Once in a blue moon, the central performance in a film is so powerful it overshadows the overall excellence of the work. It happened with Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth, where Shabana Azmi towered over what was an intrinsically laudable film.
In debutant co-directors Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi’s Shadowbox (Baksho Bondi in Bengali), the immeasurably accomplished Tillotama Shome sets the screen ablaze with her intense portrayal of Maya , a woman on the brink of a complete breakdown, coping, enduring surviving as she has no other option. Set in what looks like a small town in West Bengal, Maya’s fight for survival is never seen as a trigger for drama. There is a kind of acceptance of circumstances which a multitude of working women from the grassroots would recognize.
Whether ironing clothes and delivering them on her bicycle to her customers or trying to give her mentally challenged husband a bath after he comes home muddied and bloodied, Tillotama never plays the character for effect. There is a remarkable uncomplaining inevitability in Maya’s attitude. Her life is what it is, and there is no point in feeling sorry for herself.
Maya’s destiny is not an isolated case. Her wastrel troublesome husband Sundar (Chandan Bisht), their torn and confused teenaged son Debu (Sayan Karmakar) …these are characters all around us in different avatars. The biggest USP of Shadowbox and its deeply rousing mirror-image of life eked out at the poverty lineis that there are no self-congratulations here, none of the look-how-much-we-care-for-the-downtrodden patronizing attitudes.
This film comes from a place of absolute integrity. Maya and her terrifying predicament is portrayed with the least amount of condescension. I suspect a large part of this unassuming triumph comes from Tillotama Shome’s unnervingly quiet, unostentatious performance. This is not the first time she has played a woman at the fringe with such a lack of self-consciousness. She recently played a similar character in Gautam Ghose’s Raahgir. But what a different stratosphere the actress builds around the two characters.
Flaws? Not many. But if you insist, the idea of a woman taking so much emotional and financial pressure, ostracized by her own mother and brother (at one point, the mother calls Maya a “disgrace” to the family) without a murmur of protest does seem a little unreasonable. In the entire tension-charged storytelling (the co-director Tanushree Das, who has edited the film, leaves no room for slackening), Maya has only two meltdowns: one with her son and another with her unreasonable husband.
Who is this uncomplaining, resilient, unbreakable woman? Look in your kitchen. It could be your househelp.
