Placebo is a 2014 documentary that explores the very essence of the rat race we live in. The rat race that people from the world of AIIMS live in. It is directed by Abhay Kumar and produced by Abhay Kumar and Archana Phadke. This film is about the aspirations of the young and how much they truly need to struggle to keep them alive in a place threatening to kill them at every chance. Mere survival in this place is apparently a massive achievement, an institute of learning and there’s something glaringly wrong with that.
This documentary is shot by a young Abhay Kumar who was at the time just 25 and fresh out of Uni inside the seemingly normal but callous walls of All India Institute of India, more commonly known as AIIMS trying to figure out what hell went wrong. The documentary starts after Rahul, Abhay’s younger brother injures his right arm after punching a window in a fit of extreme sorrow during Pulse; the annual college festival of AIIMS and ends up getting nerve damage, restricting his movement. Abhay decides to document his little brother’s college in hopes of finding patterns and sneaks into AIIMS while his little brother rests at home.
There are quite a few things this film tries to address. Although Mr Kumar admits to there being no set narrative when he began shooting, a narrative does end up taking form. Dr Chopra talks about if one knows what one wants to do in life, then AIIMS is possibly the best place to be but if one is lost, then there is nothing here apart from depression. The atmosphere the institute seems to have is very frightful. There have been lots of films that talk about academic competition and its downsides but the display of academic stress in this film is so raw, almost too raw than it should’ve perhaps been. Because boy does it make you uncomfortable. But then again, that’s why we’re probably even talking about this film right now.
Places like AIIMS leave no space for things like healthy competition, it’s quite simply the hunger games, just a lot more twisted but veiled with academia. One of the country’s brightest minds thrown together to compete, one can just imagine the exhilarating and almost addictive thrill that comes at the prospect of winning. Who wouldn’t want to win? I know I would. Even if it destroys me first. The students of AIIMS end up paying a much higher price than what they bargained for. We struggle to give meaning to our lives. But when you’re within the walls of this esteemed institute the meaning is not only lost but the possibility of there ever being some semblance of meaning in the future vanishes too.
We can’t possibly move forward without addressing the themes in this film. There were quite a few but the three that stood out of the crowd were - bullying, isolation and suicide. Children can be pretty mean, sure. So when you get bullied as a child by other children who just like you have 4 functioning brain cells, it’s not the most erroneous. It becomes a problem when this behaviour leaks into your adulthood. Bullying was almost considered an important rite of passage and perhaps that’s why even after criminalising it continued for the major part. Isolation is hands down the most harrowing theme of all. Thanks to Dr K's surprisingly accurate description of it. What makes the suicides at AIIMS more disturbing is that most of them root in isolation and not academic stress.
The cinematography is surely interesting. Mr Kumar talks about how animation became a part of the film to bring in the concept of ‘Reality is fluid’. It helped portray a dreamscape and the mindscapes of individuals in the hostel. It has a very raw visual style, a lot like home video footage which makes a massive difference in terms of the tone of the film. Had the film been shot on a professional camera, it certainly would’ve lost its rawness. Although the film's latter half is much darker than the former, the frames are lighter and vice versa. Mr Kumar explained how that was because he’d shoot at night only but gradually moved to shoot in the day as well as the characters became more comfortable.
It is definitely a hard-hitting watch and leaves you with a series of questions. And no answers. What caused a fairly stable student to punch the wall till he got nerve damage, possibly ruining his career in medicine? What causes the other students with ambitious dreams who’ve worked for seemingly endless years to throw life itself away? Or is it just something in the air? Is the administration really the agency to blame for the turmoil of these students? It doesn’t matter what the answers might be. What’s important is that at least we’ve started talking about them.
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