Konkona: Brilliance personified

Konkona Sen essays the role of a schizophrenic with rare sensitivity in 15 Park Avenue.

Actors who leave no page unturned from their journals of acting techniques to achieve perfection in enacting roles seldom falter. Or disappoint. Sadly there are actors few and far between who set out to achieve this feat. That's why it comes as a bit of a pleasant surprise to see Konkona Sen Sharma, the talented young daughter of actor director Aparna Sen, essay the role of a mentally slow girl (who at times gets completely unfocussed with her hallucinations) with aplomb and rare sensitivity in Aparna Sen's latest film, 15 Park Avenue.

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Meethi, born to Waheeda Rehman after 18 years from her second marriage, has a congenital genetic history of mental illness. It's lying dormant and needs merely a trigger to lay bare the tormented psyche. There's apparently nothing wrong with her and she goes about leading a normal life, doing a regular job as a scribe, taking her job seriously and even falling in love with Joydeep or Jojo, as she affectionately calls him, all this while being a normal, ebullient girl on the campus with her friends. Unfortunately, while on as assignemnt, she gets brutally raped by goons and comes back traumatized. The agony turns into a state of schizophrenia and leaves her in a delusional mental state.

Konkona Sen Sharma essays the role of a schizophrenic with rare sensitivity in 15 Park Avenue.

To an average filmgoer such a complex role isn't anything that he would relate to. Or even want to. Nor is it common for any actor to come by such a difficult character to breathe life into onscreen. But Konkona's deft handling brings to light the subtle complexities of such a multi-layered person with an intense perceptive analysis, not once resorting to the stereotyped mannerisms or falling back on the obviously stated. She goes about playing Meethi, who lives in a world of her own, and not allowing reality to strike her or faze her. Instead, she makes us believe that for all our concerns with the world that is real for us, it is her territory where she decides the boundaries, which is more real. Or at least as real as any other world.

Konkona could have easily gone overboard trying to give Meethi a semblance of reality in a dark world. Of course, it's her mother's able direction and great support from the entire cast particularly, the formidable Shabana Azmi, who plays her educated sacrificing older sister to perfection, which helps. But without her performance as the dithering mind who's bordering on the believable and the completely incredulous survival, the film would have faltered. After viewing her performance, lyricist Javed Akhtar is reported to have been so disturbed that he actually requested Aparna Sen not to make "such agonizing films".

Konkona is not new to acting. She has proved her mettle earlier in a film where there were no demands of great homework as far as her characterization was concerned - Madhur Bhandarkar's take on the socialite evenings, Page 3. Her award winning performance in Aparna Sen's Mr & Mrs Iyer, as the young south Indian and mother of a child, was enacted to perfection also.

But she is called upon to do much more as Meethi. Kudos to her acting skills for delving into the unknown and coming up with such a
heart-wrenching performance.