Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
mY tHoUgHtS !!
A woman since history is an image of fertility, her womb is thus considered sacred. But this idea has become so strong and embedded in our minds that we tend to overlook the other side of the coin. My story is a journey into the mind of a woman who feels incomplete, empty and claustrophobic in the life she is leading. She carries the blame of being infertile. It’s a blame she is not responsible for but the world likes to tag her with the term infertile. By profession she is a doll maker and thus the story is told through her dolls. In reality she is completely helpless, but she is in control of these dolls just like a puppeteer who controls his puppets through the strings. She relates to them and narrates her tale through the dolls like a puppeteer narrates his story through his puppets. At various points in the story her visualizations, hopes, dreams and flash backs are narrated through the dolls. Her in acceptance in the society is always there as the world till date looks down upon a woman who cannot take the family forward. Throughout the film there is a delusion between what is real and what is a dream. So it could be visions of a traumatized mind and its maternal longings alternately it could also be a story in which she adopts a real baby and the doll becomes a metaphor for the child.
I managed to reach this concept after much research and much help from various people. My earlier story though on the same lines was becoming very linear. I realized much later how I had taken certain aspects in the film for granted. Like her finding the adoption house, the happy ending I was trying to project made the story a little superficial. I like the twist I am bringing about in my current concept. The ending now is ambiguous and the audience doesn’t get to know if she really adopted. I prefer the open ending, because that way I become less preachy and I do not want state anything. When I had visited an adoption house namely shishu madir, I discovered the complexities of adoption. Even if it a solution to a major problem, but the problems do end at that. I have read articles on parents who adopted and had a tough time to get to their children to accept them. Many of the children who are adopted are chosen at a particular age, and that is for a reason. The younger they are the easier it becomes for them to adjust into the new surroundings. The children get so very adjusted to the routine they follow at their adoption home that it becomes almost impossible for them to suddenly adapt to a new home. The change needs to come very slowly otherwise it could psychologically affect the child. Even for the new born, they get accustomed to the timings they are fed on and the kind of food, also the smell of their clothes and surroundings so much so that it becomes a problem if this routine is suddenly changed by the adoptive parents.
I realized that in my previous story line may be I was projecting adoption an easy solution to infertility which in all actuality is not. It is a solution no doubt, but this solution comes with its own set of responsibilities and challenges for both, the adoptive parents and the adopted child. Though my movie is about pre adoption rather than post adoption but I do not want to sell adoption as a rosy solution.
