15 Park Avenue — A Cinematic Pleasure

After a lot of hullabaloo, we actually made it to Priya. At the outset, let me clarify, all the misgivings were not movie-centric, they were seat-centric. We had managed to get Front tickets, right you ought to be shocked! I knew what I was putting my neck into.... anyways, it was worth it.

Here goes....

Leaving aside concepts on what a movie should be, 15 Park Avenue can truly and safely be called a cinematic delight. Not only were the individual performances exemplary, but the concept of the director was also praiseworthy. Once again Aparna Sen has proved her mettle and that too with respect to a theme as difficult as schizophrenia. The last time someone dealt with this theme beautifully was Ron Howard, whom I believe Aparna Sen has not exactly surpassed for no fault of hers though. The protagonists in their movies are diametrically opposite and so each to his/her own film.

The biggest pitfall faced in such films is the misrepresentation of medical facts and wrong depiction of symptoms. To my much untrained eyes, Mithi’s seizures in 15 Park Avenue seemed nothing but real, which later a doctor confirmed. (However, the doctor-patient party relationship was difficult to digest. I am not talking about the obvious chemistry between them, which is the man-woman bonding against which I have nothing. Actually, my experience with frankness of doctors about their patient’s condition has not been too great. Well that was on the lighter side!) What was perhaps more commendable in the film was the depiction of delusion and the communication of the same through the simplicity of innocence embedded in Mithi’s harmless question to her sister asking her what she would feel if someone told her she was not a professor? Also, I haven’t heard the schizophrenic state being described so simply and accurately as by Dr. Kunal, and the visual switch of a flower vase with a lamp to go with it was absolutely brilliant. Yes, to a schizophrenic, her/his world is as real and as functional as for me this computer and the keyboard, and so for Mithi her 15 Park Avenue, her Jojo, her five kids, and her pets.

The one point where I felt Aparna Sen has scored over Ron Howard is the manner in which she has mingled reality and delusion to create for Mithi her world, compared to John Nash’s absolutely fictional world. Jojo exists, their kids would have existed had ‘they’ happened and probably their house too and then suddenly the clinching statement by Mithi about her husband to the man who inspired those thoughts in the first place “he is also a Roy like you”. It couldn’t get better.

The movie actually comes a full circle. Ironically, right? After all it deals with a mind without links. But Aparna Sen’s treatment of the matter is holistic. She turns Mithi’s hope, Jojo, into her nemesis, the factor that propels her to the point, her gangrape, that becomes the precipitating factor of her schizophrenia. Then again, when Mithi’s condition consistently deteriorates, in comes hope again in the form of a married Jojo, only to become her nemesis again. He doesn’t want to let her down again, he promises to help her find 15 Park Avenue and he does. And so there is the final merge of Mithi with her delusional world.

The ending couldn’t have been more apt. You don't think so? Then here's some food for thought.


The movie had worked itself up to a frenzy? A frenzy, at the core of which is the tumultuous silence, a silence that heralds a storm, an explosion. The state which Wordsworth described as —


“Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul”

This is what we call gaining “Samadhi”. This brings with it the awakening of the third eye coupled with the ability to gain an insight into things. Any verbal, visual explanation would only serve to be dilutive at this point. Creatively, 15 Park Avenue reached a similar point of saturation with Mithi meeting ‘her family’. It just had to end there, Aparna Sen had no choice. The boy with the backpack, whistling across the lonely street… is that hope or something in between? The director expects you to know.

For no fault of Aparna Sen’s though, I like “A Beautiful Mind” more. John Nash had hope, he fought, Mithi has none. And for these reasons, this movie is a must-see. It is hopelessness at its best.