Shishir Rajmohan’s Kannada film, backed by Rakshit Shetty, has its share of moments and flourishes, but they don’t come together to give us the intended experience of ‘magic’
‘Belief’ becomes the operative word in Shishir Rajmohan’s Abracadabra, the soft-hearted drama that recently had its first public screening at the 15th Bengaluru International Film Festival. The debutant writer-director weaves together multiple threads of stories that converge in spirit, unbeknownst to the several protagonists that their life is somehow intertwined with someone else’s.
Harold D’Souza (Anant Nag), a taciturn elderly man living in Udupi, finds life has suddenly been engulfed in grief with the passing of his wife. A taxi driver named Rajesh (Avinash Rai), who Harold and the entire neighbourhood know, doesn’t like to be referred to as a ‘driver’ and is currently wide-eyed about making lots of money (by hook or crook).
An eight-year-old kid (Siddharth Prasanna) living in the same neighbourhood awaits freeing himself from the confines of his home whereas Sudha (Siri Ravikumar) doesn’t want her life to slip away meaninglessly being her illusionist/magician husband’s (B.V. Shrunga) on-stage assistant. And the illusionist himself wants to be the best there can be. All these lives and a few more seek something — either validation, respect or happiness — and long for something special, for that magical chant (of Abracadabra) to be cast on them. But for that, they must muster the belief and perhaps become better versions of themselves.
A young woman’s quest for liberation
The main charm of Shishir Rajmohan’s film resides in the way it subliminally connects everyone. It’s a gentle ploy on the writer-director’s part because he wishes for the people of his film to forge small but significant relationships with one another and maybe, find solutions to their respective problems. There must be a reason, he says, that Sudha moves to Udupi from Bengaluru and finds a small dwelling right behind Harold’s house. There must be a reason for Harold and Rajesh to venture on a road trip, as it were, during which one’s scepticism complements another’s gradual foray into faith. There must be a reason that the young boy attends the illusionist’s show so that he realizes the essence of freedom.
But the problem is that this theme or this idea isn’t evenly distributed in the film. That is to say that only certain threads or stories of this hyperlink narrative work, whereas the others don’t have the intended payoff. I was moved by Harold’s dilemma in the film and how his existential crisis makes him think of outlandish solutions. It helps so much that Anant Nag is pitch-perfect playing the part of this retired widower who, right after his wife’s death, is declared a bad husband by her sister.
A proper punch in the gut for him because he has suddenly realised that he has spent most of his married life being a tad indifferent to his wife’s wishes. It is almost as though this particular sub-narrative is at the fore and that the rest of them serve as accessories to his pursuit of finding happiness, of finding that magic back in his life. Consequently, Harold gets the best moments in the film and Shishir Rajmohan lends this character arc the finish that it deserves.
The same cannot be said of the other three narratives, though one spots a lot of scope in each of them. Sudha’s journey, for instance, starts off promisingly because picture this: a young woman sets off on an unknown path to find that liberation, to find that identity and (again) to find that magic in her life. What’s amusing, though, is that the ‘magic’ that already existed in her life, through her magician husband, was once a cause for great nuisance to her.
Sporadic moments of glory
Siri Ravikumar, too, plays the part with some control but the writing here just isn’t strong and subtle enough to elicit something in us. Instead, it begins to spoon-feed us through long conversations about what she is feeling or about the cost she must pay for her freedom and if that doesn’t suffice, there’s a song thrown in, to explain further. The nuances that Harold got to his name, Sudha doesn’t and just as the other two story threads, we are left wanting a lot more here.
As a result, I felt the ‘pacing’ of the film was a little off because, in an attempt to linger on the small moments, it fails to build its characters or take us close to them. Rajesh’s plight is interesting and the methods he chooses are interesting as well. But none of the contrivances built around him are exciting enough and in turn, the overall narrative feels too sidetracked because it ends up asking more questions of itself than it can answer. What exactly is the point of his story? Is it over-confidence growing into disbelief? Or that he must simply not go against the power, the magic of the divine? And why is his partner so abruptly, unimaginatively culled from the story?
But what Shishir Rajmohan does well is he stages certain moments really well. Take, for instance, the climax portion (no spoiler) wherein the very installation named ‘Cage of Death’ that the illusionist had built for himself becomes the site for a major confrontation. ‘How the tables have turned’: it is as though one character is saying this to another but instead of a cheesy line, we get a nice little round-off moment that sets not one but, perhaps, multiple lives free. The sore point is that the illusionist angle doesn’t really engage us to feel much for it (because of being too simplistic) and even though B.V. Shrunga, Anirudh Mahesh and others do a fine job as actors, the writing isn’t nuanced enough.
There’s no doubt Abracadabra is a film made with sincerity and love, but the gripe is that it doesn’t deliver on what it promises in the beginning. The setup, of each character seeking something beyond the ordinary, is intriguing and initially seems to withhold a lot of potential. Still, this could be seen as a missed opportunity though not without its share of moments of glory, of the writer-director finding his groove every now and then. If only the film came together with a better flourish.
