Language: Assamese.
Director: Bhaskar Hazarika
Writer: Bhaskar Hazarika
Cast : Lima Das, Arghadeep Baruah, Neetali Das .
Genre: Drama, Horror.
Streaming on Movie Saints.
Also known as : Ravening (2019)
Disclaimer: Aamis a.k.a Ravening (2019) is an amazing and unconventional film, that is not intended for kids, and for the faint-hearted.
Aamis articulates on behalf of food, precisely meat and it’s a freakish flick. Food is a normal thing and we have seen many food-related films. But Aamis doesn’t belong to that category. By borrowing the words of Sumon, the male protagonist “the definition of normal isn’t universal. when it comes to eating meat, what’s normal for you..maybe abnormal for others..” So is this Assamese film. Ofcourse, it’s a politically correct one, but an insanely dangerous one.
As the curtain raises and titles began, there’s a pediatrician, loving mom Nirmali at her early forties and Sumon doing Ph.D. on east Indian meat-eating traditions. In the middle, there’s a rickshawwala leading a common life.”Normal and peaceful”sounds good, isn’t it?!. Insooth Aamis is the total abolition of it. The rickshawwala also represents the other characters where everyone shares a common room of preachy, straight, and so-called social life. They have their own space, and they’re not distorting the flow of the story or tongue of protagonists. It’s a smart-play under a brilliant script. As the movie progresses on first gear, Nirmali and Sumon meet up, and furtherly they yield an emotion behind the restaurants, local and secret bizarre meat-eating tables. There’s a glimpse of wild excitement sparkles in the eyes of Nirmali when Sumon talks about the forbidden or taboo meat. The temptations are carving her day and nights as the movie seeps out its true identity.
Firstly Nirmali talks like a virtuous woman and disaccords with her friend Jumi’s hanky panky affair. After meeting Sumon and she realizes she has feelings for him and let Jumi know about him. She’s not sharing the genuine affection grown inside her because of buttressing her bogus didactic mask. Nirmali’s husband Dilip is a doctor who keeps roaming around for rural health work and visits home once in a while and boasts inside parties where everyone agrees with him, without disdain.
In another scene when Jumi tells her husband that she’s going out…His attitude was just like” wherever the fuck you go..why would I care”. Aamis also hints about the necessities of women and the lack of understanding in marriage on aside.
After Sumon & Nirmali getting out from the theatre leaving the play in midway, there’s an uncomfortable feeling fret inside both of them and they feel something’s not right between them. The very moment as the play ends, the audience walks out between them. It’s a beautiful scene portrayed metaphorically that, the only thing bothering them is not what they hiding in their deep minds, the love, affection, and feelings having each other but the society, the moral values, and lack of courage and individuality is stopping them. To be honest, in each frame Nirmali and Sumon were together on a one-hand distance, the audience also feels a bit of the tension and dilemma inside like the characters. The uneasiness gets worse when Sumon touches her cheek to remove the morsels. Anyhow at some points, we also think they should kiss or hug each other..whoa! where are our moral values going !! Why we are thinking like this!! This is illicit. Here Platonic love becomes an odd concept and not even the audience understands the way it works. Nirmali has to lose her physical temptation towards Sumon on a side which is not allowed in a sanctimonious society, so when her door to home opens she starts kissing morality(her husband) and resumes being a humbug. Nothing fake goes further dude..deception is worst when it’s towards ourselves..we lose control and let worse things happen!
Sumon confesses that the emotion behind eating the favourite chicken which his father gifted him was due to pure hunger and he feels no regret after all. Precisely, he loved it very much and he ate it that much! From this point, the movie shifts its gears to the next level. When Nirmali reaches that level of ecstasy, she says ” everything other than meat tastes like straw”; “the hunger gnaws me”.she has reached a level of eating human meat at any cost. The scenes like she pulls up Sumon to cut the dead body in the mortuary and staring at the rolling grilled meat and turning the pages with meat-filled photos..still haunt us.
Sumon is trying to get “physical” with her by feeding her his meat. It’s as bizarre as it sounds! After tasting it, it’s as if Nirmali has tasted the fundamental flavour of life….she felt whole! The meat completes her individuality..she feels placid like getting physical with someone she loves. As Sumon discovers his experiment or uncanny thought is getting successful results, he tries to feed her more. As their physical desires are getting nowhere and suppressed, the hunger erupts and increases day by day, all this gets messed up.
Aamis is the story of rotting desires that stinks before society. There is noone without desires. When the desires go beyond necessities, some people take a dark plunge due to their growing greed. As putting our attentiveness into the limelight, acute addiction/obsession to some interests is dangerous and has the strength to destroy the things around us and ourselves. We’ll be nomads wandering around the circle of desires and strayed. Going back is really hard,
In Shyama Prasad’s Arike Shanthanu tells his girlfriend Kalpana ” your foot is so cute and beautiful, I’d like to cut your little toe”. Kalpana asks why would you think like that with a curious smile. Shanthanu says ” I don’t know actually. I just feel like it”.
It’s mysterious how these kinds of thoughts come to a lover’s mind on such a romantic evening.
I’m trying to say that, there’s an emotion in abstruse human minds to consume or taste the things they love. Even one of my voracious reader friends said once” I like the smell of old books, I would like to eat every page” As funny and weird it sounds, these kinds of thoughts are being provoked based on some smells, thoughts or something perplexing. These all have been sleeping inside every subconscious human mind. Aamis is the wild version of what I mentioned above. The movie ends with a shot of Nirmali and Sumon holding hands with faces covered. The background music and the screaming of media and crowd play successively, which separate them from society and their world. The hunger might never consume her again..she has eaten up to the hilt and is satisfied!
So don’t put Aamis among a fantasy cannibal story to scare someone. It’s not. If someone asks you how Aamis differs from other films. Just tell them it tastes like cinema. Don’t leave a trace of what they’re going to witness. Bonafide cinematic experience!
Verdict: 6/7 stars
Brilliant.
