London Indian Film Festival 2012 Review: ABOSHESHEY (AT THE END OF IT ALL)

Indian filmmakers, both large and small, have a thing about young adults from the diaspora rediscovering the beauty of their ancestral home. Many times this takes place as a physical discovery, as desi* youth visit India for the first time and fall in love, as in The Namesake. Other times it takes place as a form of re-awakening of the inborn Indian within these young men and women who discover the beauty and grace of the old traditions, as in all-time blockbuster Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. These kinds of films go back decades, and I have to admit, they make a good case for India's beauty and atmosphere. This is the kind of film that Abosheshey is, but it is so much more.

The first person we meet in Abosheshey is Suchishmita (Roopa Ganguly), a working class woman living a life that seems fulfilling when looked at from the outside in, however, there is a big hole in her existence, that hole is the place in her life where her son, Soumyo (Ankur Khanna) used to be. Soumyo's father left his mother when he was a baby and took them both to America, where Soumyo has been raised as an American with no emotional tie to India. When his mother dies, Soumyo is conscripted to handle his filial duties and take care of her estate, such as it is, back in Kolkata. What he had intended to be a week's stay to sign some papers, turns into a life changing journey through his mother's experience living without him.
 
As I mentioned above, there is very little new in the actual plot of Abosheshey to make it stand out from the pack of stories about finding one's roots, especially in India. However, the manner in which the story is told is far more graceful than most attempts at this genre tend to be. There is no melodrama, a minimum of happy coincidence, and each character in the film has their own arc, which is extremely rare. From Souchishmita, to Soumyo, to Souchishmita's neighbors and lovers, everyone gets their story told. Granted, the story focuses on Soumyo, but it isn't as though he magically falls in love with India through the beauty of his mother's one room flat, he finds things to love in the mundane everyday existence to which he is exposed, and isn't that more believable?

There is something about the thousands of years of culture and history that makes India a country apart. It is a place in which pilgrims from the West have sought spiritual refuge for hundreds of years. Powell & Pressburger did it in the '40s, The Beatles did it in the '60s, and only a few years ago Wes Anderson made a comedy about this very trek that so many privileged people take when their lives 'o plenty are no longer fulfilling. However, it is this very same ancient history and old-fashioned spirit that makes so many second and third generation emigrants loathe to return. This is Soumyo.

Soumyo is typical of many young adults of Indian descent who try so hard to assimilate into their own worlds. Soumyo's life, business, and Anglo girlfriend (appropriately shrew-ish) are all in San Francisco, and at the beginning of the film, he sees this journey as little more than a bump in the road on his way to achieving the American Dream. Little does he know that his world is about to be turned upside down by the spirit of India.

I'm not going to lie, many of these films are downright cheesy. The idea that every single foreign born visitor of Indian descent is going to land in India and immediately kiss the ground and succumb to it's ancient spell is more than a bit ridiculous. However, good stories well told always make up for slightly unreasonable leaps in logic, and that's what we have here. Abosheshey is a beautiful story told without visual flourish, but with the kind of heart necessary for the audience to feel in touch with the characters and their emotional states all the way through. When Soumyo makes decisions or is affected by these new environs of which he remembers so little, we understand because we've been able to take this journey with him, and we aren't simply expected to believe that there is something in the air.

I attempt to avoid spoilers when I review films, but I have to say that if you read my review with any care, you can probably figure out what happens, but that's not really the point. Abosheshey is one of those films that proves the old maxim that films aren't really about what happens, they are about how it happens, and that is the joy that this film holds. Abosheshey takes the viewer on Soumyo's journey of discovery with him, letting him lead us, rather than the other way around. It's a calming thing to led by the hand of a skilled director, and this film leads us gently through a world that we can believe in and yearn for, even if it isn't ours.

*Desi is a type of slang that refers to the people, cultures, and products of the Indian subcontinent or South Asia and, increasingly, to the people, cultures, and products of their diaspora.