Aftersun- (Non-Spoiler) Review

A simple story depicting sublime relationship of a father-daughter duo or more as daughter>father relationship. Love encompasses very wide range of relationships but somehow is managed to be leashed to its romantic expressions. This movie breaks such shackles and introduces the audience to an unreserved, unscripted and deeply moving storyline.

Early on when movies like this one used to be called ‘a masterpiece’, I often used to wonder, why is this so?  These movies didn’t had complicated storyline, action, scenic locations, nor out of the box writing, nor exceptional soundtrack, nor any of the ‘Nolan’ stuff and yet people used to write and talk so passionately about such films, nonetheless the dozens of awards these films claimed.  But a casual talk with an ardent critique would open layers of initially inexplicable but mind-altering revelations.

This movie, loosely speaking, showcases the life of 11 yr old Sophie with her 31 yr old father-Calum and their vacation in Turkey. Though the storyline might sound dormant, it is nothing but deep. Her nuanced questions about his relationship with her mother, about his childhood experiences, her comprehension about her first-hand exposure to adolescent behavior around her, are some contours this movie treads upon. There is consistent presence of innocence throughout the film but there’s also a looming shadow of negativity, which seems to be as an interlude of depression and grief.

A major obstacle in understanding such a film is the perceived lowly importance which we as Indians at large attribute to the concepts of depression, grief, empathy, etc. and in general to human psychology. These are the things which we even think in closed doors, talking and processing such terms is a distant dream. Even though westerners have slightly pumped up notions surrounding these subjects, we significantly downplay them at our peril.

This film is characterized by slow storytelling, extensive use of camcorder cinematography, subtly gripping background score and the heart wrecking chemistry of Paul Mescal (Calum) and Frankie Corio (Sophie) under the direction of Charlotte Wells.

I am so tempted to turn this into a spoiler review explaining my view on subtlety of many of these scenes but can’t afford to run my thoughts wild right now. For me, this film broke the notion that a man can unabashedly breakdown only in front of his partner. There is a possibility that it can also be with your levelheaded, nonjudgmental and loving daughter.