A Misty Retelling Of Dreams: Jonaki

Dreams – a fragmented reality of memories, an amalgamation of our consciousness and subconsciousness that we wish only contains utopian ones but sometimes are forced to confront its dystopian counterpart. One always wishes to return to them when we have unwillingly pried away from its grasp. A showreel consisting of all our previous dreams ready to be projected is one that we can only wish for to come true someday.

However, Aditya Vikram Sengupta does his best to achieve this feat through his 2018 film Jonaki. With an ensemble cast consisting of the late Lolita Chatterjee, Jim Sarbh, Ratnabali Bhattacharjee, and Sumanto Chattopadhyay the film serves as an ode to his grandmother and whose memorial recollection of her life acts as the screenplay for this artistic recreation.

The film starts off with Jonaki (Chatterjee) waking up to relive her dreams where we too are invited as she tries recollecting her past along the way. We see Jonaki’s mother (Bhattacharjee) stark disapproval of her lover (Sarbh) whilst her father (Chattopadhyay) is consumed by his scientific research disregarding the family and failing health. The lingering hope of marriage that Jonaki desperately tries to cling to is snatched away when her lover enlists to fight in the war. In the meantime, she is married to an older man with whom she shares her house but not her heart. 

The film is sparsely populated with dialogues but the symbolism infused by the director into every scene compensates for the same. The white origami butterfly that finds itself only in the hands of Jonaki and her lover signifies the distinctive bond between them, one of fleeting promise and unrequited yearning. Setting the stage for young love the oranges step in as a metaphor for the scattering of love letters along the long corridor which creates a sense of curiosity. As each orange hits the ground with a thudding sound it mirrors the heartbeat of the doomed pair on receiving each letter.

Moments of exultation are soon replaced by despondence as Jonaki’s mother snatches the wedding veil from Jonaki’s hands – the last remnants of her happiness – before locking her in the room. The camera then shifts to the dust-gathered padlock reverberating which indicates her reminiscences of that particular memory are yet to be freed from their confinement. Monotony – a feeling that we all escape via our ability to slip into a reverie – surprisingly finds itself amongst one of the many memories of Jonaki’s past through a depiction of the scene in which young girls sleeping on their beds turn towards the other side at the same time.

Aditya Vikram Sengupta masterfully uses camera angles to paint each scene as photographs that can be plucked out and put on display for the viewers to interpret to their satisfaction. Voyeuristic shots of the sublime intimacy between the lovers leave us with feelings of intrusion as they relish each other’s company in their own bubble away from the pangs of reality. One can compare this cinematic approach to an Andrei Tarkovsky film which isn’t complete without the essence of a dreamlike stupor.

Nevertheless, its overreliance on metaphors and dream-like pacing to continue the story forward overwhelms the viewer after a certain point of time. This in turn makes it a film for all those who appreciate the “show don’t tell” concept as its packed allegory, selective camera angles, and idiosyncratic screenplay uses this particular outline to their benefit.

A film whose origins can be traced back to Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s grandmother’s narration of her life journey through the usage of dreams is one that lets us take a curious peek into the hidden repressed recollections of another human being.