Espresso: Fishbowl
Both the mundane and the extra'ordinary'
Madras Mattinee was at once delightful, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. It takes on a challenge to uncover what happens in the life of an average middle class man. Apparently quite a lot. It tries to find the extraordinary-ness of an ordinary family. I loved it for showcasing it with a dignity that is hard to find in mainstream cinema. Kannan is just your regular person who is saddled with life and responsibilities that he has been forever playing catch up with. He wants his children to win big in life where he couldn’t. He does all of this knowing that he would never succeed in life himself, but if he struggles enough then his children wouldn’t have to. His definition of success is his children succeeding. And that is enough. The movie captures the emotions through everyday activities of the household and common objects. A mother’s phone wallpaper, a grandmother’s paper wrapped biscuits, a son’s borrowed bike, the father’s meal plate, and the daughter’s phone wallpaper. There are big emotions but without pre-packaged, forced drama around it. We hear raised voices only a few times in the story, because nobody shouts outside the big screens. Family dramas in real life start and end with whispered emotions.
Cobalt Blue captures the messiness and the yearning of first love. But it also captures the stubbornly defined boundaries within an Indian family. The book captures how the siblings fall in love with the same person who stays as a paying guest with their family. I was constantly wondering through the book about why the siblings don’t talk to each other about who they are in love with? Not as an emotional conversation but as a casual, passing mentions. But Anuja and Tanay were born into a family with roles pre-written for them and it is not easy to confide anything out of that to each other. And for both of them falling in love is a form of escape. Anuja wants to escape from home, be viewed as someone with her own agency. Not to be treated as a child whose antics are tolerated until she could be married off. For Tanay, it is testing the waters to see if he can be himself and still be loved. Can he finally remove the mask that has been forever and painfully secured in place. Both the siblings are crushed by the societal and familial expectations placed on them. They lose the person they love, but they also gain something back.
The Berzattos are as messy as they come. Natalie, better known as Sugar, is the middle child who is saddled with the eldest daughter syndrome. Because she is the eldest daughter. Just not the eldest sibling. The portrayal of the family dynamics in The Bear is mostly raw and anxiety inducing. And at times heartwarming. In other words, just how most families are in the real world. There are very few pieces of media as evocative as the episode fishes. It offers a real glimpse into who Berzattos are together. Why they are the way they are. There is so much boiling beneath the surface. There are a lot of jagged edges. And they are too close to not get hurt in such close proximities. And Sugar wants to assure herself as much as everyone else by asking if they are okay. Which is the final straw for her mother tethering on the edge. But despite all this, I love how Sugar soldiers on. She probably would rather not. But her family needs her, so she makes herself the emotionally available adult in the family. All the while trying her best to not become her mother. Sugar deserves an award and a hug.