look at the social menace of war from a common man’s point of view and be a strong artistic signature against war.”

The film opens with a batch of lunatics freed from a lunatic asylum to free space for new entrants. The protagonist, (Tovino Thomas) who does not have a name, is one of them.

As he is explained how to take his medicines on his own, he asks the doctor, “Are you mad?” and this sets the tone of the film. We begin to learn that he is not a mad man at all, and knows this as well.

As he walks back to his old home in a discarded railway wagon at the end of the city, he throws up the medicines and laughs at his own joke. He arrives at his railway wagon, opens the lock by picking up the key hidden in the grass outside, steps in and begins to toy with some electrical equipment to switch on a bulb to liberate the room from darkness.

You cannot see any railway tracks but only once, you, perhaps, can hear of an engine roaring in the distance.

He is puzzled and surprised to find a new neighbour in a young woman who occupies the other railway wagon opposite his. She too, does not carry a name but emerges as a feisty, bold and no-holds-barred sex worker whose clients are the ‘military’ men who rule the imaginary world kept in control with the constant fear of war.

The sound of aeroplanes and helicopters dot the skies juxtaposed against the twitter of birds on the ground near the railway wagons constantly sustaining an aura of fear of war. What war? No one knows.

Which country is fighting against which nation? No one knows. But “war” is going to take place any moment is the fear-filled emotion running right through the film.

Another family with two growing children, a boy and a girl live with their paralytic grandfather in the only two-tiered, wooden house in the same neighbourhood. The sex worker teaches them off and on and also reads out stories to them.

There is a goat-pen under this house where the goats live. Their bleats often cut into the soundscape, reminding us of the last remains of Nature before “war” destroys it all.

The protagonist has issues with the sex worker, but the old man does not as he says that she is of pure mind which is more important than her body.

One can see tall and broad chimneys in the distance from the place where these five people live and we learn that there is a chemical factory nearby which emits smoke from time to time. The protagonist goes back to his new job at the mortuary.

The dead body of a university professor suddenly comes to life and begins to talk to this man. He is seen holding a thick book. He says, “If only men had books to read, there would not have been any war.” The young man is scared but slowly gets used to being conversant with dead men.

He also makes friends with the ghost of a dead musician who died of a heart attack during an anti-war music show the protagonist walked into. This musician is holding a guitar in his hand and playing on it, and tells the young man that if there was music in the world, there would be no war.

Then, suddenly, the young man finds four dead bodies dressed in orange uniforms with white helmets held in their hands. They inform the young man that they died in a leak in the chemical factory which actually manufactures chemical weapons.

They warn him of a bigger catastrophe in the factory where a big chemical leak might soon kill everyone. The young man goes to the local police but they beat him up and he runs away back to freedom.

Are these five individuals the only “free” men and women living in this ambience of a war that is fictionally created just to keep them in a constant state of fear? Or, are they the few survivors of this strange world where people are thrown into lunatic asylums just to keep them in “control”?

The sex worker turns away one of her customers from the factory/military saying that it is her body and it is her mind to use it as and when she wants to. The customer angrily walks away.

The narrative is broken into with the sounds of flying aeroplanes and helicopters which bring the inhabitants running to look at the sky with a mixture of fear, suspense and wonder.

The background music by Rickey Kej is almost like poetry set to music, soft, low-key, emotional, richly created and placed which enriches the tapestry of the visual landscape where the main characters reside. Davis Manuel’s editing keeps pace with the different scenarios of the story including the scene when the burial of the old grandfather is halted by the military police who commands them to burn it.

Tovino Thomas who plays the main lead and is also one of the producers of the film brings to life the character of the ex-lunatic he portrays through the film. Thomas bagged the Best Actor Award at 44ThFantasporto International Film Festival in March 2024.

Nimisha Sajayan as the sex worker who was raped when a little girl while her mother’s dead body lay right beside, gives a scintillating performance, with special reference to the scene where she invites the young man to dinner and teaches him to dance with lights flickering in the room courtesy the young man’s expertise with electric fittings with a dining table laid down for the dinner.

The scene of exchanging memories of their dead mothers by the young man and the sex worker as they lie down under the open sky waiting for falling stars and comets is beautiful. Indrans as the professor’s ghost does a brilliant job in his small cameo and the same goes for the rest of the cast.

The film has used absolutely no make-up, no costume and no glamour for the main characters so they melt into the natural backdrop as if they are born into the scenario.

Yedhu Radhakrishnan’s cinematography invests the film with one of the most beautiful textures in visuals seen recently in Indian cinema. There is a beautiful scene which shows a plane landing in space.

A group of uniformed men step out of the aircraft and along with their leader, begin playing in an orchestra with the leader as their conductor. Once the music ends, they get back on the aircraft and it flies away. Does this really happen? Or is this the product of the fertile imagination of the young man? No one knows and the director keeps this vague and intriguing.

The title ‘Invisible Windows’ is intriguing because it is not explained right through the film in any concrete manner. Why? Because it narrates a surrealistic story set against the backdrop of a futuristic space which shows how innocent masses can be kept in total control merely by the fear of a war looming and waiting to happen anytime, anywhere.

The film transports its viewers to a hypothetically created futuristic world filled with the fear of an imaginary war which, however, is beautifully presented, like an unfinished poem.

Please catch it on NETFLIX while it is still on. ‘Invisible Windows’ has been screened at not less than eight international film festivals including in Estonia, Portugal, India, Bangladesh, London, Germany and more.