Rashomon to Talvar – Factual to Subjective Reasoning
Mysteries are man-made in most cases. Mysteries that are solved
are remembered across generations, but those that are not become a part of
legend. In due course of time, unsolved mysteries acquire the status of
folklore. They mirror a simple fact – man was not able to solve a problem
created by man himself. Today’s theme focuses on the notoriety, and very often
the cruelty, that an unsolved mystery thrusts on a normal human society. The
theme is carried forward through two instances – a Japanese movie Rashomon made
in 1950 and an Indian movie Talvar released in 2015. Though the age-gap between
the two is more than sixty years, yet Rashomon and Talvar are similarly
mounted, crafted, and executed – at least thematically.
Rashomon:
The story of the movie goes like this: a murder happens in broad
daylight, in the middle of a jungle, and there comes three or four different
versions of what led to the murder. There is a woodcutter, a priest, a
commoner, a bandit, a samurai and a queen who are all entangled in a vicious
circle of lies, deceit, cheat, betrayal and conspiracy. While the commoner is
the voice of the wretched and the underprivileged the priest is the soul of the
society and is the only hope for humanity. The different versions as told by
the central characters are as interesting as the characters themselves. The
bandit says he is the one who killed the samurai. There was a fight between him
and the samurai at the behest of the queen who said that she would not be able
to survive with the guilt of disrespect in the eyes of two men. The wife, the
queen, says: The bandit left after abandoning and attacking her, and she begged
her husband to forgive her. To this, the husband remained indifferent and thus,
the wife tried to commit suicide with a dagger in her hand. By chance, the
dagger fell into the heart of her husband, the samurai, who died in this
process. The version of the samurai was sought through a supernatural method
and it reads: the woman fled, the bandit fled too and in utter despair of
betrayal, loss, guilt and pain, the samurai committed suicide. The woodcutter
kept insisting that all were wrong, even the phantom soul of the samurai – who
is no longer belonging to the material world and thereby must be speaking the
truth – is wrong too. The woodcutter – the confused person, the defensive
mind and the keeper of a household – does not want to get involved.
So, he lies at the hearing – he was a witness to the whole incident. At the
strong insistence of the commoner and the serene request of the priest, the
woodcutter tells his version as well. He says: The both men fought – in a
rather childish manner, with no pride, no craft, with just plain ruthless
stubbornness – and the samurai got killed. The woman fled in horror. After
that, maybe or may not be – the woodcutter stole the dagger which was a rather
costly article.
Talvar:
Based on a true incident the story here goes like this: A double murder
happens in an upper middle-class and affluent family in India. With gross
negligence by the local police force, all prima facie evidences get lost in no
time. A teenage girl and a maid servant in the home of a doctor gets killed. It
was night time and both Mr Doctor and Mrs Doctor were in their room and could
not get the slightest indication of what was happening in their daughter’s
room. Multiple versions come up regarding what happened that led to the murder.
One version says: The father, in a fit of rage, finding her dear daughter in a
compromising position with their servant, takes her life. The version is
solidified on the grounds that the couple were passing through a rather disturbed
married life and their daughter was going through a sense of seclusion and
utter loneliness. But investigation in this direction – where, as mentioned in
one of the dialogues of the movie, the conclusion was set first, and then
suitable explanation was appended to it – led to nowhere. There came no
concrete evidence to prove this theory. A team of intelligent sleuths come up
with another version: There were other people, and not the father, involved in
this gruesome murder, including some outsiders, who were either directly or
indirectly connected to the affairs of the family, and acted under sudden rage
or under the influence of a connivance of some sort. In the end, the matter
stays inconclusive.
Both Rashomon and Talvar are written in a way that present an
alternative way of storytelling. The fact that there is no narration in the
background (also not much dialogue in either of the two films) forces the
audience to see the actions underlying the different versions. By seeing the
characters do divergent things, looking, emoting and talking differently, even though
they are the same actors on-screen, we get a disturbing experience – something
that is not easy to forget. It feels as if, from the bandit of Rashomon to the
dejected father of Talvar, both are either entirely true, or are entirely
false. Had it been a simple flashback or a hyperlinked narration, the effect
would have been different. The incident is one, the characters are the same, but
their developments are divergent. The disturbance that both Rashomon (a
fiction) and Talvar (a true incident) portrays over the society are agonizing.
The common man, the priest, the doctor’s friends, the inspectors’ supervisor –
they are all under the radar of suspicion. What is the truth? Though facts are
on hand the answer is not deductible.
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