NYIFF 2012 Review: SHALA

Is there anything more pure and less corrupt than young love? That first sensation that comes when boys and girls start transitioning into men and women is a powerful charge. The feeling is so often mutually felt but rarely expressed in as gentle and kind a way as the way observed in Sujay Dahake's beautifully observed Marathi film, Shala (School).

Mukund Joshi (Anshuman Joshi) is a 14 year-old boy, and Shirodkar (Ketaki Mategaonkar) is his female classmate in rural India in the mid '70s. Theirs is that beautiful and pure puppy love that one often only experiences once. Love free from disappointment, free from baggage, and free from fear. Their courting is equally chaste; no touching, no kissing, for Joshi, a simple shared smile, or coy glance in class is enough to send his spirits skyward. However, their relationship is to face some challenges, and ultimately the fragile political state of India takes its toll on these two, and Joshi begins to learn that some things are just too fragile to exist forever.

Shala's setting in mid-seventies India drops these characters right in the middle of what is commonly known as The Emergency. In 1975, the Indian government declared a constitutional State of Emergency, which included the institution of martial law and rule by decree. The events leading up to this are complex and mostly irrelevant, but the effects directly connect with the actions in Shala. This was a country in fear of its own government; a country in which even the most conservative rural areas were becoming increasingly reactionary, breeding contempt and revolution even in these far reaches. As a result, even the actions of a young boy fumbling toward adolescence could be misconstrued as anti-social behavior as he declares his love for a classmate.

This increased pressure on the young boys and girls in school pushes Joshi and Shirodkar into clandestine meetings, so as not to confront the conservatives. Eventually, Shirodkar invites Joshi into her home in one of the most touching and affecting moments in the film. The idea that merely giving him a tour and introducing him to her family is enough to provide Joshi with an eternity's worth of chaste romantic satisfaction is beautiful. However, Joshi's romantic fulfillment backfires when one of his friends professes his love for a classmate and Joshi inspires him to tell her how he feels and all does not go as planned.

The thing that worked about Joshi and Shirodkar's relationship that made it work was that it was all about mystery. Coy glances, quiet walks, and surreptitious smiles were all it took for them to maintain. However, when one boy openly professes his love to an unreceptive girl, with Joshi in tow for moral support no less, things so south quickly, and Joshi finds himself battling for his very future at the hands of overzealous parents who demand he be turned over to the police for his part in this crime of young love in which he was an unwilling participant.

This is the first time that Joshi learns that love isn't always all it's cracked up to be, even when the love in question isn't his own. His illusions of perfection begin to crack, and as the film wears on, those cracks deepen and spread. When his future in school is put into jeopardy, and his beautiful Shirodkar's future becomes less certain, Joshi begins to learn those hard lessons that we all must face at some point.

Dahake's treatment of these characters is a brilliantly distanced observation of some of the realities of adolescence.  The camera is never intrusive, the score never prompts you to feel unnaturally, and the script says only what it needs to. There is no melodrama, there is no out of place comedy, and there are no characters without purpose. The simplicity of Shala is its greatest strength. The patience of Dahake's film pays off as the audience has the time to become truly sympathetic with Joshi and all of the different directions in which he is pulled by his hormones, his family obligations and expectations, and his dreams. At that age, every defeat is a tragedy, and every success is a triumph, and we're able to feel those feelings with Joshi, and it's a beautiful thing, even when it isn't.

Sujay Dahake's Shala screened at the New York Indian Film Festival on May 24th.