IFFLA: The ‘Rapture’ of Indian Cinema

By Vrinda Das

An air of neglect haunted the Regal Live as I entered. Yellow lights flickered dimly, the smell of over-cheesy popcorn wafted through the air, and in a crowd of Taylor Swift singing caucasians—after all, it was the Eras Tour Movie’s opening weekend—I found comfort in the enunciated ahs and bits of Hinglish sounding around me - I was at the Indian Film Festival, LA.  

You wouldn’t really know that there was an Indian Film Festival going on other than by spotting the occasional Desi person in a rather empty theatre. It seemed that's how the entire night was going to be—empty. Devoid of passion, devoid of soul, devoid even of an audience. 

The screening was supposed to be at 9:30; accustomed to PDT, I found myself in the theatre with 2 other people right on time, while the rest of the crowd trickled in, clearly following IST, Indian Standard Time, constituted by being at least 20 minutes late to any event. 

With an audience of not more than 25, a cinema crowded with empty seats, and an American intern with no caution for the pronunciation of the names of the North, South, and East Indian creatives of the film Rapture, we began the cinematic experience. That is exactly what Rapture was: a cinematic experience. 

The film follows a young boy in a village in Megahalaya’s Garo Hills as tragedies continue to befall its people, exploring issues of religion, migration, and cultural infiltration in director Dominic Sangma’s sophomore film. 

Although this film touches on many of the political issues that define the North-East—issues that are in many ways are unique to it—namely the clash between indigenous culture and organised religion, the anxiety surrounding borders, and the value of cultural territory, this film not only represents but also creates a sense of rapture, a longing, lilting experience, that embodies a fundamental emptiness, aimlessness that comes to dominate its action. 

The film forces us to be aware of our station as spectators. We are never included in this community. We watch from afar, like voyeurs, as its destruction turns inward as the trusted priest steals from his gullible disciples or as the Panchayat comes together to hide a murder. We are helpless, we have no agency, we can only stand by and look. Excessive use of wide-shots, focusing on peripheral movement, and zooming out from the action, Sangma deliberately keeps us on the outside, and as such gives us the stature of a looming, onlooker, as if we are the God this community prays to, just as unable (as Him) to help them. 

As such, the film focuses on nothing. No one character, no one storyline. We are told about children being picked up from the forest in the middle of the night, the concern over the sale of people’s kidneys (quite literally sold for parts) the kidnapping of the believed perpetrator of the abductions, a Bangladeshi man, the love story of a widowed maid and the Minister, all the while following Kassan, a young night-blind boy in the village viewing everything around him. In choosing not to focus on one storyline too deeply and following all these moving parts, Sangma manages to convince us that the goings-on of this village, although strange in its content, is mundane, commonplace, and a daily life that has been accepted by this village. That has to be accepted by this village. It puts at the forefront a hollowness that is haunting. The vacuum which explains the need for intense belief: in religion, in lies, in red-herrings, in justifying murder. In many ways, this speaks to the political neglect of this region in the broader Indian context. The choice of keeping the film entirely in Garo as opposed to English or Hindi, while also focusing on indigenous culture reinforces this idea. Meghalaya lives outside mainstream Indian culture, it exists in a vacuum. The emptiness of the film then even serves to elicit some guilt. As a proud North Indian, I begin to question my own conception of my country—how much do I associate the seven sisters of the East with my nationality? 

That’s what makes this film especially powerful. Although it forces the audience to maintain a certain distance with the community, it creates an immersive, visceral experience, partly because of the genius of cinematographer Tojo Xavier, and partly because of how it leverages the absurd in the mundane. It is just as intense of an experience, as much of a rapture, as the film itself discusses. 

The central question of neglect however, which transcends the content of the film and the region in question, comes to play even when we think about its reception. Lost on tiny audiences at under appreciated festivals. 

On the whole, Dominic Sangma’s Rapture, proves the diversity, strength, and power of Indian cinema outside of the commercial machine of Bollywood, and creates space for real, underrepresented stories to be put on screen, in a way that is just as organic, authentic, and meaningful as the film itself, even if as a global audience we are unable to find the right spaces for it to be expressed.