22 thoughts on “15 Park Ave Comes to the DC Metro”

1. i hope that like all other work of aparna sen , 15 park avenue will also be different than popular bollywood cinema . She has a good track record of delivering movies with content and a direction.

2. Its quite different from mainstream bollywood stuff. Tremendous performance by Konkona and Shabana Azmi. I was left a bit confused in the end. Can someone explain me the last scene ? 🙂

3. It’s definitely worth a watch, and is nearly void of the melodrama and entertainment typical of Bollywood. I must warn you: the pace is on the slow side, the story being a bit droopy and stretched out. BUT the acting is superb yaar, the ending is worth the wait, and.. ohh the questions it raises! hai hai the issues it addresses! wah wah the reality it portrays!

   Like the eyebrow-raising sandwich I made for dinner, this movie is a disturbing and intriguing work of art, an inspiration. Enjoy~

4. i’m amazed by every good review this film gets. it’s shoddily-shot, full of narrative holes not to mention terrible screenplay development, and lazy acting performances from everyone other than shabana azmi and konkona sen sharma. konkona is wonderful, but then we’re getting used to seeing her deliver only sterling performances; she gets a little more brilliant with every film. ’15 park avenue’, however, has only one thing going for it: the end. partly because it brings with it the relief of being able to leave a bad film and partly because it is the only bit of cleverness in the entire film.

5. I did a review of it. Instead of giving the link, I’ll just paste it:

   My faith in Indian cinema was restored last night with Aparna Sen’s masterful 15 Park Avenue (2005). The film stars Sen’s own daughter, Konkona Sen Sharma, as well as Waheeda Rehman, Shabana Azmi, Shefali Shah and Rahul Bose. A brilliant cast, and they all hold up their ends quite well. The film is largely in English, with brief turns to Hindi and Bangla where one would expect to see them realistically (i.e., when characters speak to strangers on the streets of Calcutta). After dabbling with a somewhat more commercial style in Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Sen has returned to her serious art-house roots. 15 Park Avenue has sophisticated cosmopolitan people, heavy-duty dialogue, and extended discussions of the symptoms and treatment possibilities for schizophrenia, all of which seem to be pretty much medically up-to-date and accurate. The dialogue in this movie is the closest one gets in the Indian context to the cerebral intellectualism of Ingmar Bergman or Woody Allen’s early films, and I for one couldn’t be happier. I was actually a little hesitant going into this, partly because there have been many mainstream Indian films focusing on mental illness in one way or another in recent years — all of which I’ve hated. Probably the biggest of those was Amitabh Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee’s Black last year, but one also thinks of the Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor in Kyon Ki?, where Salman Khan’s illness bears no resemblance to any realistic mental illness I’ve ever seen; Ajay Devgan in Mein Aisa Hi Hoon, which deals with autism, pretty accurately; and Hrithik Roshan in Koi… Mil Gaya, where Hrithik has a developmental disorder about which almost nothing is known, except perhaps that it’s “cute.” And there are many, many others, most of which I haven’t personally seen (an article by Sudha Rai at the Society for Critical Exchange has a theoretical take on a number of these films). Most of these films play up mental illness for pathos, trying very hard to make their protagonists earn the audience’s sympathy. And nearly all of them end up being unserious, because they are bound by a set of conventions (really just clichés) for how to deal with mental illness: all very predictable and safe. Though there is some sentimental attachment to Konkona Sen Sharma’s schizophrenic young woman in 15 Park Avenue, Sen’s film breaks most of those conventions. Among other things, the film takes quite seriously the difficulties seriously ill people can trigger for their families — not a small thing. And the personal dangers Sharma’s character confronts (rape) as well as the real damage she causes makes this film anything but safe. This film doesn’t aim to pander or tell a heartwarming tale where a person who is “different” gains a measure of social acceptance. Rather, both Konkona Sharma’s and Shabana Azmi’s characters are doing their best just to survive. In an interview, Sen has said that this film’s story is based on someone close to her and her family. I believe it; there is an unflagging realism and commitment to its subject in 15 Park Avenue that just about everything else I’ve been seeing lately has lacked.

6. Aparna Sen has never been a part of the so-called Bollywood mainstream – so her work is obviously going to be different from the regular sappy melodramas. Therefore her films should also be judged at a higher plane.

   IMO, this film does not really work: the acting is too uneven – while Konkona and Dhritiman stand out – the remaining cast just goes through the motion; the mixture of English and native dailogues stilts the narrative flow and a couple of unnecessary sub-plots are thrown in. Sen’s use of the non-chronological storytelling confuses matters. Overall a disappointing effort from a director who has made some really good films – 36 Chowrongee Lane or Parama, which are of much higher quality, comes to mind.

   However, I would still recommend 15 Park Av over plopping down $10 for Da Vinci Code ! Also, for those interested, Sen’s earlier works like

7. …sorry, hit the post bottom too quickly – ignore the last incomplete sentence (from ‘Also….).

8. shabana azmi no longer ‘acts’ these days. either on stage or infront of camera. and to me, the end of 15 PA is a very cliched art house twist. an extremely insincere directorial flourish, trying to make a bogus statement that she is above mundane bollywood filmmaking.

9. Was there any explanation why the women are wearing ponchos???

10. They are on holiday in Bhutan. It’s a little cooler there…

11. and from what I remember of my childhood…wetter too.

    Haven’t seen the movie yet. But Sen Sharma is awesomely gifted.

12. Agree with Amardeep, this is far from a “safe” story, it shows the real impact of mental illness on the individual and on everyone around them. As such I found this a really intimate look at the internal dynamics of a particular family.

    But interestingly, I thought this film worked on another level. The premise of the film is based on Konkona’s flimsy grasp on reality — her hallucinations and paranoid delusions are the obvious and painful problems that we witness on screen. Beyond her character though, I read the film as a study of how people who are not mentally ill — Shabana’s character, for instance — suffer from their own delusions and misconceptions. Perhaps they’re not manifested as extremely, but they are there.

    So the film was really asking a fundamental question: what is reality? Whose reality is “true” or “real”? Is the reality of a mentally ill person less valid than someone who is not mentally ill?

    Looking at Shabana’s character, you could argue she suffered the delusion that her friend / love interest would choose her over a lucrative tenured professorship in the US. But, that was not to be. Similarly, the grandest delusion of all on her part (and the family’s) was that Konkona would somehow reemerge from her illness to become her former self. The somewhat abstract ending reveals the hollowness of Shabana’s belief that everything would be OK — perhaps her version of reality was no more or no less distorted than Konkona’s?

    In any case, though the film was somewhat uneven, it was one of the more through provoking ones I’ve seen a long time.

13. Sorry, last line should read “one of the more thought provoking ones.”

14. I watched the movie about 2 months ago and liked it.

    brown_fob – The ending can vary depending on your perception of the overall movie, it’s what you make out of it. It can’t be explained.

15. The ending can vary depending on your perception of the overall movie, it’s what you make out of it. It can’t be explained.

    @Payal

    I did interpret it in a couple of ways. I was keen to listen to what others have to say about the ending. This might not be the best place …but we could use “spoiler alerts” to warn the ‘junta’.

16. The movie was screened in Boston last month, with Aparna Sen answering questions after the movies (here’s what I thought about it). As others have said, the premise of the movie is quite laudable, but the execution isn’t as good as some of her previous movies. The english dialogue and delivery seemed pretty forced in many places. There’s a scene in the movie that juxtaposes Shabana Azmi teaching quantum physics with Konkana Sen being flogged by a witch doctor at her mother’s behest. I thought this was a rather unsubtle way of showing the generation gap, but Aparna Sen seemed rather pleased with it as she mentioned after the screening. It was also amusing to see a lot of people really dissatisfied with the ending and saying so. Aparna Sen’s retort was that an open ending was a standard literary/dramatic device! Well I guess what she really wanted to say was that since the struggle againist schizophrenia goes on for the protoagonist long after the audience leaves the theater, there’s no point in allowing them the satisfaction of solving the puzzle of her mysterious fantasy. Despite all that, this is a movie definitely worth watching, or at least attempting to watch. (Two enthusiastic brown thumbs up!)

17. For one thing this is a “hauntingly boring” movie – please avoid :).

18. For one thing this is a “hauntingly boring” movie – please avoid 🙂

    surething I did watch it b/c i was with bad company…. on the flip side coming back to matlab simulation felt quite good after the brain zapper.

19. So the film was really asking a fundamental question: what is reality? Whose reality is “true” or “real”? Is the reality of a mentally ill person less valid than someone who is not mentally ill?

    that is a very deep question . we assume that reality is that what majority confirms to . so we tag some persons as mental /abnormal /sick /….. based on our notion of reality . centuries ago , when nearly everybody believed that earth is centre of universe , saying that earth is sphere and revolves around sun was seen as a sureshot sign of person being held by devil . now if i will say that some aligns are responsible for evolution on earth , majority of students/ professors learning and proving otherwise will shot me down . The same case for everything like sexual orientation / stand on social issues / morality /…..

20. I once did a review too and since I’m a lazy ass, I’ll just copy and paste it.

    This is a multi-faceted, insightful and bold story about the people in the life of a schizophrenic patient, their (and our) perception and realities. Although the main theme revolves around a delusional young woman, the story delightfully flirts with physics, medicine, religion and even politics as it questions our perceptions about what is true and what is real. Konkona Sensharma beautifully conveys that the world Mithi is living in is as real to her as ours is to us. Within that world, she is logical and her thoughts are internally consistent, not the gibberish that they seem to us in our world. Here are a few outstanding scenes to look out for while watching the movie (don’t worry, these are not spoilers). I absolutely loved the way Aparna Sen wove these commentaries into the story. – The references to quantum mechanics and relativity intermingled with the witch-doctor (“ojha” in Hindi) performing his religious rituals that he believes will drive away the “ghosts” sitting in Mithi’s brain. – The doctor prescribing shock-treatment as a solution that is “believed” to work – Windows of perception – The scene about the review of Anu’s book. – The allusion to illusion in a conversation about a director looking for “maya”. – News footage of George Bush telling the whole world that there is “no doubt in his mind” that there are WMD in Iraq (now, that is not as much about Bush’s perception, who I suspect knew the truth, as the gullible public’s perception about WMD in Iraq.) – One of the best scenes in the movie is where Mithi tells Anu “Charu sent this man to beat me” and Anu dismisses it as a matter of course. Konkona did a fantastic job, bringing out the strange mix of muddled thoughts in a schizophrenic’s brain when her world and the real world clash. Aparna Sen was bold, but not bold enough to pose one big question: Is nearly all of mankind delusional to believe in God? She could have inserted some scenes about “normal”, “healthy” people praying to and sacrificing for a Being that no one has ever seen or heard from in all of human history (The ritual/exorcism scene doesn’t go far enough). That would be the ultimate question: What is normal? Who’s reality is right, the Believer’s or the Atheist’s? IMHO, this movie is a far more intricate exploration of the schizophrenic mind than “A Beautiful Mind”. It looks at the minds of not just the sick person, but also the healthy, and does so from many different angles and illuminates our understanding of our own minds and our world. If the former got 4 Oscars, this deserves more – At least one each for story, screenplay, direction, Konkona, and Shabana Azmi. It was truly a treat to watch this movie and I’m glad I bought the DVD for my collection. This was a story very well-told indeed.

21. An atrocious film. Konkona rocks as usual, but the rest of the cast are nothing short of awful. many of the scenes, with stilted dialogue, reminded me of our 10th grade convent school theatrical productions in India. Rahul Bose is, as usual, a terrible, affected performer. The ending is absurd–even if you allow for a post modern, metaphysical take on it. It is only the pathetic state of independent Indian cinema that allows for crap like this to be applauded. The story is of course a great one and in the hands of a more capable director could have been a significant movie. But, alas, Bengali auteurs like Ghatak and Ray are turning with agony in their graves at their new gen counterpart’s attempts to carry on the great tradition of bengali cinema. What is astonishingly bad is the shot selection in the movie– almost amateur-like. There’s no attempt to have the shots communicate what the essence of the drama is in a particular scene. But, ooohhh man, the script is soooooo bad, so english-babu like, with horrible dialogue that it perfectly matches the absurd acting in it. There is one scene with Bose and Shetty–intended as visceral, emotional drama–that is part hilarious and part embarassing to watch because it is so unintentionally, ridiculously funny.

22. the film shall re made again as part 2