Much of the recent discourse around sexual harassment and rape - including the many insensitive statements that continue to be made by people in positions of authority - centre on personal morality and the gap between "modern" and "traditional" ways of doing things. Much voyeuristic attention is directed at the "westernised" woman whose lifestyle and dressing sense are perceived as being directly related to the bad things that might happen to her. In this context, I was intrigued by the narrative structure of Unni Vijayan's film Lessons in Forgetting (last year's National Award for Best Feature Film in English), which leads the viewer down a winding path by offering a range of perspectives on a free-spirited young woman.
The film (adapted from Anita Nair's novel) opens with the information that 19-year-old Smriti had a terrible accident (though it might also have been an attack) on a beach in a Tamil Nadu town: having suffered brain damage, she is now in a vegetative state, and her father, Jak, is trying to understand what happened, while also learning things about the person she was. In one of the first scenes, a doctor at the hospital where Smriti was taken puts on a show of conditional sympathy. Yes, this is terrible, but, you know, "this Western culture..." and then his voice trails off, and he begins again: "I'm not blaming anyone, but when girls are let loose..." He tells Jak that tests indicated his daughter had "been with" more than one man shortly before the tragedy.
Jak then meets some of Smriti's friends - members of the theatre troupe with whom she had been travelling - and discovers that she had been sexually intimate with more than one boy in her group. Through their stories (presented in inter-woven flashbacks) we learn that she was promiscuous and possibly a little flighty and irresponsible in how she treated the people she was close to. And the boys themselves have clearly been scarred by their involvement with her: one has become a depressive alcoholic, another has taken quick-fix solace in religion, and while all this is presented simplistically we get the point. These scenes define our initial attitudes to Smriti. We see her mainly through male eyes: riding a scooter in a short skirt, flitting from one guy to the next without always being mindful of hurt feelings; and later, walking about imprudently in torn jeans in a small, conservative town, constantly drawing attention to herself.
But late in the film, there is a subtle shift in perspective. The character comes into her own, the male gaze is supplanted, and vital gaps in the story are filled in by a sympathetic older woman who knew Smriti. We learn that she was plucky and good-hearted, with a conscience and an insufficient sense of self-preservation, and that what happened to her was not only grossly disproportionate as "punishment" for her (real or imagined) faults, it was also a direct result of the compassion that stems from her "modern" upbringing. It alters our attitude to the character and makes us confront our own buried or overt biases.
Lessons in Forgetting builds in intensity in its disturbing final sequences, and it also has a lovely sand-art animation scene that summarises the plot as the opening credits play. Given this, it's a pity that much of the midsection is flabby, with the English dialogue often sounding stilted and a couple of the lead performances, wooden. However, the good bits reminded me of two other flawed but interesting low-key films I saw in the last few months: Jalpari, which deals with female foeticide and links gender discrimination with an imbalance in the natural order (Nair's book uses cyclones as an important metaphor, one that isn't really explored in the film), and Listen... Amaya, which touches on the relationship between children and single parents. Lessons in Forgetting may have been a better film if it had explored the bond between Jak and Smriti at fuller length, letting us see how a certain type of parent-child relationship can be a little like walking gingerly across a beach littered with very sharp shells - and how it can affect the subsequent choices and actions of both sets of people.
Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer
