Film: Memories in March

If you are looking for a quick reco about this film, I'd say go watch it (it's out on discs now). You will definitely be touched by it and want to share it with your friends and loved ones.         



The writer of Memories in March, who is also one of its lead actors, Rituparno Ghosh, is openly queer. More importantly, he is also someone acclaimed globally for his work, especially his sensitive portrayal of a range of human relationships. The movie itself is about perhaps the most important relationship in a gay man’s life, his mother, and her coming to terms with her (dead) son’s gay orientation and the son’s lover (also his boss). The mother is being played by Deepti Naval, who herself has fine performances to her credit and who has recently made her directorial debut with Do Paise Ki Dhoop, Chaar Aane Ki Baarish, whose lead protagonist is supposed to be gay. Naturally, one expects a film that makes you question some long held beliefs about relationships, digs deep to uncover some untouched layers of the human psyche or at least punches you in the guts and turns on the tear faucets albeit without resorting to Bollywood garden-variety melodrama.

The Bollywood trappings are happily absent. Lacking also is the capacity to meet our other expectations fully. The best plus is that one of the main ingredients, which Indian cinema so often seems to care little about, is not missing. There is a story that’s mostly sensible, a plot that’s plausible. For that alone and for making a film that most producers will not even consider, the makers deserve kudos and a hug.

There’s nothing in the film that makes you cringe or angry as a gay man. No wrong or mixed messages about being queer, no resorting to either effeminacy or portrayal of out-of-control gay sex drives to arouse laughter, no lament on the ‘misfortune’ of being queer. Not that you expect such rubbish from Rituparno Ghosh.

From a queer-rights-advocacy perspective, the movie pushes the right buttons, even if not hard enough. The interactions between the mother and son’s lover and the mother and son’s girlfriend address some of the myths that strange straight people still entertain about us in connection with masculinity/femininity, gender roles, conversion, aesthetic abilities, fixation on the sex, and so on.

The performances by the cast may not be award-winning but do not disappoint either. Of the two leads though, Deepti’s is the more convincing act. Rituparno’s trouble with accent and his real life persona serve as a handicap to accept his portrayal of the bereaved lover-cum-creative director. It’s like he wasn’t acting much; just playing himself. Of course it’s quite possible that having been born of Rituparno’s imagination, the character has a mostly autobiographical anchor.

Like some advertising films which hold your attention momentarily, the movie has a sprinkling of sparkling moments, some of which tap the tear ducts, but in sum, the film turns out to be drab. Don’t expect any scintillating scenes between the two protagonists, including the argument that leads to Raima Sen's character outing her deceased friend to the mother. In fact the entire build-up in the plot to the outing has a false ring to it, coming across as an overreaction from the mother, especially from someone who seems to be dealing with the loss of her son so well from the start; although she does verbally express his death to be the worst event in her life. To underline, the sequence of events leading up to the outing seem forced.

As an aside, there are two strange and unnecessary elements in the story. Raima’s character could be interpreted as a gray one, as she uses her dead friend’s contact to land a new job. Maybe the writer or director was being quirky in giving the freaky touch to the watchman character.

For the Indian queer community, this movie is the next important feature film after Onir’s My Brother Nikhil. Sadly, it did not even get that much theatrical viewership on first release in April 2011. However, one hopes that it will find a bigger audience over the years.

The Indian queer community’s war may seem to be cut-and-dried about decriminalisation and winning equal legal rights, but at its core is winning the hearts of people that matter to us like mothers (in Memories in March) and siblings and parents (in My Brother Nikhil) and thus dispelling ignorance and the resulting homophobia of our society at large. The movie may not have as much emotional appeal and intellectual core as we had expected, but its heart is in the right place and beats for us.


Versions of this piece first appeared in Bombay Dost magazine in August 2011 and in Trikone magazine (Winter 2011 issue).