Absurdistan : No Water No Sex
People are alive far away in some other lands than our own respective countries. They have stories to tell. They have visual visions to show those tales. They have grip over their narration and they can use voice over in such an effective way that an audience may no longer even notice its (VO’s) presence after some minutes in to the film. They have humorous ways to present their stories. They can create laugh every other minute through the concoction of their scenes. They can make us realize about the serious problems while we are laughing on the predicament of the characters present on the screen.
People have stunning imageries to showcase their visual understanding. People have sense to search a right location and an eye to search and finalize the right kind of actors suitable to present a particular story. People have talent to use dialogues only when it becomes difficult to avoid them else they can create their filmi magic through the visuals only and through the body language and facial expressions of their characters only. People know how to use the camera in an effective manner and which scene has to be shot in day or night and which kind of light is needed. They know about the proper use of sound.
They know how to associate present days understanding and problems with a fairy, magical and superman type tales.
If not Bhagiratha, who had brought Ganga on earth for the mankind, than Farhaad kind of lovers can fit in to any setting. There are phases when a person can do great works because he is in love and he has to do what his lover has demanded. He has to get his lover. He has to win the closeness of his lover at any cost as rest all the things look absurd, without any meaning and he knows very well that if he does not get her now then its difficult and rather impossible for him to survive.
If a person has been cherishing an idea that this girl is for him only and girl also enjoys the same idea about the boy and they seem inseparable and circumstances appear in such a way that they have to bear temporary separation and they know that they have to meet after so and so years and when lover comes back and he is happy that now waiting has been finished but he finds that new situations have been arisen and what he does for the sake of his love and lover, she finds it utterly selfish and her morale does not allow to think and do things only for two of them and she scolds him and challenges him to do good work for all of the inhabitants of their place.
Lover has to do what she is asking and he has only 5 days to finish this hard task.
Absurdistan is a land, on which no country is ready to claim any ownership. Its abandoned by big countries.
Males, here, are lazy and while their women, work hard and earn the livelihood they simply pass the time in pub and try to enjoy sex with their women, even by attacking their work places.
They don’t work but still they want to maintain the establishment of a patriarchal society at that place where they have the right to say final word and where women should obey them.
At such a place, a boy and a girl are born at same time, in the adjacent bed in same room of a hospital. They are raised together since childhood and they don’t know any other life when one will not be with other. They are one.
Their physical bodies also have to grow and at the same time they have to come across the feelings which come to the minds of matured people and their bodies, along with their minds, start longing for each other. But they cant satisfy this need.
And once time comes to do that for which they have been wanting since long, situations become bad in the place.
Their place is suffering from acute shortage of water rather only source of the water has been almost dried and water comes in the forms of drops at irregular intervals and men of the place find themselves unable to do anything about this problem. They try to adjust to the new drought situations but women have to run the houses and they have to do all kinds of works. Men still are busy in entertainment. They still want to live a routine life where they used to get up, eat and play and have sex.
There is a tension between men and women.
Often in such societies where women are the main working force and men simply spend the time in mundane activities, women direct the course of actions and they decide and fate follows them.
We have seen Chipko like movements where women strength has guided the society. They have power and strength to fight against the evil, be it negation of alcohol or lottery or dowry or exploitation of women, if they decide to bring the things in right order then they can do it. People have to bow before their strength and when they are on right track because they want to save the families and thus society then who can dare to negate their movement?
Not without any reason it has been said that if woman is awakened then whole family is awakened about a matter. There is no family without woman.
Young girl shows them the path when she challenges her lover that if he can bring water for all of the people only then she w’d allow him to consummate the physical relationship between them and as they have to perform the ritual of their first night within a period of 5 days only, he has less time to fulfill the condition.
But he is a lover and he is a wise and hard working man and he has to try.
Does he succeed?
Scarcity of water can create a chaos and big trouble in a society. Nothing can be done without water and Absurdistan shows the importance of water in such a humorous way.
All the women follows the stand of young girl and men warned in clear words that if they cant bring water then they will have to be deprived of the sex.
All women in that place create the slogan, ” No Water No Sex “.
Absurdistan is a lovely film and it brings the collective satisfaction which a person can get by recalling, all those beautiful fairy tales listened in the childhood and very good comics read in the childhood and romantic stories read during younger days and humorous, serious things read when attained maturity. It’s a film which has all the things mixed in such a way that different species form one uniform piece of creation.
Absurdistan, if it has to be defined in one line, is like a very good Mulla Nasruddin Joke, which is witty, humorous and wise at same time. Characters in the joke will look like donkeys, and foolish but outcome of the joke would be very profound.
An interview with, Veit Helmer, the director, and Kristyna Malérová and Max Mauff, young leading actors of the film, can be seen below.
Tags: Absurdistan, Kristyna Malérová, Max Mauff, Mulla Nasruddin, Veit Helmer, World Cinema
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
The premise looks quite interesting, will check it out in near future.
@Jahanpanah,
film should be liked by you. have a nice watch.
what: bring water to a desert.
***
why: you get to sleep with that one girl who you’ve always wanted. and you’ll lose her forever if you don’t succeed.
***
when: you got 5 days to the d-day.
***
what an amazing premise!! and absurdistan is a pretty amazing title as well. thanks for the intro RK. i’m gonna some how find this, some place.
@wb,
there should not be any problem in finding it.
Bhagwan mile na mile, khojne se film to mil hi jayegi.
check out Surprise and Gate to Heaven also from Veit Helmer
Surprise is on youtube.
His is funny but different kind of filmmaking. reminds eras of chaplin and laurel Hardy
More on Veit Helmer on his website
Watched Surprise. It was good and funny too. Humor seems to be an essential part of his films. Reminds me of those Physics experiments where objects act in tandem to achieve a desired goal.
@Jahanpanh,
Surprise’s arrangements reminded me of a Kamal Hasan film, I guess it was Appu Raja, where he does such arrangements.
I really wonder where to watch these movies as they are not released in theatres. Can anyone point me out to some library in Bangalore who will keep such films or do we have other ways to be able to watch these kind of films
@Sourav Biswas,
In addition to film festivals, mostly DVDs provide the way to reach such films. Its DVD was also supposed to be released around this time. Please check for that.
Haven’t seen Appu Raja but arrangements like in Surprise were used traditionally to create humor like in Charlie Chaplin, Tom n Jerry etc.